Guideline for Paper One
Your papers provide you with a unique opportunity to examine one play in depth (there will be two of them).
Take any play not on our reading list before A Dolls House (October 24th)— either another play by one of the authors whose play is on our reading list, or a play in the anthology that is not included in the reading list — and write a five-page analysis of it with one chapter from Backwards and Forwards as your template.
Chapter 12 (Theme) is the only “off limits” one, because it is too easy to do just what the chapter warns against: turning drama into a philosophical argument. If you choose any of the super-short “tricks of the trade” section, please combine two sections to complete your analysis, rather than only one. For instance, I’m already asking you to use background information at the beginning of your essay (see below).
A Dolls House
This is meant to be a thoughtful essay so please write in paragraph form.
As a preamble, name which chapter you will emphasize (later you can justify your choice), then give an overview about the period of time in which the play was written, the playwright’s circumstances in writing the play and the social environment that determined its style. Do NOT cut and paste information because I’m very good at identifying plagiarized material.
Reach for a synthesis of biographical and social information (above) after declaring which ONE of the chapters you’re using from the Backwards and Forwards outline and expand on the play you chose using the concepts in that chapter. You only need one medium paragraph for this concluding paragraph.
A Dolls House
When writing your paper, please refer to the MLA Handbook (7th Edition) and follow the instructions for formatting a research paper. I prefer footnotes, but internal quotes will also work. Note that you must have at least three sources, and two of those should be books and/or published articles (such as those on JStor). Although they can start your research, wikipedia, spark.notes, gradesaver, etc. are not quotable sources and I will not accept them.
Dr. K.
