Due: First version in class on Wednesday March 27; Final version on Wednesday April 3.
Instructions: Three to four pages long. See Paper Standards on syllabus for details about the formatting of your paper.
SparkNotes is a favorite students’ reference source for guides to literature (and much better than Cliff’s Notes) but the writers of these notes necessarily simplify and, like all other interpretation, provide a debatable argument, not The Truth. Find an interpretation in the SparkNotes guide to Henry V that you either 1. disagree with, 2. agree with, but you think also needs careful qualification or refining or 3. think is better or worse than the opposing view in the Cliff’s Notes on the play (pick only one of these three options), and say why. Make sure you provide evidence from the text to back up your point.
For this assignment to be successful, you will need to make sure 1) that you pick an interpretation from SparkNotes (or Cliff’s Notes)–e.g. a claim about a “theme” or a “character,” not about the plot–and 2) that you pick a very limited point to discuss, just one section from the SparkNotes (or Cliff’s Notes) discussion, or even one assertion from that one section. Do not discuss the entire SparkNotes (or Cliff’s Notes) coverage of Henry V.
For this assignment, you’ll find arguments to disagree with or to qualify in the following sections:
- Analysis of Major Characters
- Themes, Motifs & Symbols
- Any of the analytical parts of the subsections listed under “Summary & Analysis”
1. If you plan to disagree with a SparkNotes claim about the play, you can, following your brief introduction, set out in a paragraph or so what the textual evidence might be for the SparkNotes claim, and then in the rest of the paper set out the reasons you think the claim is flawed, along with the evidence that supports your reasons.
2. If you plan to qualify a SparkNotes claim about the play, you can, following your brief introduction, set out in a paragraph or so the textual evidence that would support that claim, and then in the rest of your paper set out the reasons that the claim needs to be qualifed in some way(s) or made more precise or with different emphases. Again, textual evidence should support your reasons.
3. If you plan to compare opposing claims in SparkNotes and Cliff’s Notes, you’ll want an introduction that sets out briefly the opposing claims, which you think is the better claim, and, crucially, why. Your body should discuss the relevant textual evidence for each claim, and, in providing that evidence, explain why the evidence better supports the claim you prefer.
General tips:
- Introductions should be brief. Ruthlessly cut any general statements, e.g. “All literature has multiple interpretations” or “Many students find SparkNotes useful.” Start with your particular focus on the play.
- In the body of your essay, make sure you support all your claims with relevant quotes from the text. Additionally, do not assume that what the quotes indicate is self-evident. Instead, explain to the reader why the quote proves your claim.
- Do not, however, quote more than is necessary. Your paper should not be mostly quotes from the play.
- When referring to SparkNotes’ claims, make SparkNotes the grammatical subject, e.g. “SparkNotes claims x.” Do not write “they claim” because these writers of SparkNotes are not credited and we do not know who “they” are (so “they” becomes a broad pronoun reference).
- Make sure each paragraph is unified, that it argues a single point.
- After you’ve worked–a lot–on the content, then revise–and revise again, and again–for sentence-level issues.