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ENGL 1C PP5 – Self-Determined Literary Critical Inquiry

Background: This term, you have encountered the most commonly practiced forms of literary criticism as you’ve worked through a challenging set of canonical texts. You have also faced a gradual reduction of scaffolding, a pulling away of the support you’ve been used to and a push toward the independent, self-motivated work that you’ll encounter in the upper-division courses at your four-year universities. An expectation that comes along with this mode of instruction is the capacity to formulate your own projects, and to engage in critical inquiry with little more than the texts placed before you.

Task: This is a two-part project – the first part is to ask a question! You have seen where the interests of your professor lead you: language, power, identity, and intertextuality, to name a few examples. Now it is up to you to determine the scope of a literary critical project. At the outset of your text, designate a question that you would like to answer about ANY single text or combination of texts that we have encountered this term. In the composition of your question, name the literary critical tradition that serves as the inspiration for your question – look back to the chapters from Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today to accurately convey the critical tradition with which your question identifies.

The second part of your project is to answer your question, of course! Engage in your self-determined critical inquiry into at least one of the texts we have read this term.

Specifications:– 1000 – 1200 words.– Include at least 3 well-integrated and accurately attributed quotations.– Maintain the conventions of academic texts which are so familiar to you, including demonstrated audience awareness, a structure conducive to effective communication, a text relatively free from errors and entirely free from errors that interfere with authorial intention, etc.

Some notes:– You can split off your question into a “preface” style section, where you directly relate your question to your reader in advance of your work, or you can integrate it directly into the body of your text, probably in the introduction paragraph. The expectation in upper-division and graduate courses is for the latter, but it’s up to you how you’d like to handle it!

– Get creative!–

But don’t get stymied by all this freedom! There are so many choices, and you can’t do them all in this one short essay – think about what has interested you and do your best to keep the scope of your project limited so that you can engage with your selected source text(s) with profundity rather than sweeping over their surface.

– Don’t forget that I am here to help, however you may need it!