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English 1302 - Iyengar, Kalpana: Critical Analysis Essay

Critical Analysis Essay

Critical Analysis of Fences [1000 to 1,250 words]

Due: May 17th
For your final essay assignment, you will be writing a critical analysis essay of 1000 to 1,250 words based on the play Fences. Unlike a literary analysis, critical analysis is comparable to a research paper and asks you to work with information outside the primary text. You must locate, read, and analyze three peer reviewed articles from Google Scholar or other credible search engines. 

A critical analysis is an intense and thorough investigation of the secondary source materials along with the primary text. Research is required to understand and convey to others the internal complexities of the text based on the findings of other scholars in the field. This exercise requires you to pick and expound upon the importance of specific attributes of three to five peer reviewed articles and integrate the findings in your essay. You must paraphrase, summarize, or utilize direct quotations (sparingly) in your essay.

You will need to make a claim, or argument, about an attribute/theme and connect them to Fences. In other words, you will be problematizing the play. This claim will then be support by specific evidence from the articles that you read and evaluate demonstrating how you can support your claims with evidence.

Resources

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/critical.htmLinks to an external site.

How to Integrate Research into Writing

Exercise on Using Quotes and MLA Documentation

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/CriticalEpartsEGS.pdfLinks to an external site.

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/samplemlacritalessay.pdfLinks to an external site.

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/EGcritessaywresearch.pdfLinks to an external site.

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/argue.htmLinks to an external site.

https://www.fcusd.org/cms/lib/CA01001934/Centricity/Domain/3762/University%20of%20Chicago%20Writing%20an%20Argument%20in%20College.pdfLinks to an external site.

MLA Resources

https://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/MLAGuide.pdfLinks to an external site.

https://owl.excelsior.edu/citation-and-documentation/mla-style/mla-in-text-citations/Links to an external site.

Tentative Topics

Topics for a Critical Exposition

  1. Racism
    1. Historical
    2. Cultural
    3. Sociological
  2. Morality and the lack of
  3. Marriage and Dysfunction
  4. Identity Negotiation or Crisis
  5. Racially Stratified Urban America
  6. African American Linguistic Practices
  7. Fences as Symbolic of Prison
  8. Father-son Relationship
  9. Feminism […]

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