Literature Essay

  Write a five to six page essay on the below topic. This assignment must include quotations from the assigned readings to support your ideas. In addition, you must use THREE outside, scholarly sources in this essay. Please also use in-text citations and complete a works cited page, according to MLA guidelines.

In this course, we have read many works of literature from the modern era.  However, it is impossible to cover every meaningful work in just eight weeks. Therefore, it is your turn to decide what literary works should be included in LITR202.  You may choose to include works that we have read this semester, and you may choose to include additional works of literature that we did not discuss. Did this course ignore a country, a genre, or an author?  Create a literary canon that fills those holes.  There are a few rules, though. 

1) Your essay must include at least four literary works from at least two different countries. These works must have been written during the modern era.  These works can be poems, plays, novels, and short stories; however, these works may NOT be films. Most of the literary works should come from this course.

2) Your essay must be five to six pages long and contain at least three peer-reviewed articles.  The three peer-reviewed articles is a minimum requirement.  To achieve a higher score, you should find a peer-reviewed article for each of the literary works you have decided to include in your essay. Also, you must find a scholarly source that directly focuses on your chosen work(s) that we did not read in this course.

Please send me a message or post in the open forum if you have any questions about this assignment.

Please remember the following:

1. Avoid any and all summary sites within your essay.  This includes Sparknotes, Shmoop, Cliff's Notes, and Wikipedia.
2. Use MLA format and citations in this essay. Also, please write this essay using third person.
3. You may not use any wording from previous essays or forums.
4. Note that the works cited page and headings are not included in the page count. Please use one-inch margins, do not add extra spaces between paragraphs, and use 12 font Times New Roman. 
5. Scholarly sources generally come from academic journals and have been examined by experts in the field for accuracy.  Generally, you will find these in the APUS databases.  
6. Make sure your essay has a clear introduction and thesis statement (topic plus point about that topic) at the bottom of your introduction.  The thesis should be based on the readings in this course.
7. Make sure your body paragraphs are focused on proving your thesis statement. Do not summarize the readings. 
8. Be sure that your thesis expresses an analytical thought and is not just a statement of simple fact or plot summary.
9. Make sure to have a conclusion that does not bring in new information.