Literary Criticism Analyzing Author Intent and Meaning

Your Goals  Demonstrate understanding of Shakespearean drama and literary analysis by:  Analyzing William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar through a chosen lens of literary criticism.  Remain objective and critique without insult, while simultaneously avoiding author flattery.

Your options  Formalism: a study of the form and structure of the play  Focus is on a literary device (ie: you may examine the use of metaphor, but you cannot expect to examine metaphor and symbolism thoroughly)  New Historicism: a study of the work in context of the author’s time period  Focus is on the context and requires background knowledge of the historical time period  Feminism: a study of the role of women in a text  Focus is on gender representation  Marxism: a study of the role of social classes in a text  Focus is on the representation of lower classes or criticism of the upper classes

Your benchmarks  Day One (30-31 March): Choose a lens to examine the play, gather significant quotations, and begin the pre-writing process. Have a working thesis and the beginnings of an outline or draft.  Day Two: (1 and 4 April): Spend 30 minutes continuing draft or outline. Find a partner and talk through each other’s thesis as well as your draft/outline. Use the rubric to help give suggestions and a preliminary scoring in the areas you are currently able to. Spend at least 15 minutes on each person, then continue refining your essay.  From here, your work will be outside of class. You should make a Scribe appointment for the week of April 4 th. This will not be a part of your grade, but would fulfill your requirement, and will undoubtedly improve your paper.  All essays are due (for full credit) on April. These need to be submitted to Google Classroom.  Final deadline for partial credit is 7:30am, 19 April. No essays will be considered for grading after this.