ENG H202:  Topics for Paper 2


A hard copy of your second essay is due in my faculty mailbox in Denney Hall, Room 421, by noon on Friday, March 7, although you are also welcome to turn in your paper on the last day of class (Thursday, March 6), if you'd prefer to do that instead. Your second essay should be 1,500 words +/- 10% (from 1,350 to 1,650 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 for this class 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: Compare and contrast Tennyson's and Arnold's treatment of religion in In Memoriam and "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," respectively. Some brainstorming questions (note that you don't have to address all of these in your essay): How would you characterize the crisis of faith that both Tennyson's and Arnold's speakers seem to experience, and what strategies do they use to try to navigate or manage that crisis? How do personal and cultural factors conspire to create the crisis for each speaker? Further, at the level of form, how do Tennyson and Arnold use imagery, metaphor, metrical effects, or other poetic techniques to represent the seriousness or poignancy of their speakers' crises of faith? Since both poems are rather long, if you choose this option you should focus on just one or two key parts from each poem to develop your comparison/contrast of the texts.

Alternative version of Option A: Use the same basic prompt but compare and contrast the treatment of religion or religious faith in Arnold's "Dover Beach" and ONE of the following Hopkins poems: "I Wake," "No Worst," or "Carrion Comfort."

Option B: Compare and contrast the journeys portrayed in Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and Rossetti's "Goblin Market." Some brainstorming questions: How do the two poets use the motif of the journey to suggest change and development in their characters? For example, how does travel through space (and/or through particular kinds of places) seem to correlate with psychological or spiritual changes in the characters? More generally, if we think of a journey as a structure of experience that involves transportation from one place to another and then return to the starting-point, but not without some kind of transformation in the person who takes the journey, how does this structure of experience play out in the two poems? Also, to what extent do the journeys occur in a social context (that is, involve others besides the characters taking the journeys), and how do those contexts differ across the two works?

Option C: Compare and contrast Brontë's and Woolf's treatment of the institution of marriage as it affects Jane Eyre and Clarissa Dalloway, respectively. Some brainstorming questions: What motivates the characters' choice of marriage partners, and how are those motivations connected with cultural, familial, and personal issues? In what ways (or to what extent) does marriage or the pursuit of marriage constitute a positive, productive force for these two female protagonists, and to what extent does it constitute a negative, counter-productive (or even downright destructive) force? Does either author use other characters' marriages as a kind of foil or point of reference for understanding the protagonist's marriage(s)? More generally, in what ways do these texts prompt reflection on the problems and potentials of the institution of marriage, particularly for women?

Option D: Compare and contrast the representation of violence in TWO of the following works: Browning's "Porphyria's Lover," Rossetti's "Goblin Market," Brontë's Jane Eyre, Yeats's "Easter, 1916," Synge's Playboy of the Western World, or Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Some brainstorming questions: What are the sources and effects of the violence represented in each work? To what extent does the violence in question have cultural as well as personal dimensions? How are the characters transformed by the violence, and what strategies do they use to try to manage or deal with it? How does the issue of violence connect up with the other themes being explored in the two works you are examining? Since a number of these texts are quite long, if you choose this option you should focus on just one or two key parts (or scenes) from each work to develop your comparison/contrast.