English 201 Paper 1:

Review/Analysis of an Academic Essay

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        Assignment Objectives:

 
•        You review a published example of literary scholarship to see how other scholars perform their work
•        You yourself write in the form of the review essay, a popular genre of literary scholarship which is also a
                 good  point of entry for graduate students into the realm of published scholarship.
 

Assignment Requirements:
 

•        Four to six typed double-spaced pages that carefully analyze a short piece of scholarship from a
                 refereed journal.
 
•        Your paper both briefly summarizes and carefully evaluates the essay.

 

Suggestions:
 

•        When you look through journals while choosing an essay, take a look at review essays that many journals
                  carry. These could be good models for Paper One.
 
•        In preparing to write this paper, you should examine the structure of the chosen essay as well as its content.
•        Let me know what essay you have chosen.
•        You also might ask yourself some questions as you read:
Who do you think the projected audience is? How useful would the essay be to other readers, other scholars?

What kind of scholars would (or would not in your opinion) get some use out of the essay?

Why do you think the author chooses to structure the essay in the way s/he does? What is the structureís effect on the content?

What kind of assumptions does the author make about the nature of literature, culture, etc.?

What kind of approach does the author take?