4A. SHORT ANALYSIS PAPER
OVERVIEW See Reading Course Schedule for Due Date.
TOPIC: Select a literary work that we have read in this course, and select a point to argue or analyze. You may argue that a character is a hero, that the gods play a major role, that the animal symbolism is significant, that the character’s harmatia is arrogance, that the women are treated as objects, that irony pervades the literary work, etc.
PURPOSE: To analyze a piece of literature from a perspective of your choice. This perspective becomes your argument, your thesis statement.
THESIS STATEMENT: The paper will have a clear succinct thesis statement, and it will prove the thesis with quotations from the literary text and explanations of how each quotation supports the thesis.
QUOTATIONS: When quoting from the text to prove your point, you must use the textbook for our class—The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 4th edition—and indicate the page number of the quotation in parentheses. You must use a minimum of 8 quotations from the literature to support your thesis.
After each quotation, place in parentheses the author’s last name and the page number from The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 4th ed., from which you took the quotation. For example, (Sophocles 720). Note: there is NO comma between the author’s name and the page #.
RESEARCH: The Short Analysis Paper is not a research paper; it is your analysis of one aspect of one piece of literature we have studied in the course.
PLAGIARISM: Do NOT use outside sources in writing this paper. Do not plagiarize. Do your own reading and thinking. If you plagiarize the paper in part or full, you will fail the paper and possibly the course. It is easy for a professor to insert a paper into Google and find sources. Don’t take the chance.
NAME: Be sure to put your name—LAST NAME FIRST– on the paper AND on the file name.
PAGE NUMBERS: Inserting page numbers into your document is a requirement.
LENGTH OF PAPER: The Short Analysis Paper should be about 4-5 double-spaced pages long and have a minimum of 8 quotations from the literature to support your thesis. No outsifktde Sources should be used.