Writing Homework Help

PROGRESSION TWO – “Texts‐in‐Context, an Argument” (6-7 pages)

collection: “The Opposite of Loneliness” by Marina Keegan

Please read the instruction very carefully and go through the rubric before you start because this is not an analytical paper. instead, you need to create your own argument and develop it using textual evidence from the collection and outside sources.

The whole paper should be in MLA format, including in-text citations and works cited page.

This assignment asks you to read a body of work by a single essayist and write an essay analyzing and interpreting that body of work in the context of a critical or scholarly conversation about it.

In this essay, you will play the role of a critic and develop an argument about the work by your chosen essayist based on careful, close reading and contextual research. A critic, for our purposes, is not someone who criticizes a writer’s work, but an engaged and attentive reader who is sincerely interested in both what the writer says and how s/he says it. You will be asked to listen to your writer’s voice on the page, to notice nuances of language, to understand what preoccupies his or her mind. Most importantly, you will attempt to recognize patterns across several texts by the same author: patterns of syntax, vocabulary, and imagery, yes; but also patterns of thought. You can think of this kind of criticism as detective work: your job is to read evidence from the texts and decipher the bigger picture behind it. What common thread do you see running through the whole body of work, even when the writer addresses subjects seemingly unrelated to one another? What questions do you see all these texts responding to, even if these questions are not asked explicitly? What hidden desires motivate the writer of these texts? What secret beliefs do these texts uphold? Any good text creates a world of its own, with its own laws, a set of beliefs, and a unique logic, not to mention its unique poetic atmosphere – the “feel” of this world, the colors that set it apart from other “worlds” created by other writers. What do you notice about the universe of your chosen essay collection?

Doing research on your author and reading academic articles and critical essays about your chosen collection will help you recognize the things you are noticing and articulate their importance. You will engage with several sources in your essay to create a context for your own reading of the primary texts, but will ultimately rely on your own observations and analysis to build a nuanced argument.

Research requirements: In addition to 6 essays from your chosen collection, you will need to identify 2-3 texts (essays, articles) written about the work by your chosen essayist and 2-3 sources that would help you better understand the issues that your chosen author is addressing in his/her work, or can be put in conversation with the writer’s work.

Skills Practiced:

-Developing an interpretation that considers evidence from several primary texts by an author, rather than one primary source.

– Using library resources to locate appropriate sources to contextualize this interpretation.

– Carefully and ethically selecting and engaging with scholarly and critical sources.

– Identifying, understanding, and contributing to a specific critical or scholarly conversation.

– Developing an essay that offers an interpretive argument—and that therefore reflects curiosity, concession, and elasticity of thought without sacrificing analysis and the clear and compelling development of an idea.

Note: you need an argument at the beginning of the paper and develop the argument to a deeper extent, not just focus on the analysis of the writer’s work/sources.

Here are the 6 essays from the collection. Other than that, you need to find 5-6 outside sources, please see the instruction for more details.