What is ekphrasis and how is it employed/explored in your chosen text?
Order instructions:
Please write a 1500 word essay on ekphrastic poetry. Please use the poems ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ by Auden and John Ashbery ‘And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her
Name’.
You can find the poems here
Auden: http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html
Ashbery: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47769/and-ut-pictura-poesis-is-her-name
I’ve attached the assessment notification document. There’ some room to form a question or you can use the one highlighted.
ENGL2666 Creative Writing: Theory and Practice
Assessment Task D: Research Essay: Critical Writing
1500 words
Description:
You may choose to write either a standard Academic Essay or a Personal Essay as your Research Essay. Please note that for our purposes the Research Essay
(whether academic or personal) is a piece of critical writing, which involves research of scholarly sources, close reading and analysis of one or two
primary texts (e.g. one novel or longer work, or two poems) in order to present an argument in response to a research question/ topic.
Guidelines:
1. Identification: Correctly identify your essay (name, title, page numbers etc.) and state which kind of essay you have chosen to write.
2. Citations/ References/ Research Assistance: The essay requires the use of citations and references to substantiate your argument (use as many
sources as necessary, bearing in mind the limited word length – say, minimum three secondary sources). Before asking for further information from your
tutor, you are required to refer to the links on Blackboard for information on the Department of English’s preferred referencing systems and Fisher Library
research assistance.
3. The focal primary text/s you choose should be the work of a contemporary published author (20th/21st centuries), either those covered in this unit
or of your own choosing. It should NOT be your own creative work. Further information & sample research questions for the exegetical essay are on p. 3.
4. The research essay is not a creative work, as such, though you may choose to write with imagination, clarity and grace within the traditional form
of the scholarly essay (i.e. you may push at the boundaries of the form, bearing in mind that the essay is primarily scholarly research, analysis and
argument-based).
5. Engagement with Lecture Topics: The research essay (whether academic or personal) should demonstrate engagement with and careful thought about one
of the topics covered in the lectures of this unit (this is part of the grading criteria). The best essays demonstrate awareness of the critical,
historical or theoretical context of your chosen focal primary text and topics, as well as possible complexities and qualifications in argumentation.
6. Word count: The word count of 1500 words (strictly +/- 10%) does not include quotes from your primary text nor bibliographic information.
Quotations from secondary material is included in the word count, as well as any substantive footnotes (so please do not use footnotes as a way of
including extra words). You are required to include the word count of your essay excluding the quotations from your primary text and footnotes/
bibliographic references in your submission. Excessive length may be penalized.
7. Submission:
8. Late penalties: 2% for each working day that you are late. You may request a two-day extension from your tutor without going through Special
Consideration, but you need a good reason. Any further extension needs to be applied for using the Special Consideration link on Blackboard and
substantiated by a Medical Certificate or other evidence of necessity.
Your essay should not merely be descriptive, and you should spend as little time as necessary in describing plots or content. You should, instead, focus on
presenting a synthesis of your research findings and your own insights and discoveries about your focal primary text and topic. We want to see your
engagement with and understanding of your primary text and critical secondary sources in relation to your research question, rather than a summary of what
the critics have written. We want to see evidence of your reading and engagement with the ideas and analysis of other scholars and critics in order to
support and substantiate your own findings; remember to always reference their work. Remember also the root meanings of the word ‘essay’: to trial,
attempt, endeavour to ‘weigh up’ or evaluate something. We want to see you doing this, no matter which type of essay you choose to write.
You are encouraged to devise topics of your own and choose appropriate primary texts to investigate your topic, in consultation with your tutor.
If you would like to receive feedback or advice on your Research Essay, post an outline for your essay to the Discussion Forum or email to your tutor 48
hours/ two full days before your next class. Day 9 will be focussed on the essay form and the Research Essay will be discussed in class in Week 3 – do take
the opportunity to bring in your ideas/questions to class then. You can also speak with your tutor about your Research Essay during consultation hours.
Your outline should include 1) your essay topic (related to one of the lecture topics); 2) your chosen author and focal primary text for close reading; 3)
your research question; 4) ideas for your argument, and 5) 2-3 references, as a starting point.
Below are some Sample Research Essay Questions. Please note that these are suggestions only, to help you devise your own question and topic.
Sample Research Essay Questions
1. In her essay ‘The Rejection of Closure’, Lyn Hejinian writes about ‘open’ and ‘closed’ texts. Choose a minimalist form — say, a constraint-based
poem, a very very short story, or even a work of genre fiction. Why and how, according to Hejinian’s argument, is your chosen form more open or closed? Use
at least 2-3 examples of the form in your essay (e.g. 3 Lydia Davis stories).
2. JM Coetzee: ‘All autobiography is storytelling. All writing is autobiography.’ Test this statement by doing a close reading of a work of
autobiographical fiction or creative non-fiction of your choice. Why do we choose or need to label creative works as either one or another?
3. Will Self describes psychogeography as a ‘meditation on the vexed relationship between psyche and place’. Define and discuss possible aims and
effects of this ‘meditation’ as a narrative technique in a text of your choice.
4. Is it possible for a writer from one ethnicity to write from the perspective of another ethnicity or culture in an informed way that does not
culturally appropriate? For example, a ‘white’ writer writing from an indigenous or non-white perspective, or vice versa? Examine this (usually vexed)
question using one creative text of your choice, in any genre.
5. Poems use the spatial geometries of the page. For poems, the space and spacing of words creates meaning. But precisely how do poems make meaning
through space? Find ONE poem that uses the visual space of the page in interesting and/or unusual ways and read it from the perspective of the spatial.
What vectors lead the eye where, and how?
6. Choose an ekphrastic text — say, a poem/story/prose about a painting/film/visual art (‘a representation of a representation’). What is ekphrasis
and how is it employed/explored in your chosen text?
7. Using the work of an Australian Indigenous author as your primary source, discuss how Indigenous authors adapt western literary forms to both
participate in national and international literary cultures while preserving and expressing distinct Indigenous cultural materials and qualities.
8. With reference to one prose or poetic text, define and discuss contemporary environmental literature and ecocriticsm, and how this genre might
contribute to social and political engagement with environmental issues. How is your example representative of the main concerns of environmental
literature?
9. Do a close reading of a personal essay of your choice, in order to consider the synthesis of creative reportage, creative “postfiction” and the
creative functions of memory and speculation. What are the strengths or limitations of this hybrid form, and what might they contribute to literary and/or
social discourse?
10. What makes writing political, and can it constitute a form of activism? Do a close reading of a ‘political’ creative text of your choice (where the
word political is to be interpreted in its broadest sense) and site it contextually to investigate this proposition.
