ENGL 440: English Fiction B.A. (Before Austen)
Professor Taylor
Final Project Directions
Due Friday, 5-5 (bring a hard copy to my office before noon)
Requirements: Choose one of the following touchstones. Your goal should be to submit a 10-page final project (or the equivalent, if you choose option III). Outside research should be conducted and included on an “as-needed” basis. In other words, if you run into a problem along the way and neglect to conduct the sort of research that could help you solve it, that is a problem—it will demonstrate a lack of awareness (or of assiduity) on your part. On the other hand, I’d rather you didn’t simply grab a few quotations from a secondary essay in order to fulfill an arbitrary requirement.
Professor Taylor
Final Project Directions
Due Friday, 5-5 (bring a hard copy to my office before noon)
Requirements: Choose one of the following touchstones. Your goal should be to submit a 10-page final project (or the equivalent, if you choose option III). Outside research should be conducted and included on an “as-needed” basis. In other words, if you run into a problem along the way and neglect to conduct the sort of research that could help you solve it, that is a problem—it will demonstrate a lack of awareness (or of assiduity) on your part. On the other hand, I’d rather you didn’t simply grab a few quotations from a secondary essay in order to fulfill an arbitrary requirement.
- Literary Analysis. Trace an evolutionary line through our readings, concluding with Austen’s Northanger Abbey. To what degree does Austen rely on, and/or reimagine, the sorts of Plots, Settings, Characters, and Narrative Points-of-view deployed in earlier works of English fiction? Is Austen’s work best thought of as a different species of the same animal? Or as a different animal entirely? Be sure your answer to these questions is clearly stated as a thesis at some point in your essay (generally at the end of the first paragraph, but variations are possible).
- Creative Engagement. Use your creativity to demonstrate your ability to engage in a sustained and sophisticated fashion one of the texts we read this semester. However you proceed, in other words, your creative response must follow directly from your careful and attentive reading of the work in question. As a rule of thumb, be sure that at least 30% of your final project is analytical in nature—perhaps as a three-page explanation following your seven pages of creativity. Whatever your approach, be sure to include direct textual quotations at some point along the way.
- Using Fielding’s Shamela as a model, create a parody of one of these early “novels.” It might be best to choose a particular scene (or perhaps a combination of a few scenes) as the object of your satire, given space constraints.
- Or write a new ending to one of the novels
- Or update a scene (or scenes) from one of the novels to contemporary times.
- Professional Editing and Design
- Intended audience?
- Ideas for front and back cover design?
- General Introduction: what information should be covered? How many words in length? What potentially confusing or noteworthy aspects of the novel, its author, and/or its cultural background should be addressed?
- Copy text: which edition of the novel should serve as copy text? Why? (You’ll need to find a copy of an original manuscript, if possible—I can help with this).
- Textual note: Looking through the original, what aspects of the text need to be modernized? Why?
- Annotations: Print out 10 pages of the original novel and explain where annotations would be required. Provide at least five sample annotations as a point of reference.
- Depending on the intended audience, what sorts of appendices might be required (e.g., discussion questions, excerpts from historical documents or critical responses, glossary of terms, etc.)?