English IV Senior Research Paper
Mrs. McDaniels
Topic: You are to write about the connections you can make between the life, the works,
and the literary time period in which your approved writer (must be English, Irish, or
Scottish) lived. You must read biographical material about the author and some of what
the writer has written (**ten poems, five essays, five short stories, one novel or one play
minimum**). The literature must be classical literature, no postmodern (1960s+) writing
unless approved. Examine your literature textbook to place the writer in a particular time
period and read the introductory essay for that period. What events would have had the
greatest impact? Note fads, fashions, scientific advances, and everyday life. NOTE:
You must have your writer and the specific resources you are reading by that writer
approved in advance.
Guidelines: Because you are collecting information that other people have already
published, you have to give credit to these people for the information you use that is
theirs. In other words, NO PLAGIARISM. To protect you from temptation, I
REQUIRE photocopies or printouts of your resources to be turned in with the final copy
of the project. You may make notes on these papers and/or use highlighters or you can
use note cards to help you with your planning, but whatever choice you make –you need
to turn them in with your paper. Also I expect two copies of your paper turned in on the
due date along with your sources. When I return your paper, I will pass back one copy of
the essay and your sources, but I will keep one copy of your paper forever (or at least 5
years).
Resources (minimum):
 Three print resources
 Three internet resources
 Two critical resources (print or internet)
Citing Sources: We will follow the MLA style, and you will have access to the writer’s
handbooks to help you.
Critical Essay: You will need to conduct research in several areas: your author and
his/her times, the book you are reading and its context, and the criticism of the work. In
order to focus your work, center your research on the questions you need to answer:
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What is the context of the work –when, why was it written?
What social, historical, and cultural issues are addressed?
How does the work reflect the issues of the time?
How are the author’s personality, beliefs, and background reflected in the work?
How was the book received in its own time? Now? What do critics, then and
now, say about the work?
Develop and support a thesis sentence that makes a connection between the life, the
works, and the literary period in which your approved writer lived. For example:
p = poet
ep = epic
d = diary
n = novelist
pl = playwright
ph = philosopher
e = essayist
sh = short stories
au = autobiography
Edmund Spenser was the ideal Renaissance man because of his interest in
politics and the arts.
OR
Familiar with all medieval social classes, Geoffrey Chaucer reveals his
cynicism and a hidden faith in The Canterbury Tales.
Your finished project will be a 6-7 page paper with parenthetical citations from the work
itself and from your other sources (3 in-text citations per page minimum). You will cite
your sources parenthetically within the content of the essay. Focus your essay on what
you can prove from your reading and research. Narrowing your topic will help. You
essay MUST be typed (12 point, Times New roman), double spaced, with 1 inch margins
(top, bottom, right, left).
Works cited Page: Cite all your sources in an alphabetized list that follows the MLA
format.
