Essay Instructions from the professor:
You will write a short essay (5 FULL pages, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt., MLA FORMAT) in which you offer a critical analysis of a text from our readings. (In the case of this essay it will be a critical analysis of “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman). Outside sources are NOT allowed. A critical analysis is an exercise in close reading that builds claims from evidence. I want you to show us how you understand the significance of your chosen text by developing an interesting interpretive idea through the analysis and discussion of a few important and carefully selected passages. In these papers, you must:
Provide a title. Titles of academic essays should express the central thrust of your argument, and should pique interest in the paper that follows.
Introduce the topic under review. Academic essays use argument as a tool of intellectual discovery. What do you want to investigate? What issues have you identified that beg closer scrutiny? Offer at least a provisional thesis statement that announces the argumentative work of the essay, and serves as a point of departure for your discussion.
Incorporate (a minimum of) five quotations from “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman and provide in text citations from MY textbook pages that I will provide in the “attached files section” for every quotation. These quoted passages will be the centerpieces of your paper, the evidence you offer for your interpretation and analysis.
This is the one citation that should be at in the Works Cited page
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” The Norton Anthology of
American Literature Vol. B 1820-1865, 2022. pp. 1168-1212.
Come to a final reckoning about the meaning and significance of the particular passages you’ve chosen to discuss. That is, your paper will use these quoted “parts” to offer us a new perspective on the “whole.” What can a reader gain by seeing the text as you see it? How do the elements you’ve identified correspond to the evolving issues and questions we’ve been developing in class?
In addition to the executing the mechanics enumerated above, strong essays will advance sophisticated claims in compelling, well-crafted prose that is free of grammatical, spelling, syntactical, and typographical errors.
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