The Basics:

Due: Wednesday, April 20.  Monday, April 25

Length: 5 pages (4 pp. minimum). 

Citation: cite poems by line numbers.  Please be sure all quotations, whether inserted as blocks or run-in to you prose, are formatted and punctuated correctly.  Be sure all title formats are correct.  Be sure your Works Cited entries are perfect!

*Please note that this time around I'm not requiring a topic statement.  If you would like to send me one and receive some feedback, you'll need to email it to me before Thursday, April 14, and you will receive comments on Monday, April 18.  I will also set aside extra time on the 18th to meet with students who would like to discuss their papers.

Subject: 

You have some choices:

• Choose one substantial poem by Herbert or one or more religious poems by Donne (either a Holy Sonnet or “Good Friday”) and show how the speaker resolves the problem of speaking/writing/praying (depending on the poem) to a specifically Protestant idea of God.  Your thesis, and the body of the paper that follows, should first develop the problem and then assert the poet’s strategy in your poem for addressing it.

• Use either a Herbert poem or one of Donne’s religious poems to present a spiritual problem, and turn to one poem by the other writer to show a “resolution” of it.  So, if a Donne poem presents a doubt about salvation, or a Herbert poem struggles with what kind of imagery to use to address God, then (respectively) a Herbert poem finds some assurance and a Donne poem offers useful imagery.  Also, your “resolution” need not be absolute—it can be partial, tentative, temporary, or incomplete in some other way.

• Argue that, although a particular Herrick poem may seem ordinary in its topic or idea (carpe diem, celebration, praise of rural life, etc.), it’s actually quite radical.  In explaining what’s different about the poem from others we have encountered (whether by other poets or even Herrick himself), be sure to include discussion of formal elements: imagery, sound effects, rhythm, and especially diction.

• Contrast a poem by Jonson and one by Herrick on a common theme (nature, the good life, virtuous action, sexuality, privacy, collectivity, etc.).  Your thesis should explain not only how the attitudes of the poems differ, but why that is important.  Really, you should seek to understand one of the two poems: what do we learn about this Herrick lyric, or that Jonson ode, by contrasting its view with that in another poem?

• As above, but with Herrick and Herbert, rather than Herrick and Jonson.

• Argue that a seduction poem by Donne, Marvell, or Carew is about more than sex.  That is, because of its setting, or particular images, or tone, or another aspect of its language the poem is asserting something important about its speaker or a larger issue (time, nature, mortality, salvation, honor, masculinity/femininity, political rule, etc.).

Additional Requirements

• Your paper must have an argument, of course, and that argument must be stated clearly early on.  In a paper of this length, your thesis should be clear by the end of the first or second paragraph.
• As a rule, when you are “done” with your paper you should go back and refine your thesis statement, then move through the paper making sure that everything you say is in some way related to it.
• Every paragraph should have a clear topic sentence (preferably first) that itself is a supportable claim (ie, no facts, descriptions, plot/poem summary, etc.).  A good editing exercise is to read just the topic sentences in order, making sure the paragraphs have topic sentences, that they are relevant to the thesis, and that the paper has a logical order.
• Your paper should not begin with bland, general statements about history, literature, themes, authors, poetry, or any other vast subject.  There’s nothing wrong with starting off by saying, “In ‘Poem Title,’ the lyrical speaker….” 
• Please use the simple present tense throughout: “Jonson suggests…,” “Herbert presents...,” etc.
• Your claims about the meaning of the texts must be supported by reference to specific language or passages, and any quotations should be sufficiently analyzed for your reader.  Explain, in other words, what quotations mean.
• The places in the text you refer to in support of your claims must be cited, whether you quote the actual language of the text or not.  Use parentheses and indicate line numbers as appropriate.
• Your paper will include a “Works Cited” list.
• Your paper will include a title and page numbers.
• Be certain your paper is proofread carefully; titles of complete works are underlined or italicized (titles of short works, such as our poems, should be put in quotation marks); citations use correct punctuation; all paragraphs are sufficiently developed and address only one topic.
• Your paper has a conclusion, and the conclusion does not simply repeat points you have made two or three times over the course of your paper.  The conclusion should also not “finally” offer your argument.  That should be in the first or second paragraph.