McAuliffe A.P. Literature & Composition Research Paper

Research Paper    A.P. Literature and Composition

Assignment.  Find a topic that derives from something we have studied this year. Choose a major work or an author we have read, a novelist, playwright, or short story writer.  Or choose a poem or poet we have studied.  Consider literary theories, such as New Criticism, Reader Response, New Historicism, etc. The topic should be suitable for a 5-7 page research paper using a minimum of three legitimate outside sources.  Your paper must follow MLA guidelines for manuscript format and citation conventions. 

 

Getting Started.  Begin with a school-sponsored site (e.g. Bloom or Gale Group) or begin with a book.  The subject should be one that you are interested in.  It may be one that you have already thought about (e.g., female characters in Hamlet), or it may be a question you have not yet considered (e.g., How much did Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop use “closed form” in their poetry?)

Read pages 2179-2184 in your textbook.  This will give you an overview of what this kind of paper entails.  It also addresses important issues like internet reliability and plagiarism.

Review the hand out, “Sample Research Topics.”  This will give you some idea of suitable topics for this assignment.  It may also stimulate ideas of your own.  Whatever topic you choose must be related directly to this course; it should not derive from a class you took previously (e.g., A.P. Language, 11 H, or 10H).

Some of the work on this assignment will be done in school, though you will have to do much of the drafting on your own time.  Steps along the way will be graded.  

 

Schedule.

_________ Topic due

_________  Tentative thesis statement and Preliminary Works Cited due

_________  Rough draft peer annotation

_________  Paper due

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Sample Research Topics

This is not a comprehensive list.  It is intended to provide a sense of what kind of topics are appropriate.  You must have teacher approval for whatever topic you choose.

Novels and Plays

The relationship between a writer’s life and work: Jane Eyre/Charlotte Bronte; Albert Camus/The Plague; Tim O’Brien/The Things They Carried.

Translation in literature: Oedipus; The Plague; (The Aeneid; The Divine Comedy; Beowulf).

Literature and politics/economics: The Mayor of Casterbridge; The Things They Carried.

Literature and the Absurd:  Camus, Stoppard, Becket.

Changes in perspective on a classic:  Hamlet (e.g. 18^th century excisions; 20^th century Freudian readings).

Race in American literature: Song of Solomon.

Psychological/scientific perspectives on literature: character; free will

A feminist perspective on mostly male-centered stories: The Plague; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Heart of Darkness; The Things They Carried.

A new historicist perspective on literature:  Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare.

Poetry

Explore a verse form or metrical pattern:  The sonnet, sestina, villanelle, haiku, free verse.

Read more of the work of a poet we have studied:  Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Hardy, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins.

Explore a poet who influenced or was influenced by one of the poets we studied.

Research a category of poetry: Romantic, Naturalist, Pastoral, Symbolist.

Research a prize winner:  U.S. Poet Laureate; Nobel Prize; Pulitzer Prize.