I. Formal Requirements

I. FORMAL REQUIREMENTS

Titles

a.)Short stories and poems in quotation marks: “Neighbour Rosicky”; “Patterns”

b.)Novels and plays in italics: The Great Gatsby; Mourning Becomes Electra

Quotations and references (MLA-style)

a.)If quotation is shorter than four lines, use quotation marks. The number of the page in the given work from which you have taken the quotation must always follow the citation in brackets.

(i)If your text makes it obvious where or from whom the quotation comes from, all you have to indicate is the page number, as follows:

Derrida makes the point that the “face is not only a visage which may be the surface of things or animal facies, aspects or species” (98).

(ii)If you do not specify the source of the quotation in your text, you have to indicate the name of the author of the book or the study you are citing plus the page number:

We can find, however, extreme views in deconstruction which state that the “face is not only a visage which may be the surface of things or animal facies, aspects or species” (Derrida 98).

(iii)If you want to omit something from a quotation, you can do so by inserting [. . .] in place of the omitted part:

“The face is not only a visage which may be the surface of things [. . .] or species” (Derrida 98).

b.)If quotation is longer than four lines, do not use quotation marks, but indent your quotation as shown by the example below. As regards reference, (i), (ii) and (iii) apply in the same way as above.

In White Noise, Don DeLillo readily debases such taboos as the sacredness of the family, as we can see in the following passage:

Bee was quietly disdainful of wisecracks, sarcasm and other family business. A year older than Densie, she was taller, thinner, paler, both worldly and ethereal, as though in her heart she was not a travel writer at all, as her mother had said she wished to be, but simply a traveler. (94)

Bibliographic data

At the end of your essay, you have to compile a list of the works you cited (primary sources as well as secondary ones). At the top of the page, you have to put the heading: “Works cited” Order the list by reference to the surname of the authors. The bibliographic data you normally have to provide is:

(i)the name of the author (surname, given name),

(ii)title of the work you used

(iii)place of publication (shortened if possible, eg. NY for New York)

(iv)name of publisher (publishing house) in a shortened form (e.g University Press=UP; Bantam Books=Bantam; Harper & Row=Harper)

(v)date (year) of publication

Bibliographic data for books have to be provided as follows:

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. NY: Viking, 1984.

Bibliographic data for short stories and poems have to be provided as follows:

Malamud, Bernard. “The Magic Barrel” in: The Norton Anthology of American Literature vol 2. Nina

Baym et al ed. NY: Norton, 1985. 1864-1879.

II. WRITING THE ESSAY

PLEASE DO NOT… / PLEASE DO…
…write lengthy introductions full of biographical information on the given author or period to fill the page. If you do want to use such information, there has to be a strict logical connection between the info and what you want to argue. / …concentrate on a certain problem (contradiction, dichotomy, linguistic feature, etc.) that you claim to discover in the given work, and explore it in a logical argument. Expose the problem right at the beginning of your essay, and argue along its lines all through.
…get lost in plot summaries! The assumption is that both you and your instructor have read the work you are discussing, so do not pretend to be addressing a larger audience, and tell tales we both know. / …reflect upon the plot in an interpretive fashion instead of summarizing it. Phrase your reflections in a critical manner, and rely on the text as much as possible to back up your reflections.
…quote just for the sake of quoting! Never leave a quotation without reflection, especially if it is a long one. / …rely on quotations from the text and relate to them in an analytical manner so that they will form integral parts of your argument instead of being mere ornaments in your text.
…read a literary work as if it were made up of facts, and do not regard characters and their acts in them as if they were “real.” Avoid speculating about what the characters may be doing after the text ends. / …remember that a literary work is fictitious, it is a text, made up of language. Read it as a text, and try to explore its subtlety by taking every word to be important, especially if you write about a poem.
…pass moralizing value judgments, especially not in a cliché-like fashion. Do not tell me that something or someone is “bad” or “good” (or some equivalents of these poles) if one may know it well without telling. / …read the text and reflect on it with as open a mind as possible. Even if something is radically in opposition with your sense of “the normal,” take it to be a “thought experiment,” and try to think that the text is offering you an alternative viewpoint. A literary essay is definitely a medium in which you can freely explore ideas which you may not think of exploring in life.
…express personal opinion in a very direct manner. Avoid using “I think…” if you can. Do not say things like: “I think Orin Mannon is a neurotic,” for it is stylistically not right, and because it can very easily delimit your scope of further arguments. / …phrase your personal opinion in the form of raising a questions or a problem that you can explore further and further. Instead of the "I think…”-sentence, you can say: “Certain elements inOrin’s behavior seem to suggest that he is a neurotic.” And then the field is opened upfor arguments: you can refute it, you can support it, you can consider the possible causes, etc.