Book Club Assignment Part II: Individual Assignment

Modern Interpretations of the Arthurian Tradition

Due no later than Thursday April 22 in class

Submit to www.turnitin.com before you give me the paper

For the group assignment in this class, you will choose a modern interpretation of the Arthurian legend, discuss it as a book club, and then make a presentation on it (the nature of which I will leave up to you) to the class in mid-April. This is your chance to interpret the legend and to see how a very diverse group of modern authors have interpreted the tradition in different ways for different purposes. The group presentation counts as 10% of your grade in the class. Here are the group members.

Each book club is required to

• Obtain its own copies of the chosen book (either from libraries or from bookstores or online)
• Set and keep a reading schedule and keep individual reading journal entries on your reading. (The reading journal gets turned in with your individual paper.)
• Hold at least four meetings to discuss the book, with a different person acting as group leader each time; everyone should share this responsibility.
• Develop its own reading group questions about the book. (Note: I know that some of these books have reading questions online. You might start from there, but make the discussions your own—don’t let somebody else’s interpretations shape yours!!!) Everyone in the group should contribute to developing the list of discussion questions.
• Plan and execute a 20-25-minute presentation on the chosen book (which can include up to 10 minutes of open discussion of the book with the class) for April 12 & 14.
• Collaborate on an annotated bibliography about the club’s book that will be shared with the class by e-mail on the day of your presentation.

For the individual part of the Book Club Assignment, each group member will write her or his own paper on the chosen book.* This should be a 7-10 page paper (not counting Works Cited) in which you do one of three things: 

1. Discuss the author’s use of a particular part of the Arthurian tradition in the chosen book (sample thesis: Sutcliff creates a believable fifth-century Arthur without overly sentimentalizing him),
   or
    
2. Discuss how the author adapts, changes, develops, or even limits the portrayal of a specific character in the chosen book (sample thesis: Marion Zimmer Bradley emasculates the figure of Arthur by making him a weak pawn in The Mists of Avalon), or
    
3. Discuss how the author may use the Arthurian tradition to advance her or his particular agenda (sample thesis: T. H. White twists the Arthurian legend to argue for an anti-war stance in The Once and Future King). 

All of these will require an argumentative stance: that is to say, your thesis must take a position that the paper proceeds to support with carefully-applied evidence. The paper must be documented in correct 2009 MLA style and the use of outside scholarly sources to reinforce your argument is expected. I will not specify a particular number of sources, but you will want to bring in at least four or five outside voices to supplement what you have to say. While you may be discussing your ideas in your book club, remember that this paper is your own interpretation—so feel free to advance a “minority report” if that is appropriate. And this is not a summary of what your group presents--it's your own, independent paper, and should represent your own thinking!

Feel free to bring ideas, outlines, and drafts of your papers by my office for discussion. The Writing Center (242 Bancroft; 323-2138) is a great place to get help as well.

*If you are just dying to write about one of the other books on the list, come talk to me and plead your case.

I will provide you with the Turnitin.com information in class. This individual paper will count as 20% of your grade in the class.