Guidelines on Writing Critical Essays in the School of English for JF Students, Exams of English

Download Guidelines on Writing Critical Essays in the School of English for JF Students and more Exams English in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Guidelines on Essay Writing in the School of English for JF Students FOUR Important opening points: 1. REFERENCE STYLE: For assignments in the School of English, you are expected to use the School’s Reference Guide available here: https://www.tcd.ie/English/assets/pdf/style-sheet-update-2018-19.pdf 2. ESSAYS V.S. OTHER FORMATS OF ASSESSMENT: This guide deals primarily with the most common/traditional type of take-home assessment in the School, which is the critical essay. In the Fresh years, most take-home assignments are critical essays, with the exception of some alternative formats of assessment such as annotated bibliography or translation and commentary exercises in modules dealing with Old and Middle English. 3. Wordcounts include footnotes and endnotes (as well as any quotations) BUT exclude bibliography. Check the Handbook for wordcounts for Freshmen essays. 4. If an essay exceeds the prescribed wordcount by 10% or more, five marks will be deducted. Where the word limit is expressed as a range (e.g. 2000-2500 words), the penalty will be applied if the upper limit has been exceeded by 10% or more. Critical Essay-Writing Q&A What is an essay about literature? A critical literary essay (the kinds of essay you are most often asked to write in English Literature classes at TCD) should essentially provide an analysis of a literary text, which proves a thesis (sometimes also called argument) that the essay’s writer has come up with. In other words, it needs to be more than just a collection of your assorted ideas about the topic you have chosen and it also needs to be more than a summary or overview of other critics’/scholars’ analyses. What is the relationship between the topic (i.e. one of the numbered prompts on the essay topic sheets) and the thesis/argument you are supposed to come up with? Think of the prompt/topic you choose as a question or problem and of the thesis or argument you will come up with as an answer or solution to the question or problem, or perhaps as your own unique take on the problem… How do I know that the thesis I have come up with is right/correct? 2 In fact, a good thesis is a reading of the text that can be argued with or disagreed with (but that is still generally historically and factually correct and/or plausible). A thesis that cannot be argued with at all is usually a historical fact, plot summary, or too vague. Here are some examples of such inappropriate theses: A. ‘Shakespeare’s Othello is a fascinating play, which has gripped readers and audience for many centuries.’ (too vague -- you need to say something more specific and interesting) B. ‘Shakespeare’s Othello is an early seventeenth-century play.’ (historical fact) C. ‘Shakespeare’s Othello depicts the tragic outcome of a racially mixed marriage’ (plot summary) D. ‘Shakespeare’s Othello reflects anti-slavery views, which were rapidly spreading around the world when it was written’ (historically implausible/ inaccurate) Do I need to state what my thesis is anywhere in the essay, and if so, where? Yes, the thesis/argument should usually be stated in one longer or two shorter clear sentences usually somewhere in the first two paragraphs of the essay but not at the very beginning of the first paragraph; you need to introduce your topic first before you throw the thesis at the reader. Do I need to explain what happens in the text so that the reader can understand my points better? Write as if your reader already knows the text (because your lecturers/TAs do!) and so avoid plot summaries. Focus on how the text you are writing about communicates meaning rather than merely on what it is saying. Make sure to support all your claims with good examples (either in the form of direct quotations or paraphrases). How do I write/spell titles of literary texts? Names of short poems and short stories should be in quotation marks (‘A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed’, ‘The Prussian Officer’) while names of long poems, plays, and prose works should be in italics (The Great Hunger, Othello, Jane Eyre). How many paragraphs does my essay need to have? Your paper should have an introductory paragraph, concluding paragraph, and a number of body paragraphs. You should use the introduction to introduce your topic and get the reader interested in it and the conclusion should review and summarize your argument and possibly place it in some larger context. The individual paragraphs in the body of the essay should each make some particular point. You can think of your argument as consisting of the individual paragraphs as building blocks.