Reflection Paper 2

Due June 22

Length: 3-4 pp (undergrads); 4-6 pp (grads)

Submit to www.turnitin.com before class on June 22

Criticizing a Critic

In this paper I would like you to explore some secondary criticism about mythology, literature, and gender issues. Choose a short literary work (poem, short story, something on that scale) that uses a myth about gender in some way (structurally, thematically, imagistically, etc.). Then find a scholarly journal article that analyzes the use of mythology in that literary work (use the MLA International Bibliography as the fastest way of finding an article). Provide URLs to both the work and the article in the Works Cited page of your reflection paper so that I can review them.

Your Task: For your reflection, analyze the critic’s take on the way mythology works in your chosen work. Do you agree, disagree, fall somewhere in between on the analysis? (This will be your thesis/stance for the paper.) Can you tell what “school” of mythology criticism the critic is working from, and in your opinion does it work well for the analysis? If you’d been analyzing the mythology in this work, what would you have done differently? Better? More? Less? This could be a model (or the start) of a section of your big paper, so choose your work wisely!

If you’re stumped in finding a short work that uses mythology, use Google Books to find Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths edited by Nina Kossman. Full of good stuff: http://books.google.com/books?id=d8qTLjwGw8gC&printsec=frontcover.

Make sure that your thesis is well supported by concrete evidence; you should be quoting as well as paraphrasing from both the original work and from the critical article in your analysis.

Please consult your Prentice Hall Guides or the MLA Handbook to make sure your paper is documented correctly. Remember that MLA has recently updated its rules for citing online materials; heaven bless the Purdue OWL, which has a handy online update for all the rule changes. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/15/