MAJOR AUTHORS: CHARLES DICKENS | Spring 2008
PAPERS AND EXAMS
For general policies on papers and exams, see The Fine Print.
Exams
The final exam, worth 20% in the calculation of your final grade, will be held on in our regular classroom on Thursday, May 8 from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
A make-up exam will be administered for medical reasons only. You must supply documentation of all illnesses and accidents. (A note indicating merely that you were seen at the infirmary won't suffice.) Please do not request special arrangements to alleviate any of the following: a crowded exam schedule; a heavy workload; conflicts with employment, extra-curricular responsibilities, or job-hunting; familial celebrations (e.g., weddings or graduations); crises in other people's lives (e.g., severe depression of best friend's roommate); crises in your own life that are a normal and inevitable part of the collegiate experience (e.g., demise of relationship with boyfriend or girlfriend.) Fairness dictates that such accommodations cannot be made for one without being offered to all.
For help writing exam essays, consult Writing Essays Exams in the Geneseo Online Writing Guide.
Papers
You will write two papers for this course. The first paper is worth 25% in the calculation of your final grade and should be approximately 5 double-spaced pages (1250 words) long. The second paper is worth 35% in the calculation of your final grade and should be approximately 7 double-spaced pages (1750 words) long. For the second paper, you must draw on at least two critical or scholarly works on nineteenth-century British fiction.
You may submit your own topics for papers as well as the final exam. Under "Tools > Surveys" in mycourses, go to the "Submit a Topic" survey.
The "due-date" for each of the papers in this class is not a single date but a one-week range during which you may submit your finished work. I grade and return papers in the order in which I receive them, so the earlier you submit, the sooner your work will be returned. You can get a sense of what I look for in papers by downloading a copy of the evaluation rubric that I complete for every paper submitted. In addition, the Online Writing Guide offers help on a wide range of essay-writing matters, including proper conventions for citation. In both papers for this class, you must follow MLA format for citations.
Paper One
Due February 19-26 (no later than 11:59 p.m. on February 26)
Choose one of the following topics.
- Take a single number of Pickwick Papers and discuss both (a) the elements (words, images, incidents, themes, etc.) that give it internal coherence and (b) the contribution that the number as a whole makes to the overall coherence of the novel.
- Discuss the range of voices in Pickwick Papers. How does the voice of the narrator compare to that of various characters? How is voice an index of character in the novel? How is it a source of humor? How is it a guide to understanding? How is it an obstacle to understanding?
- Use the Hyper-Concordance of Victorian Literature or a text analysis program such as Concorder Pro (Mac) or TextStat (Windows or Mac) to look at the words of Pickwick Papers. Discuss any interesting patttern(s) that you find.
- You can submit your own topic through myCourses. (Tools > Surveys > Submit a topic.) It should be a topic that everyone in the class can write on, and you should word it accordingly. If I think it's a good topic to make available to everyone, I'll add it here.
Paper Two
Due April 15-23 (no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 23)
In this paper, as in your first paper, you will analyze one or more texts and present an argument that you support with textual evidence. What distinguishes this assignment from the first, however, is the expectation that you will contextualize your analysis using at least one secondary source. This is the assignment that you will use to demonstrate that you have met the second individual learning outcome of the course.
In literary study, a secondary source may be a work of history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc. that helps to throw light on a literary text. Or it may be a work of literary criticism that does the same.
You can think of literary criticism as representing an ongoing conversation among readers about the significance of literary texts. If you use literary criticism as a secondary source, you do so in order to insert yourself in that ongoing conversation.
Echoing is not conversing. Don't quote a critic simply to agree. You can quote a critic to disagree, or you can quote two or more critics who disagree with each other and join their conversation by taking sides.
Don't think of your essay as a research paper. In 7 pages, you cannot possibly conduct an exhaustive examination of a problem. You'll do best to think of your project simply as a literary analysis that considers the text in a context - a context of facts or ideas.
Remember that your essay must have a thesis.
Your assignment is to examine your chosen text(s) in relation to one of the topics below. You may write on any Dickens novel other than Pickwick. You may focus on a single text or consider two or more texts in an essay of comparison and contrast. (It's okay to refer to Pickwick; just don't make it a focus of discussion.)
- Dickens as entertainer
- Dickens and the "angel in the house"
- Dickens and capitalism
- Food and drink in Dickens
- Moral plotting in Dickens
- Matter and spirit in Dickens
- Visual Dickens
You can propose additions to this list by going to Tools > Surveys > Submit a Topic on our myCourses site.
Submitting Papers
The two papers for this class must be submitted electronically by 11:59 p.m. of the last date in the due-date range (e.g., February 26 for Paper One). Submit your papers using the drop box in mycourses. (Look for the Drop Boxes under the "Tools" tab.) Late papers lose one-half grade per day.
Be sure to keep a copy of your work.
If you need help with this electronic submission procedure, contact the CIT HelpDesk. If they can't assist you, contact me.
Return of Papers
I will return work electronically, in the order in which it was received, with corrections and comments included in the returned file. Please do not expect work submitted close to the deadline to be returned in less than 2-3 weeks.