• Having read and annotated one of the texts listed below (the Romanticism), explore a specific theme in mandatory 700-800 words (5 ¶s in a mature font) by focusing on a particular motif that will be an adequate representative of its time period: historical, religious, political, literary, etc., in relation to life nowadays.

• To support your thesis, choose a concept directly discussed or mentioned in the text.

• If you choose a poem for Paper 2, review the PowerPoint "How to Write about a Poem" posted in D2L under "Content." Choose three words of phrases from the poem that represent the specific theme, one per argument paragraph.

• Make sure that your thesis adheres to one of the three options from the thesis handout (link). The first part of the thesis will be specific to the text itself and the second part will go beyond the text itself to show something more about concrete examples from life nowadays (do not present generic social/societal commentary). MANDATORY ESSAY ORGANIZATION (link).

• Italicize, bold or underline the thesis statement.

• The first part of each of the argument paragraphs will analyze the text, and the second part will relate that analysis to precise examples from life nowadays (link).

• The introductory ¶ should have only two sentences, one of which will be the thesis statement.

• The paper cannot earn more than 60% without the required organization and thesis.

• This is to be your own, original work, without referring to any outside sources or commentaries, but this is not an "I" paper.

• Use present tense.

• Do not use "you."

• Do not focus on the literary devices used by the author (e.g., diction, tone, irony, symbolism, metaphor) but rather on the actual content.

• Include a brief heading with your name, assignment, date and course.

• Include the word count at the top of the paper.

• To be eligible for credit, the completed assignment MUST meet all of the above conditions. If any requirement from the prompt is not met, the assignment will be ineligible for credit. 

• Only the first submission of your choice of ONE of the major papers is eligible for credit (choose Paper 1, Paper 2 or Paper 3).

• Here are some examples of concepts for this paper:

• Submit your final draft through the Assignments Dropbox in D2L under Paper 2 by the due date.

• No title page is necessary, but title your essay in an original manner (not the title of the text) and put your name on the paper in the upper left corner.

• Detailed feedback about the submitted paper will be provided in D2L.

• The content of the paper will be graded based on its organization, thesis, paragraph structure, quality of arguments, analysis strength and lack of summary. Each type (not each occurrence) of major grammatical errors (e.g., run-on, pronoun-antecedent agreement, fragment, misplaced modifier, parallelism, verb form, subject-verb agreement, 3 x spelling errors) will equal a deduction of 10 points.

• As always, if you have any questions, please email me at cperkowski@gordonstate.edu or post a question in the D2L forum.

The texts:

Wordsworth, Poetry (choose one poem)
Shelley, Poetry (choose one poem)
Keats, Poetry (choose one poem)
Browning, Poetry (choose one poem)
Whitman, Poetry (choose one poem)
Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dickinson Poetry (choose one poem)
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich