ENG 590.07: Topics for Paper II
Due Monday, November 8, your second
essay should be 900-1,100 words long (please type in the word count at
the end of your paper); the essay should also adhere to the formatting
guidelines that can be linked to here:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman145/papertemplate.html
Option A: Drawing on
ideas discussed in Allrath
and Gymnich's article on "Gender Studies," compare and contrast how
Plath and Rhys explore interconnections between gender and identity in The Bell Jar and Wide Sargasso Sea,
respectively. In what ways does Allrath's and Gymnich's article help
illuminate these interconnections? Conversely, are there ways in which
the article falls short of accounting for the gender-identity nexus in
the two texts? (Note: please feel free to write about this topic
without drawing directly on Allrath and Gymnich, if you'd prefer not to
use their article in this context.)
Option B: Compare and contrast the functions of
narrative order (in the sense of chronological or non-chronological
narration) in TWO of the following texts: Plath's The Bell Jar, Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, and
McEwan's The Cement Garden.
For this topic, you may want to focus on a couple of key scenes from
each of the two novels that you choose, discussing how flashbacks or
flashforwards (or the lack thereof) affect your interpretation of the
scenes in question. Then discuss how the narrative ordering of events
relates to broader issues being explored in each text. Are there
differences in the way the narrators move around in time while telling
their stories, and if so can you connect those differences to how their
narrators view the relation of past to present? Is either of the two
texts you examine more or less prone to non-chronological ordering than
the other, and if so, how does that difference shape your understanding
of the narrator-protagonist in each case?
Option C: Focusing on Wide Sargasso Sea and
The Cement Garden,
discuss how Rhys and McEwan use their narrator-protagonists to explore
the continued effects of the past on the present. In what ways do
Rhys's and McEwan's narrators continue to live out the legacy of past
events, and how do those events shape their (and the reader's)
sense of who they are? How do Rhys and McEwan treat the problem of
agency--specifically, the agency of the characters with respect to
their own and others' histories? In what ways does the institution of
family provide, in each text, a link between past and present?