Due Dates:
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Thesis – Wed, February 13
Outline – Wed, February 20
First Draft – Friday, February 29
Final Draft – Friday, March 14
p = poet
ep = epic
d = diary
n = novelist
pl = playwright
ph = philosopher
e = essayist
sh = short stories
au = autobiography
Book or Author Choices
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Sense and Sensibility,
Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park,
Emma,
Northanger Abbey,
Persuasion
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Don Juan
Canterbury Tales
Middlemarch
The Mill on the Floss
Silas Marner
The Time Machine
The Invisible Man
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The War of the Worlds
2001: A Space Odyssey
Mrs. Dalloway
To The Lighthouse
Dubliners
Portrait Of The Artist As A
Young Man
Finnegan’s Wake
Midnight’s Children
The Satanic Verses
Burmese Days
Nineteen Eighty Four
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 The Adventures Of Oliver Twist
 A Tale Of Two Cities
 The Life And Adventures Of
Nicholas Nickleby
Tom Jones
Treasure Island
The Black Arrow
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde
 Kidnapped
 Peter Pan
 Songs of Experience
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William Blake (p)
Robert Burns (p)
Mary Wollstonecraft (e)
William Wordsworth (p)
Walter Scott (n)
p = poet
ep = epic
d = diary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (p)
Jane Austen (n)
George Gordon, Lord Byron (p)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (p)
John Keats (p)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (p)
John Stuart Mill (e)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (p)
Charles Dickens (n)
Robert Browning (p)
Charlotte Bronte (n)
Emily Bronte (n)
Anne Bronte (n)
George Eliot (n)
Matthew Arnold (p)
Dante Gabrielle Rosetti (p)
Christina Rosetti (p)
Lewis Carroll (n)
Samuel Butler (n)
Thomas Hardy (n)
Bram Stoker (n)
Robert Louis Stevenson (n)
Oscar Wilde (n, pl)
George Bernard Shaw (pl)
Joseph Conrad (n)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (n)
A.E. Housman (p)
Rudyard Kipling (n)
Horace Walpole (n)
Matthew Lewis (n)
Ann Radcliffe (n)
Dorothy Dunnet (n)
Edwin Muir (p)
George Orwell (n)
Samuel Pepys (d)
John Dryden (p, pl)
Andrew Marvel (p)
John Milton (ep)
George Herbert (p)
Robert Herrick (p)
Ben Jonson (p)
John Donne (p, e)
William Shakespeare (p, pl)
Sir Phillip Sidney (p)
Christopher Marlowe (pl)
Edmund Spenser (p)
Margery Kempe (au)
n = novelist
pl = playwright
ph = philosopher
Geoffrey Chaucer (p)
J.R.R. Tolkien (n)
Agatha Christie (n)
T.S. Eliot (p, e)
Edith Sitwell (p)
Katherine Mansfield (sh)
D.H. Lawrence (n)
A.A. Milne (n)
Virginia Woolf (n, e)
James Joyce (sh)
E.M. Forester (n)
William Somerset Maugham (pl,
n, sh)
Walter de la Mare (p, sh, n)
Bertrand Russell (ph)
H.G. Wells (n)
William Butler Yeats (p)
Thomas Paine (e)
Thomas Gray (p)
Samuel Johnson (e)
Henry Fielding (?)
Alexander Pope (e, p)
Aemelia Lanyer (e, p)
Jonathan Swift (n, e)
Daniel Defoe (n)
Aphra Behn (p)
Seamus Heaney (p)
Tom Stoppard (pl)
Chinua Achebe (n)
Ted Hughes (p)
Muriel Sparks (sh)
Elizabeth Bowen (sh)
James Donleavy (n)
Joan Aiken (n)
Elizabeth Jane Howard (n, sh)
Denise Levertov (p)
Doris Lessing (n)
Arthur C. Clarke (n)
Dylan Thomas (p)
William Golding (n)
Daphne du Maurier (n, sh, pl)
Louis MacNiece (p, pl)
Samuel Beckett (n, p)
Graham Greene (n, pl, sh)
Evelyn Waugh (n)
Richard Lovelace (p)
Salman Rushdie (n, e)
Gerald Manley Hopkins (p)
W.H. Auden (p)
e = essayist
sh = short stories
au = autobiography
Senior Paper – ROUGH OUTLINE
Name ________________________
Author ______________________________________________________________________________________
Reading ______________________________________________________________________________________
Thesis statement:
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
Connecting the work to the author’s background
Three major points:
1.
quotes from primary source to prove it
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b.
c.
2.
a.
b.
c.
3.
a.
b.
c.
Sources:
Connecting work to historical (and literary) time period
Three major points:
1.
quotes from primary source to prove it
a.
b.
c.
2.
a.
b.
c.
3.
a.
b.
c.
Sources:
Criticism
1. Source:
Date of source:
Summary:
2. Source:
Date of source:
Summary:
Missing information to fill in with websites:
p = poet
n = novelist
ep = epic
pl = playwright
d = diary
ph = philosopher
e = essayist
sh = short stories
au = autobiography