interpretations of the meaning and significance of a piece

English 273 Short Critique Papers SpecsTo dig deeper into the process of interpreting literature, write a short paper making an interpretative
argument over one of the week’s readings. The goal is to offer your insights, reactions, and
interpretations of the meaning and significance of a piece
literature. You want to make an
arguable
claim and briefly explain and support it
. These short papers will help you generate ideas for your
longer papers and record your thoughts throughout the semester.
Papers will be graded pass/fail. To receive credit,
each paper must meet
all
these specifications:
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Papers are due electronically on Moodle by
midnight
of
the
last day of
that class week, and
must be over the literature for the week; you may not write about the historical
introductions, or in
–
class example readings.
Late papers are not accepted unless you use a
token.
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Papers should follow correct MLA formatting for headings, titles, and page numbers.
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Papers must be mostly free of distracting mechanical errors such as subject
–
verb agreement
problems, inadequate proofr
eading, or incorrect or missing punctuation. Serious grammatical
errors, such as fragments, run
–
ons, and comma splices are unacceptable.
?
There is no firm length requirement, but you must write at least one healthy paragraph
(that’s 4
–
5 sentences) doing ea
ch of the following:
1.
Briefly summarize the text by giving a quick overview of the story or poem’s setting,
characters, and main plot points. You should cover who the major characters are, what
the setting is, what the main conflict is as you see it, and wh
at the resolution is.
2.
Offer your interpretation: What themes, oppositions, and/or repetitions are there? In
other words, what’s one thing you think the text argues? Be sure to give supporting
evidence: what in the text supports your interpretation and b
acks up your claims? Cite
specific passages using the author’s last name and page or line numbers in MLA citation
format. No works cited page is needed.
3.
Explore possible literary contexts: Do you see any similarities in style or content to
other pieces yo
u’ve read in or out of this class? Still nothing? How about movies or TV
shows? Or is any historical or biographical knowledge help out here?
4.
How would you critique the ideas in the text? Do you agree or disagree
—
or some of
both
—
with the worldview the t
ext presents? Or are you not sure what to make of it; has
the text led you to questions you hadn’t considered before?