English Literature

please compose a 1500 (~5 Pages) word essay that explores a theme across at least two texts that we have read in the second half of the semester.

Please use the following guidelines when composing your essay:

Build your essay from a central thesis statement. This means that you have one major point that you are making throughout your analysis that all paragraphs seek to prove.
Construct the body paragraphs to follow a logical progression from the argument (topic sentence), examples from the texts, and explanations of how these examples prove your overall points.
Make sure you show rather than tell with examples from the texts. Quotes work well when you want to point to specific lines.
You do not need to use any outside materials for this exam. You only need the texts themselves.
Use MLA formatting guidelines, and make sure you provide line numbers for poetic works.
Think deeply rather than broadly. You don’t have to summarize the complete narratives. Focus on those elements that are the most important for your overall point.

Please answer one (1) of the questions below for your final exam in a 1500 word essay. See the Information on Blackboard for more instructions.

1. Many of our texts explore the definitions of loyalty and honor in terms of what people should do because of the role they hold or the power they have. Often these words mean the same thing, and at times they can be very different. In your essay, discuss how two of the texts depict honor and loyalty. Explain what you see as the important similarities and differences in these approaches.

2. In the Defence of Poesy, Sir Philip Sidney argues that true fiction serves to teach and delight the reader in order to prompt virtue. Explore this idea in two different texts (not Sidney’s Defence) and describe how they teach and delight, if at all. In your essay, compare the similarities and differences in these approaches.

3. The idea of courtly love carried tremendous weight during the Renaissance. Explain how two different texts depict courtly love and where their approaches are similar and where they are different.

4. Many of the texts we’ve read in this class center, at least in part, on the idea of justice. Explore how two of the texts depict the principles of justice and how these principles bear out in similar or different ways.

5. Select two texts and discuss them in terms of the concept of patriotism. Explain how the texts present the idea of support for country and how different characters support or challenge this idea. Think about how the characters might represent the authors’ perspectives.

The readings to choose from is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe), Gulliverls Travels (Jonathan Swift), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Olaudah Equiana), Sidney’s Defense of Poesy