Topics: Short Paper

English 753 Twentieth-Century Literature P.Laurence

Shorter Paper: Topics (focused on different types of literary criticism)
Length: 3 pp.
Expectations: A well-organized essay with attention to thoughtfulness, support of views with quotations from the text, correctness, proofreading. Please follow MLA guidelines for quotation. You are not expected to consult critical sources for this paper but rather reveal your own literary thinking and interpretation. The longer paper will require conversation with the critics.

Please consider the shorter paper as a preparation for or an exploration of a topic that may develop and continue into the longer essay.

1. Reader Response

F. R. Leavis posed the question, “why study literature?” He has argued that the study of literature makes us better people because it engages us in a discussion of human values and complexities, and refines our moral sense. Harold Bloom states that this is untrue. Great writers, he says, undermine important humanist values:

The Iliad teaches the surpassing glory of armed victory, while Dante rejoices in the eternal torments he visits upon his very personal enemies. ...Dostoevsky preaches anti-semitism, obscurantism and the necessity of human bondage…Milton’s ideas of free speech and free press do not preclude the imposition of all manner of social restraints. Spenser rejoices in the massacre of Irish rebels, while the egomania of Wordsworth exalts his own poetic mind over any other source of splendor. (The Western Canon)


Take a position for or against Leavis or Bloom’s position. “Why study literature?” Use the books read in the early part of the semester—Proust’s Combray or Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse—as part of your argument.

2. Narrative Techniques

The queen died. Story
The queen died of grief. Plot
The queen died; no one knew why. Mystery

Discuss either Proust’s Combray or Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in relation to the elements of plot, story and mystery as suggested above. Or you may explore notions of character development or narrative techniques for capturing consciousness.

Given that this is a short paper, it might be useful to focus on one or two elements of narration, and what you observe in Proust or Woolf’s writing.


3. Genetic Criticism: criticism that is based on sources like diaries, mss. drafts, holographs, and transcripts that precede the work.

A more open-ended topic, suitable to continue into the longer paper (or even a thesis). See www.woolfonline.com as well as class blog for this assignment: www.bc20thcenturylit.blogspot.com

What kinds of literary questions might you generate after reading on-line some of the Virginia Woolf diary entries and the historical information on the 1926 General Strike of Miners—written during the time she was writing To the Lighthouse? Relate any aspect (a few entries of the Diary or historical information) to the text of To the Lighthouse?
Focus on what interests you.

What are the connections between the private life of Virginia Woolf and public historical events that swirl around her? What is the relation between the private and public in the life and writing of an author?

This assignment is for those who feel comfortable working with materials on-line.

4. Defining Literary Terms
Define the terms “modernism” and “modernity” in terms of your reading of Proust’s Combray or Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

5. Textual Analysis
Compare the passage on the mother’s kiss in Proust’s Combray to the first 8-9 pages in “The Window” section of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (up to the passage “For they were making the great expedition…”)