Monsters!

ENG 2100

Essay 1: An argument using a critical lens (5 pages)

Assignment: Analyze either Homer’s or Theocritus’ representation of the Cyclops through the lens of Carroll’s theory about monsters. By using your chosen Cyclops to reflect on and scrutinize Carroll’s work, you should develop an argument of your own that complicates, challenges, extends, or otherwise revises some aspect of his theory.

An excellent paper will both 1) use the theoretical text (Carroll) to shed light on a real puzzle, contradiction, or surprising feature of the literary text (Homer or Theocritus), and 2) use the literary text to complicate, challenge, extend, or otherwise revise an aspect of the theoretical text.

In developing your argument, you may find it useful to think about the topic in terms of any of the following criteria (but probably not all of them!):

  • a feature of monstrousness that Carroll doesn’t address in his theory but that, in your view, characterizes the representation of the Cyclops you’re analyzing.
  • an element of Carroll’s theory that doesn’t seem to apply to the Cyclops—why not, and why might this “poor fit” between the theoretical and literary texts be important or interesting to notice?
  • a way that Carroll’s theory could be complicated, challenged, extended, or revised so that it better fits the case of the Cyclops.
  • an adapted version of Carroll’s theory, developed with the Cyclops in mind, which would lead you and your reader to a new hypothesis about monstrousness in general.

DEADLINES:

Pre-draft = Thurs., Sept. 4

Draft = Thurs. Sept. 18

Conferences = Sept. 19-23

Final revision = Thurs. Oct. 1

Your draft and revision are due(printed) at the beginning of class and also to turnitin.com by midnight on the due date. (I’ll give instructions on signing up for the site well in advance.)

A Note on Drafts

Sometimes students misunderstand the word ‘draft’ in the context of a college writing course. While we’ll do a lot of writing that is ungraded and relatively unshaped, the draft you hand in should be your best possible effort at getting your ideas on paper and shaping those ideas into a coherent and readable whole. You should use full citations just as you would for a final revision.

The better the draft, the more useful the feedback you will get on it.

It is a draft only in the sense that I will then suggest ways to improve even the best work you can do at that stage in the process. That said, students sometimes face writer’s block or some other impediment during the drafting stage. Please don’t suffer in silence! Let me know what’s going on before the draft is due so we can figure out the best way for you to proceed.

Cover Letters

Each time you turn in a draft or a revision, the first page of your document will be a cover letter, addressed to your readers (that is, to the class at large). Your cover letters should be about three-quarters to a page, single-spaced, and should address the following questions:

For the draft:

What do you see as your thesis and motive?

What are the biggest problems you’re having at this point in the writing process?

If you were going to start revising today, what things would you focus on?

What idea or point do you feel you’ve articulated or argued most successfully? Least successfully?

What’s the number one question about your essay that you’d like your reader to focus on? (Use the “Lexicon” vocabulary here: thesis, structure, evidence, etc.)

Any other concerns?

For the revision:

What are your motive and thesis? How have they changed from draft to revision?

What are you happiest with in this revision?

What was most challenging in your drafting and revision process? How did you approach those challenges?

What would you continue to work on in further revision if you had the time?

Any other concerns?