Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: daixieit

LIT102 Literature in Context

Resit Essay Topics

Deadline: 4pm, Monday 24^th July 2023

Word Limit: 2000 words (+/- 10% leeway, with 1800 word minimum and 2200 word maximum)

Please attach a cover sheet and submit an MS Word file via LMO.

As a form of good academic practice, referencing is essential. Both primary and secondary sources need to be referenced, and page numbers should be provided for direct quotations. With regards to style and referencing, you are encouraged to follow the conventions of the XJTLU Harvard Style Guide, which may be downloaded from the module’s Learning Mall Online portal. The other accepted formatting styles are: Modern Language Association (MLA), Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) and Chicago. The American Psychological Association (APA) style is not acceptable. Please try to be consistent in your adherence to one of the accepted formatting styles.

Please note that all submissions are subject to Turnitin originality checks, but these are not the only tools we use to check for plagiarism. Do not rely only on getting your similarity score down to a particular number (e.g., by paraphrasing from an external source while not providing an appropriate citation). Acknowledging your sources in an honest and consistent manner, and following one of the accepted referencing guides listed above, will help you avoid academic integrity issues.

The submission should be named: Name_Student No._LIT102_CW.doc(x).

Marking will be conducted by teaching staff on the module according to the University Marking Descriptors. All marks are provisional until confirmed and released by Registry.

Please answer one of the following questions. You must not choose the same topic that you selected for coursework two:

1. Is it necessary for us to have intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s historical context to gain a meaningful understanding of his major poetic works? Discuss with reference to at least one or more of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

2. To what extent does having knowledge of the Enlightenment era help us gain a deeper understanding of the third book of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels? Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

3. To what degree is it necessary for us to have knowledge of Keats’s political and/or social context to appreciate his poetry? Discuss with reference to at least one of his poems. Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

4. ‘Wuthering Heights is about England in 1847. The people it reveals live not in a never-never land, but in Yorkshire. Heathcliff was born, not in the pages of Byron, but in a Liverpool slum’ (Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel). Outline to what extent you agree with Kettle’s claim that Brontë’s novel is fully engaged with its contemporary social context. Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

5. David Kuebrich claims that ‘by 1850 Melville was well aware of the tensions, political struggles, and ideological discourse that characterized relations between New York workers and their employers’ (‘Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in Bartleby’). Outline to what extent you agree with his assessment that ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ represents ‘a stunningly original analysis of employer-employee relations that stands as fit culmination and enduring witness to this indigenous antebellum tradition of radical political economy.’ Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

6. Is knowledge of the historical context of Victorian England crucial to forming a meaningful understanding of Hardy’s ‘The Withered Arm’? Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

7. Does a full understanding of ‘The Horse Dealer’s Daughter’ by D.H. Lawrence depend upon a full understanding of the interwar atmosphere in which it was written? Your answer should include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

8. Do Katherine Mansfield’s formal experimentations with storytelling render her work less historically engaged than what we might find in conventional literary realism? Discuss with reference to at least one of her short stories. Your answer should also include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

9. ‘In a meaningful encounter with a text that reaches us powerfully, we feel at once pulled out of our own world and plunged back with redoubled force into it’ (Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism, p. 17). To what extent does this statement by Gallagher and Greenblatt help us situate the role of history in literary scholarship? Discuss with reference to at least one literary text (e.g., a poem, short story or novel) you’ve read on this module. Your answer should also include a reference to at least one work of theory or literary criticism.

Marking descriptors