Path 2

Seminar in Victorian Literature
Path 2: Essay Guidelines & Prompt Map

". . . I debated what to do" (l.35)
Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" (c.1835; 1836, 1842)

Essay responses to Path 2 prompts should . . .

deliver a structured argument: these will not resemble personal journal entries, blog-style writing, or stream-of-consciousness reflections. Essays should be tightly organized, with main points logically ordered. The whole should be framed by a creative, short introduction and some kind of conclusion (do not wrap up by summarizing your main points).
evince creativity: these exercises are all about effective, persuasive argumentation, and not at all about giving me some "correct" answer you think I want to hear.pursue a narrowly argued thesis: your essays should move in a very specific direction. Do not attempt to touch on all tangentially related ideas.provide adequate evidence: use your own ideas, textual references (with MLA-style page citations), and relevant material from secondary sources. Whether I happen to agree or not with your thesis matters little, as long as it is sufficiently supported and logically, persuasively rendered.
convey your argument in 500-600 words: this constraint on length represents one of the most challenging parameters of the assignment--take it seriously.
demonstrate familiarity with the assigned chapters: your essay should indicate awareness of all of the reading assigned for the week in which you write--do not generate an essay grounded in the first portion of the week's assigned reading.
evince polish: essays should show signs of careful revision.
appear on Blackboard by Saturday at 11:59 p.m. and immediately follow the prompt itself, which you should paste at the head of your entry.

Grp 1 Charles Dickens	Grp 2 George Eliot	Grp 3 George Eliot	Grp 4 The Woman Question	Grp 5 Art & Truth
Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge (1840-41). Penguin, 2003. ISBN: 0140437287	George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876). Oxford, 1998. ISBN: ISBN:978-0199538485	George Eliot’s "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" (1857). In Scenes of Clerical Life, Oxford, 2009. ISBN: 0199552603 George Eliot’s “Janet’s Repentance” (1857). In Scenes of Clerical Life, Oxford, 2009. ISBN: 0199552603 George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866). Penguin, 1995. ISBN: 0140434354	Alfred Tennyson’s “The Princess" (1847) online E. B. Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856). Norton, 1995. ISBN: 0393962987 A. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859-74). Penguin, 1989. ISBN: 0140422535	Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-34), Oxford, 2008. ISBN: 0199540372 Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868-69). Broadview, 2001. ISBN: 1551113722
sec 01 Julia Bluff Stephen Leonard Samson Luke Hawkins	sec 01 Lizzy Gilbert Shannon Gourley Susie Kopecky	sec 01 Mindy Truelsen Amanda Ayres	sec 01 Erin Holzer Rebekah Maples Jessica Davis	sec 01 Jen Wiens Alissa Magorian Jake McKiernan

Lamia
"Lamia" (1905)
John W. Waterhouse

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu