Department of French

UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN

TRINITYCOLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH

SENIOR SOPHISTER DISSERTATION

NOTES ON PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION

2009-10

Two-Subject Moderatorship

SENIOR SOPHISTER DISSERTATION

NOTES ON PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION

1.Candidates for Moderatorship Part II will already have experience of problems of preparation and presentation of extended written work in their Freshman and Junior Sophister assessed essays. However, the following differences between these earlier exercises and a Senior Sophister dissertation should be emphasised:

(a)The greater length of the dissertation (9,000-12,000 words) implies greater care in selection of topic, organisation of work, and structuring and presentation of material.

(b)The dissertation, which should afford some insight into the techniques of research work, should aim at presenting something new, whether by means of a new approach to a well-known material, or by analysis of new material.

2. For these reasons, an unhurried approach is essential. Students are required to obtain the agreement of an appropriate supervisor for a provisional definition of subject area by the beginning of the second week of Trinity Term. They should, however, make use of the remainder of that term to consult further with a view to closer definition of the subject, and should expect to commence work during the long vacation. (See end*). The final date for submission of dissertations is the first day of Trinity term of Senior Sophister year, which must be strictly adhered to.

3. The dissertation should comprise the following elements:

(a) Title-page:giving title, name of author, name of supervisor and year of submission.

(b) Table of Contents:listing Introduction, chapter titles, conclusion and bibliography, with

the page numbers in which each starts.

thereafter the abbreviation with

page-reference will suffice.

(d) Introduction:setting out briefly (no more than 250 words) the objectives and scope of the

dissertation and the general shape of

the argument, together with some statement

of how the work relates to studies already available.

(e) Text, set out in chapters: divided as most appropriate to the material. (If sub-sections to chapters are used, it is

preferable for these to be given separate

headings and listed in the Table of Contents.)

(f) Conclusion: summarising the results of your investigations, indicating their significance,

setting them in a wider context and perhaps

indicating possible future explorations.

(g) Bibliography: listing all primary and secondary sources consulted (for reference methods, see 13 below).

4. Three copies of the dissertation should be prepared, two for submission to the Department, and one for retention by the candidate. It is worth remembering that discussion of the dissertation (conducted in French) constitutes about half of the Moderatorship Part II viva voce examination. Candidates are therefore advised to re-read their dissertations carefully before presenting themselves for the viva voce.

5. The dissertation should be typed, with double spacing (inset quotations in single spacing) on one side only of good white paper (preferably A4). Ample margins should be used, and the typing should be reasonably consistent in the length of line and the number of lines per page. The pages should be numbered consecutively at the head. A plastic spiral binding is required.

6. However good the typist, significant errors may occur, and these are the responsibility of the candidate. The accuracy both of the final draft and of the typed dissertation should be carefully checked, paying special attention to the transcription of quotations. It follows that arrangements for typing should not be left to the last minute.

7. Notes may appear as footnotes, as notes following a chapter, or together at the end of the dissertation. Whichever method is used, reference numbers to the notes should appear at the point in the text which relevance dictates, above the line, without punctuation. Notes are intended primarily for documentation and for citation of sources; they should not normally include extra expository material, which should be included in the text or, in exceptional cases, added as an appendix.

8. Abbreviations:

(a)A contracted form of a word, ending with the same letter as the full form is not followed by a full stop:

Mr Dr Mrs vols St

(b)Other abbreviations take the full stop:

Esq.vol.p.no.

(c)Where the initial letters of each word of a tide of a journal are used as an abbreviated title, full stops are omitted:

MLRPMLARHLFTLS

9. Square brackets should be used for the enclosure of phrases or words which have been added to the text by someone other than the original author: He adds that 'the lady [Mrs Jervis] had suffered great misfortunes'.

10. Titles of books and other writings:

(a) In English, the initial letters of the first word and of all subsequent principal words (i.e. excepting articles, prepositions and conjunctions) are capitalised:

A Tale of Two Cities

Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead

(b) In French, only the initial letters of the first word and of proper names are capitalised, unless the first word is an article, when the first noun and any preceding adjective take an initial capital:

Histoire de la peinture en Italic

La Grande Peur dans la montagne

(c) In all other modem European languages, capitalisation in titles follows the rules of capitalisation in normal prose in that language.

11. Italics (indicated in typescript by underlining) are used;

(a) for single words or short phrases in foreign languages not used as direct quotations from another writer;

(b) for the titles of all works individually published under their own tide (books, journals, plays, etc.).

Single quotation marks are used for titles of individual poems from collections, chapters from books, and articles from journals. For examples, see 13 below.

12. Quotations Lay-out of quotations differs according to length:

(a) Short quotations (less than about 60 words of prose or less than two complete lines of verse) should be enclosed within single quotation marks and run on with the main text.

(b) Longer quotations should be inset in single spacing, starting on a new line, without quotation marks. A quotation occurring within such a long quotation should be in single quotation marks; if a further quotation occurs within that, double quotation marks should be used.

The following example illustrates these conventions:

The prediction makes it clear that it is Julien's 'coeur feroce' which will end by making him a parricide (rather than accident or fate): and the effect on Julien is to inspire the fear not so much of accidentally killing his parents as of experiencing a conscious desire to do so:

Sa prediction 1'obsedait; il se debattait contre elle. 'Non! non! non! Je ne peux pas les tuer!' puts il songeait 'Si je Ie voulais, pourtant?...' et il avait peur que Ie Diable ne lui en inspirat 1'envie.

13. References: the following examples show the normal conventions for citation:

(a) BooksYvonne Bellenger, Du Bellay: Ses 'Regrets' qu'il fit dans Rome (Paris, Nizet, 1975), pp. 23-4.

Samuel Beckett: The Art of Rhetoric, edited by Edouard Morot-Sir, Howard Harper, Dougald McMillan III, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures:

Symposia, 5 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1976).

(b) Articles in books: Peter France and Margaret McGowan, 'Louis XIV and the Arts', in French Literature and its Background: The Seventeenth Century, edited by John Cruickshank, French Literature and its Background, 2 (London, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 82-98.

(c) Articles in journals:Graham Chesters, 'Baudelaire and the Limits of Poetry', French Studies, 32, No. 4 (October 1978), pp. 420-34.

N.B. In the bibliography at the end of the dissertation, the order is generally alphabetical by the surname of the author. Here, therefore, the surname of the author will precede his or her forename or initials:

Koritz, L.S., Scarron saffrique

(Paris, Klincksieck, 1977).

14. Further details of commonly accepted conventions will be found in the MHRA Style Book, 1971 (TCD Library P. 35755), 2nd edition 1978.

* As a guide, the following pattern of progress may be useful:

by the start of Michaelmas Term:plan drafted;

by the end of Michaelmas Term:two chapters drafted;

by week 6 of Hilary Term:body of dissertation drafted;

by the end of Hilary Term:final draft completed, with introduction and conclusion;

Easter vacation:typescript corrected & bound, for submission on first day of Trinity Term.

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Department of French

Academic Year 2009-2010