Analytical Essay: The Transcendentalists and Popular Culture



Analytical Essay: The Transcendentalists and Popular Culture

Assignment:

Write a three-page essay in which you discuss the way that something from popular culture relates to Transcendentalism. Your essay MUST:

• Have an introduction with a clear argument (thesis)

• Describe an example of something from popular culture that contains Transcendentalist ideas (movies, songs, books, television shows, etc…)

• Explain how the element of popular culture relates to the Transcendentalist writings we studied in class (Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” or Walden or Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”).

• Contain at least two quotations from the Transcendentalist writings we studied. All quotations should be introduced properly, explained, and gracefully incorporated into your own sentences. Quotations should also be parenthetically documented according to MLA format.

• Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the writings and the ideas of Transcendentalism.

• Be organized in a logical manner, with strong topic sentences that keep your paper “on track” and graceful transitions that cause your writing to flow smoothly from one point to the next.

• Contain a works cited page in MLA format. Have a formal tone and avoid using first or second person pronouns

• Be free of grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and typographical errors.

• Follow all of the MLA guidelines regarding paper format and documentation

DUE DATES:

Thesis Statement –end of class 11/19

Outline – 11/22

Rough Draft – 11/26

Final Draft – 12/2

Thesis development:

✓ Include title of work and author’s name (don’t misspell either of these).

✓ Make sure your thesis makes sense (has a subject) and responds specifically to the prompt.

✓ Make sure you are arguing something. Your thesis needs to be provable!

Organization and Structure:

✓ Every body paragraph needs a topic sentence. A topic sentence is the main idea of your paragraph—the big point you are trying to make in this specific paragraph.

✓ You must LEAD IN to your concrete details (evidence), whether they are direct quotes (better of the two) or paraphrase. Your lead in needs to be a complete sentence and needs to put your evidence in context. Make sure that your lead in is correct and accurate for your quote.

✓ After your evidence, you need to analyze. In your explanation/analysis, you need to prove deeper thinking by a. explaining what the quote reveals and b. how it supports your thesis.

BANNED WORD LIST: Do not use these words, on pain of points being taken off!

I (me, my, our)

You (your)

This shows that/This quote proves that

A lot

As stated in my thesis (or anything that references that you are writing an essay)

Pesky Details:

✓ You aren’t buddies with the author, so you aren’t on a first name basis with him. Use last name only.

✓ Longer titles (novels, full length plays) are italicized; shorter works (poems, short stories) get quotation marks. Nothing is underlined anymore—it’s so yesterday.

✓ You are (or should be) writing a literary analysis, not a review of the author or the work. Thoreau doesn’t care if you think he did a “great job” at metaphors with “Walden” and neither do I. So get rid of evaluations.

Citations

✓ If you are only quoting one work throughout the entire essay, then you don’t need to bother with last names. You simply give the quote and then have the page number in the parentheses after the quote.

✓ Remember the end quotation mark goes BEFORE the parentheses.

✓ Remember that the end punctuation (a period) goes AFTER the parentheses.

Example: “Spare me! You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin’. Learn charity, woman” (54).

✓ If the author ends what you want to excerpt with a question mark or an exclamation point, keep it inside the quote and then add a period after your citation.

Example: “This warrant’s vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!” (77).

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