ENGL 326-01—British Literature: Restoration to Romanticism
Professor E. Derek Taylor
Spring 2017
Prompt for Comparison Essay (bring a hard copy to my office on Wednesday, May 3, before noon)
Instructions: Write a four-person play. Yes, seriously—write a four-person play.
Two of the main characters in your play must be writers from the first half of our semester (Enlightenment); the other two must be from the second half (Romanticism). It is up to you to decide how these authors end up in a conversation (I’ve thought of everything from computer holograms to ghosts), but whatever your strategy, be sure that during the course of the conversation, the following three questions are directly and thoroughly addressed:
- What is the function of art? What, put differently, should art do?
- How should an aspiring artist prepare him/herself to be a good writer?
- What is the difference between a “good” poem and a “bad” one?
A few specific requirements:
- Your characters need to demonstrate genuine interest in the above literary questions; have fun with this, but don’t have so much fun that you neglect the work at hand.
- Your characters must quote themselves (or other writers, perhaps) directly—use your book, in other words. They do not need to quote from any secondary sources—but if they do, they need to cite their sources carefully and accurately.
- This conversation needs to be sustained, not cursory. Aim for 2000 words.