ENGL226 Paper 2 Topics

 

Answer ONE of the discussion questions listed below in a 3-5 page essay in which you support your points with specific textual evidence from the assigned readings. Please specify which question your essay addresses.

Although research is not required for this assignment, if you do incorporate ideas or passages from secondary sources, use parenthetical citation to document your sources within the body of your essay and create a Works Cited page providing bibliographic information for each of the sources you cite. Follow the MLA guidelines for research documentation from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Sixth Edition by Joseph Gibaldi), which is available in the Reference section of the John D. Williams Library.

Due Date: October 26. Papers submitted after all papers have been collected at the beginning of the lecture period will be considered late and will be assessed the appropriate grade penalty. IMPORTANT NOTE: NO PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED BY EMAIL. Papers must be submitted directly to your discussion instructor to be accepted.

 

1. Compare/contrast the power and purpose of art and the artist in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" and Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Can art capture the warmth and intensity of human experience? According to these poems, what are the roles of art and the artist in addressing the human condition?

2. Choose one of the following themes: nature, progress/evolution, scientific/technological advancement, forbidden knowledge, love, family relationships, loneliness/isolation. Compare and contrast the treatment of your chosen theme in the works of any two of the following authors: Percy Shelley; John Keats; Mary Shelley; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Charles Darwin. Use specific examples from the works of both authors to support your analysis.

3. Choose a poem by either John Keats or Percy Shelley and compare/contrast the poem with Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein in terms of how the two works reflect the dominant concepts of Romanticism.

4. Choose at least two of the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and compare/contrast the poems as Victorian texts. How do the poems reflect significant concerns of the Victorian Age?

5. Choose one of the following characters: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Byron's Manfred, Percy Shelley's Prometheus, or Tennyson's Ulysses (please do NOT choose a character you wrote about for Paper 1). Compare and contrast that character with Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein in terms of the themes of ambition, individualism, and isolation. What are each character's central ambitions? What are the personal and social results of each character's pursuit of his ambitions? What are the sources of each character's isolation? Is the character guilty of a crime? If so, what crime? How would you compare the crimes and punishments of the two characters?

6. Relate Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to a contemporary issue. For example, what do we learn from Frankenstein that might be relevant to the current debate surrounding human reproductive technologies, such as genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, human cloning, and stem cell research? Or consider how you can relate Frankenstein to contemporary concerns about changes in the traditional American family structure (especially recent debates about juvenile delinquency and the effect of single-parent families on child development). How is the Creature's experience in Frankenstein relevant to the experience of today's youth? Be sure to use specific textual evidence from Shelley's novel to support your analysis.

7. Choose one work by one of the following authors: John Keats, Mary Shelley, or Tennyson. Compare the literary work with related visualizations in artwork or photography (you may use more than one piece of art). How do the visualizations reflect themes, character types, or settings relevant to the literary work? Support your answer by referring to specific examples from the text of the literary work and specific features of the artwork (colors; light/dark imagery; physical features of the setting; positioning and arrangement of figures in the picture; physical appearance of characters-facial features, clothing, body language, poses, etc.). If the artwork depicts a specific scene from the literary work, how does the artwork interpret the scene? Do you agree or disagree with the artist's interpretation of the scene? Why or why not? You're welcome to use any art you find, but several relevant pieces of art are posted on our Blackboard course website in the EXTERNAL LINKS section under "Artwork." NOTE: This website has a large collection of artwork related to Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," Shelley's Frankenstein, and Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Passing of Arthur."

8. Choose one work by one of the following authors: John Keats, Mary Shelley, or Tennyson. Compare the literary work with a related film or piece of music (the film or music may be a direct adaptation of the literary work or it may be a film/composition that contains themes or characters similar to those in the literary work). How does the film/music reinterpret the original literary work to fit a new medium and time period? Some suggestions: compare one of the film adaptations of Frankenstein to Mary Shelley's original text (there is a filmography of Frankenstein-related films at <http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/engl205/frankenfilm.html>); compare the Creature's character in Frankenstein to the speaker in the song "Monster Demolisher" by Electric Frankenstein (the lyrics are printed in the lecture notes of the Mary Shelley PowerPoint presentation); compare Loreena McKennitt's song "The Lady of Shalott" to Tennyson's poem. Use specific examples from BOTH the literary work and the related film/music to support your analysis.