ENGL2035: Modernism
Research essay

Select one of the texts on the course (or, in the case of the poetry, a set of texts), and write a critical essay of 2000 words on one of the supplied topics on that text.

This is a research essay. In it you are expected to show that you have read and can make use of some of the scholarly criticism relevant to your topic. As the criteria sheet shows, this is a prime criterion: an essay which does not do this will not qualify for a pass, no matter how excellent it may be in other respects.

The essay should not just repeat the work we have done in class, or the views in the introduction or the critical apparatus of the editions we have been using. It should be your own carefully developed critical argument, drawing on relevant scholarly criticism, and documenting meticulously all such uses.

Your choice of topic for the essay determines which of three groups you are assigned to, and consequently the date on which your essay is due.

Before you begin your essay

Make sure you have read and understand:

• the Criteria Sheet;
• the Guide to Critical Reading;
• the University's policy on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism (3.40.12);
• the statement on Fair Usage and Plagiarism;
• the EMSAH Style Sheet, which is a guide to the School's required style for all documentation (MLA). Note that MLA style is quite different from styles you may have used in other Schools, and that those other styles will not satisfy the criteria for accurate documentation for this assignment.
• the Assignment Key.

The criteria

You should pay careful attention to the criteria sheet, and the qualities against which your essay will be graded. In particular, note the two prime criteria:

• The need for the essay to show evidence of further reading. This is a research essay: it asks you to go further afield than the set texts, and to explore some of the rich scholarly and critical work which has been done on these texts and issues. Just what constitutes scholarly reading (and what doesn't) is discussed in more detail in the Guide to Critical Reading, along with some suggestions on how to use this work most efficiently.
• The need for the essay to document, accurately and fairly, all cases in which it draws on other writings, published or unpublished. This is covered in the handout on Fair usage and plagiarism.

  An essay which does not meet these two prime criteria will not qualify for a pass.
  
  On top of that, an essay which does not fulfill the second prime criterion (accurate and fair documentation) must now, according to University policy, be taken directly to the Head of School for further action. Regardless of what your intentions in the matter might have been, the simple absence of adequate and fair documentation of all sources in a piece of assessment constitutes plagiarism. As plagiarism is not defined in terms of any intention to deceive, a plea that you did not intend to deceive is no defence: the onus to get it right is with you. Plagiarism is treated as a serious charge; intention to deceive is another, more serious charge which compounds it. Ignorance of the idea of plagiarism, of what constitutes plagiarism, or of the course's, the School's and the University's policies and statements about plagiarism and its consequences cannot be accepted as an excuse. Quite the opposite: as ideas of fair use and intellectual property are at the core of academic work, ignorance of them is itself culpable.

Research

How much extra material should you read for this essay? There's no single right answer to that, but do keep in mind that I'm not looking for a large bibliography, I'm looking for the ways in which you can use your further reading in the text of the essay--the ways in which it actively contributes to an argument which develops that reading and its ideas. Here again, you should see the Guide to Critical Reading. In general, I nearly always find that a small bibliography in which all of the entries are well used in the essay is far more impressive than a big bibliography appended to an essay which makes only passing use of the items it mentions.

Essay key

Do read the Essay Key carefully before you write this essay, for the simple reason that there's a very good chance it will save you marks. It's a compilation of all sorts of things I've commented on in assignments over a number of years. I've put them all together in the one place so that (a) rather than penalize people for them after the event, I can give out the Key before the event, so you need never make those particular mistakes; and (b) if those mistakes do come up in your work, I can refer you to the Key, where you'll often find a more detailed explanation than I can afford to give in the margins of an individual essay. Make use of it!

At the bottom of the criteria sheet for this assignment, you will notice an area for bonuses. I've kept a record of the feedback I gave you on your first essay, and in particular of those aspects which might have effectively lost you marks: problems with expression, difficulties in structuring an argument, and so on. The Bonus section is a chance to regain some of these marks.

You can regain up to 4 percentage points for this assignment for making clear improvements in any of the four principal categories on the short assignment's criteria sheet: Principal Texts, Analysis, Argument, and Style and Expression. Half points can also be given, in recognition that even if a problem's not entirely fixed, you've taken significant steps in addressing it.

Note, though, that negative points can also be given. If you haven't made any attempt at addressing things which were pointed out in the feedback on the previous essay, you may lose marks. The onus is on you.

The aims of this assignment are:

• to further your skills in:
  • the close reading of a literary text;
  • assembling and structuring an argument about this text, using the analyses you have made in the course of that close reading;
  • using secondary critical materials to enrich or develop your argument.
• to gain a more detailed knowledge of the techniques and issues involved in modernist texts, through a detailed and focussed examination of a particular example.
• to exercise your ingenuity and critical acuteness.

The Graduate Attributes this assignment fosters are:

• In-depth knowledge of the field of study:   The research essay asks you to focus in depth and detail on one group of texts and issues from the course.
  
• Effective Communication:   This assignment is concerned with developing your ability to analyse and organise your ideas on a specific set of texts or issues. It requires you to collect and work with ideas from the scholarly literature in the area, and to integrate this into your own work. It asks for clear structure and expression.
• Independence and Creativity:   The research essay asks for independent work in an area we have discussed initially in class. It allows for and encourages independent thought.
• Critical Judgement:   This assignment asks you to analyse, to apply critical reasoning, to evaluate critical arguments, and to reflect on the justifications and grounds for these decisions.