Select one passage from:
- Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
The close reading paper asks you to explicate/analyze in detail a short passage from one of the works we have read in the course.
Begin by selecting a passage. Closely analyze a theme, image, or other meaningful pattern that you notice in the passage. How does what you have noticed in this passage relate to the overall design, structure, and/or meaning of the larger text? What are the larger implications of your analysis—both for understanding the passage and the whole work and for considering the place of the work in a broader context of other fiction like it?
As you draft your essay, think carefully about how you will identify and incorporate the passage into your argument. Should you integrate it in its entirety as a long quotation in your introduction? Should you announce it in another way in the introduction? What context does your reader need for understanding the passage and the text from which it comes? Should you not bother with a long quotation of the passage, but bring in relevant parts of the passage as you are analyzing them? Note that you may need to draft the full essay before you determine how best to handle the identification and incorporation of the passage itself.
Do not forget that I am looking for a traditional literary critical argument in this assignment. By “literary critical argument,” I mean that I am expecting you to craft an essay that
- presents an introduction that concludes with a thesis statement announcing your interpretive claim about the passage,
- proceeds to develop its argument through a series of clearly related body points that cite and analyze specific evidence from the text (and, if needed, other sources), and
- ends with a substantive conclusion that spells out the larger implications of your analysis.
In-text parenthetical citations and works cited entries should follow standard MLA style.
You may consult outside sources that help you place the work in its proper historical, cultural, political, and—perhaps—even psychological context; you may also consult reference sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary and any relevant specialized dictionaries to help examine the fine points of word choice and shades of meaning that may be significant to your reading. You are not, however, to consult any existing literary critical responses to the text you are analyzing.