Your final essay this semester will be a thoughtfully developed and carefully argued analytical research paper on William Shakespeare’s King Lear(or fiction: see “topics”). This will be your opportunity to learn how to write a more extended, complex argument about a literary text and back up that argument with substantial evidence from both the text itself and from thorough research into existing literary criticism and conversations about the text. This paper will demonstrate close reading skills and the appropriate use of evidence from literary texts. It will also show your ability to create a clear thesis statement, and your ability to incorporate and engage scholarly critical sources as part of a well-organized, thesis-driven argument.
