ENG 543:  Topics for Paper I

Due Tuesday, February 7, your first essay should be 1,250 words +/- 10% (from 1,125 to 1,375 words) and adhere to the formatting guidelines that can be linked to here:

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman145/papertemplate.html

Please note that your essays represent opportunities for you to explore your own ideas, so you should do your best to avoid repeating specific points that have come up during our class-discussions.

Option A: As we discussed in class, and as a number of our secondary sources on e-reserve have emphasized, modernist writers were interested in portraying the nature of inner experience--the flow or stream of consciousness, the associative logic of memory, the nature of emotion, the way people use perceptual data to make sense of experience. Compare and contrast how TWO of the writers we will have studied by the time your paper is due--namely, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Beckett--focus on the inner worlds of characters. To what extent do the authors use different techniques to represent the characters' inner worlds, and do those techniques imply different conceptions of the mind? Further, do you agree with Lukács's critique of the inward turn of modernist writers (see the e-reserve item assigned for January 26)? Do you agree that, when it comes to the two texts you are examining, the focus on characters' inner experience marks a turning away from broader social concerns? Why or why not?

Option B: Compare and contrast Joyce's portrayal of one of the characters (or character-narrators) in Dubliners with (1) Lawrence's portrayal of Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers, (2) Woolf's portrayal of Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway, or (3) Beckett's portrayal of Murphy in Murphy. Some brainstorming questions:  To what extent do Joyce and the other author you are considering use similar techniques in representing these two characters, and to what extent do their techniques differ? How do the authors relate the characters to their surroundings? Is there ever a disparity between what the characters think or feel and what they say or do?  If so, what does this disparity suggest? How does the issue of gender bear on the authors' portrayal of the two characters?

Option C: Use ideas discussed in any of the critical sources that we will have read by the time your paper is due to develop a comparison/contrast of two of the following authors: Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Beckett. For this option, you should focus on just ONE of the secondary sources that we have read. (Recheck the syllabus and review the critical sources placed on e-reserve; note that all but two of those sources were to have been read by February 7.) Then use a scene from each of the two texts to "test out" the validity or productiveness of the critic's ideas.  What features of the scenes do the critic's ideas help you understand? By contrast, are there aspects of the scenes that the critic's ideas do not help illuminate?  Do the critic's ideas seem to shed more light on one of the scenes than the other? If so, why?