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EN203: Assignments

Page history last edited by Tonya Howe 14 years, 6 months ago

Use the links to learn more about specific assignments and topics. If you have a comment or a question about any material on this page, please use the "comment" feature to ask--and if you have answers for your peers, be the first to answer their questions for bonus participation points!

 

 

Explication and Close Reading

 

Your argumentative essays should be firmly grounded in explication or close reading. To "explicate" means, literally, to unfold; you will be "unfolding" the meaning of a text in this assignment. An explication--another way of saying "a close reading"--does not need to have an argument, though as an essay, it must be put together well. Instead of making an argument, you are being asked to make detailed, minute, informed observations of the text and its language, using the vocabulary of literary explication: diction, imagery, tone, style, metaphor, character, plot, and so on. 

 

View some notes on poetry explication from Duke University and the University of North Carolina. The Literary Link, a popular website, also contains a good overview of the process beyond poetry explications.Take a look at an explication I wrote (explication.sample1.doc); or, take a look at a student's example. The student's explication received an "A."

 

MLA Style and Citation

 

Everything you turn in for this course should be formatted and cited according to MLA style (the Modern Language Association). You should have your Hacker handbook from EN101 and 102; if you do not have this text, the library has several copies available for your reading pleasure. You may use the variety of online formatting tools--feel free to suggest one!--but you must be aware that you will have to proofread your materials. Electronic formatting tools are never completely accurate, and because this is purely objective information, you should either know it or know where to find it. The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University is a reliable source for documentation.

 

MLA style requires full-page formatting, internal citations, and a works cited page. All three are necessary for your assignments in this class. I will deduct points from essays not in MLA form. The explication sample (explication.sample1.doc) is in MLA form, minus a works cited page--you should be able to put your own works cited page together!

 

Citing from the OED

http://oed.com/services/citing.html

"plough, n.2" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 4 Apr. 2000 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00181778>.

Citing from an Anthology with Multiple Volumes

Note that the primary sources and introductory material from your anthology are treated differently. In the samples below, Mary Astell's "Some Reflections upon Marriage" is a primary source, and the excerpt "Mary Astell: 1666-1731" is the introductory material.

 

Astell, Mary. “Some Reflections upon Marriage.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Lawrence Lipking. 7th ed. Vol 1C. New York: Norton, 2000. 2281-2284.

Lipking, Lawrence, ed. “Mary Astell: 1666-1731.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. 7th ed. Vol 1C. New York: Norton, 2000. 2280-2281.

 

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