ENGL 633 : Bibliographic Essay
633 Description | 633
Syllabus | 633
Critical Readings
The bibliographic essay affords you the opportunity to read
and assess works of Shakespearean scholarship on the play or plays, which you
will write about in your final scholarly essay. It will also enable you to teach others in the class about the
status of scholarship on the play or plays you have selected for your research
and writing this semester.
In preparation for writing your bibliographic essay, you will
read a wide variety of articles and book chapters about one or more plays. Read quickly—even skim read—at first so that
you get the gist of a large sampling of articles/chapters. If you find some articles not very
interesting or helpful upon this quick reading, eliminate them from
consideration for your essay. From all the
articles and chapters you skim read, you will choose eight, which you
have found the most useful and illuminating in your reading of Shakespeare’s
text. These carefully selected
articles/chapters about the play will be the subject of your bibliographic
essay. Don’t bother writing about articles that you think have no merit. It may well be that you will find some
articles useful, persuasive, and helpful in some ways but also limited or
flawed in others. Your bibliographic
essay will indicate both the strengths and weaknesses of the articles you have
chosen to write about. Once you have
selected the eight articles and/or chapters you will examine in your
bibliographic essay, you will want to go back and re-read them carefully,
taking notes that will help you gather evidence so that you can fulfill the
following objectives for your essay.
Objectives of the Bibliographic Essay:
1. Nail
down the thesis idea and purpose of each of the eight essays, offering your
reader enough of an explanation so that you make the thesis and main supporting
ideas clear. You may wish to quote
directly from the essays to illustrate your analysis.
2. Indicate
the critical or theoretical approach for each article if you can do that so
that your reader knows the perspective or “slant” the scholar takes in each
article.
3. Assess
the strengths and weaknesses of each article/chapter.
4. Tie
your own essay together with some kind of thesis idea about the scholarship you
have read for your piece. It might be a
thesis about the status of Shakespearean scholarship and criticism on the play
you have selected, or about the merits (and limitations) of a particular type
of scholarship and criticism, or about some other insight that reading the
eight articles has afforded you. You
MUST have a thesis idea for you essay, and you should state it clearly in a
thesis statement early in your piece.