Research Paper Guidelines

RESEARCH PAPER Guidelines:

For the Research Paper, you will choose a poem (and poet) to research and write about. 

Topic Choices:

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost (p. 679)

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson (p. 670)

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath (google)

“The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats (p. 717)

          Read the poems and then choose the one you are most interested in finding out more about.

 To begin, research your poet, the time period in which they were writing, the literary movement they are part of. Reread the poem in light of the biographical and historical information and see if you can view it from new perspectives. You may wish to read more of their work: additional poems, letters, essays. A good place to start is the website poetryfoundation.org.

          Getting to know your poet and the context of their work will help you to better understand their work. However, this paper is not a biography. If you include any biography it should be minimal, unless you are doing a biographical reading of the poem. The focus of your paper should be on analyzing the poem(s) and the literary criticism about the poem.

          We will learn how to access the library database so that you can find essays of literary criticism analyzing the poem you will be writing about. These essays will present various interpretations on the poems you are studying. Perhaps you will agree with an idea in one or more of these essays, or perhaps you will disagree. What these essays will do is broaden your perspective on how to analyze your chosen author’s works, and also serve as support for the argument you will make about the poem. We will discuss and learn how to incorporate the literary criticism into your argument. (Worksheets for Outlining and Working with Sources will help you).

You will write a 7 to 10 page research paper in which you make an argument about a poem, and support your argument with quotes from the literary criticism and/or other sources. You will utilize a minimum of five sources: critical essays from the library database (you will be taught how to do this), at least one book, and .edu or .org websites. **Websites such as Wikipedia, Spark Notes, GradeSaver, Shmoop are NOT acceptable sources and will result in a failing grade on the assignment. Quotes and paraphrases must be cited in-text and on a Works Cited page. Papers missing these elements will be substantially marked down. Along the way, there will be small assignments due so that I can see the progress you are making with your research.