English homework help. Final Essay Guidelines
For your final essay in this class (5-6 pages, double-spaced), you will be writing an original essay that engages with at least three of the texts or paintings we have read or looked at this semester. There are multiple ways to do this, but whichever you choose you must have a thesis statement.
- Focus on a primary work and only mention the secondary texts or paintings as support
for your discussion. For example, you could write your entire essay about Hamlet
but quote something from Tolstoy, Kafka, or the Bible to help support and develop your thinking. This way, the focus remains on the primary text, which is Hamlet.
- Take a comparative approach, bringing three (or more) texts and paintings into
conversation around a common theme, question, or point of view. For example, you
could consider how memory operates in Hamlet, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Notes of a Native Son. This way, you give equal weight to all three texts in your discussion of memory.
- Take a philosophical approach, focusing on the nature of a single concept or way of
thinking (such as justice, history, morality, faith, skepticism, cynicism, poverty, cruelty,
inequality, mortality, sin, salvation, etc.), and show how different authors (or painters)
engage with this concept. For example, how do Marinetti, Sir Thomas Browne, and Nietzsche think about history and why? This way, you are free to draw on as many texts as you see fit as long as they help you deepen your understanding of the central idea or concept.
NB: You are encouraged to adapt and expand any of your reading responses for this
assignment.
NB: All texts you quote should be cited in a footnote or endnote only once (see below).[1]
While quotations in the paper itself should have page numbers given (like this (p. 56)) or
act and scene given, if from Shakespeare (like this (2.3), meaning act two, scene 3) or
from the Bible (book, chapter and verse – Genesis 3:27).
**Digital Copy must by Uploaded to Canvas**
[1] William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode. Methuen & Co. Ltd : London,
- (that is, Author Name, Title of Work, editor if applicable. Publisher : City
Published, Year.)