Paper One
2-Page Review of a piece of Literary Criticism on HamletPaper Due February 24, In-class Presentations February 24, 2005
Assignment Requirements:
- Two typed double-spaced pages that carefully analyze the assigned short piece of scholarship from a refereed journal. You cannot go over 2 pages (700 words maximum) because you only have 5 minutes to present your ideas.
- Your paper both briefly and accurately summarizes and carefully evaluates/analyzes the essay. For evaluation you will have to determine how persuasive the piece is. Give some attention to the critical methodology(ies) employed by the author. Is the argument supported well by the evidence offered?
- You need to attach a copy of the essay you are writing on to the back of your review essay.
- Number and staple your 2 pages.
- Proofread carefully. In just two pages even a single problem with syntax really shows.
- Download paper to the www.turnitin.com website.
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.
- You use this project to enter the ongoing critical discussion about Hamlet.
- You gain experience presenting your ideas orally and also help the whole class gain an overview of contemporary criticism on Hamlet.
Suggestions:
- Take a look at review essays that many journals carry (usually at the back). These could be good models for any academic review essay.
- In preparing to write this paper, you should examine the structure of the chosen essay as well as its content.
- You also might ask yourself some questions as you read:
1) Who do you think the projected audience is? Scholarly essays are all aimed at scholars but there are different kinds of scholars. What kind of scholars would (or would not in your opinion) get some use out of the essay? For example, is this written for Renaissance scholars, anyone interested in postcolonial criticism, gender representations?2) What is the effect of the essay's structure on the content?
3) What kind of approach does the author take?