Suggested topics/authors for the literary analysis research paper
Arnold, Matthew
Austen, Jane: Emma (social manners, relationship between Harriet and Emma); Sense and Sensibility (social manners,
society reflected in the relationships, impact of wealth and class on society); Pride and Prejudice (social manners, satire on
Victorian values, society reflected in the relationships)
Beowulf (full text)
Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre (Jane’s struggle for independence, Jane as a feminist, social criticism)
Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights (theme of revenge, narrative structure)
Criticisms give
Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s Progress (Christian allegory)
Canterbury Tales
you a better
Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland
understanding
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness (symbolism of light or dark, the journey, theme of alienation,
of literature
commentary on Colonialism); The Secret Sharer (theme of alientation/internal or external, Leggatt
and help you
as alter ego)
see what you
DeFoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe (theme of rebellion and individualism)
had not seen
Dickens, Charles: A Tale of Two Cities (social criticism/commentary, theme of regeneration);
before.
Oliver Twist (social criticism/commentary, autobiographical elements, role of institutions, LENGTH
Ultimately, you
warning); Great Expectations (social criticism/commentary, Pip’s coming of age); Hard Times, David Copperfield
decide what
Donne, John
feels correct.
Doyle, Arthur Conan: Sherlock Holmes
Eliot, George: Silas Marner
Fielding, Henry
Forster, E.M.: A Room with a View (paradox of the role of the female, Lucy’s struggle with social conventions, social
criticism/commentary, role of setting/influence and inspiration); A Passage to India (Colonialism, character study)
Greene, Graham
Hardy, Thomas: The Return of the Native (role of setting, theme of fatalism, civilization vs. barbarism); Tess of the
D’Urbervilles (role of setting or female, fatalism, comparison/contrast of Angel and Alex)
Jonson, Ben: Volpone (theme of greed, social commentary, social prominence); The Alchemist (social commentary,
development of the sham)
Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Kipling, Rudyard
Lawrence, D.H.
Lewis, C.S.: The Chronicles of Narnia
Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte D’ Arthur
Marlowe, Christopher: Dr. Faustus (theme of spirits, social commentary, character development, theme of ambitions); The
Jew of Malta (theme of revenge and betrayal, character development)
Maugham, W. Somerset
Medieval Literature
Milton, John: Paradise Lost
Orwell, George: 1984 (effects of totalitarianism on the individual, social commentary/warning on the future); Animal Farm
(allegory)
Poets: George Gordon (Lord Byron), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Elizabeth Bennett, William Blake, William
Wordsworth, John Milton: Romantic elements in poetry, Elizabethan lyrics
Scott, Sir Walter
Pope, Alexander: The Rape of the Lock
Shakespearean comedies: Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, 12th Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like
It, The Tempest
Shakespearean tragedies: Titus Andronicus, Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus
Shaw, George Bernard
Shelley, Mary W.: Frankenstein (elements of the gothic, alienation)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (full text)
Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queen
Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels (satire on government/monarchy, scholarship, war or mankind in general)
Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings
Victorian Age/Novels
Wells, H.G.
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray (autobiographical elements, moral decadence); The Importance of Being Earnest
(social commentary)
Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One’s Own (role of women, discrimination)