Proposal Elements: Working Title, Questions, Thesis Statement, Project Description, and Works Cited

Working Title

Proposal Elements:

1) Working title

2) Question(s) being answered in this essay

3) Working thesis statement

4) 3-5 paragraph description of the project — e.g., how do you plan to develop and support your thesis? are you using secondary sources? if yes, what are you using and why?

5) Works Cited -e.g., list of primary texts, book reviews, scholarly articles/books, literary reference materials, etc. that you will be drawing on in your essay.

You are not required to consult secondary sources for this paper.

You may work exclusively with the primary text(s) and reference materials — e.g., Oxford English Dictionary, The Broadview Pocket Glossary of Literary Terms, etc.

Students selecting this option may have as few as two entries in their Works Cited list-e.g., primary text and The Broadview Pocket Glossary of Literary Terms.

The proposal represents a preliminary snapshot of your final project. If you change topics, books and/or develop new research question(s), these changes must be approved by the instructor. Students who undertake large scale changes (as above) without instructor approval may not receive a grade for the final paper (25%).

Sample Submission

1. Working Title
“The good in bad endings: A comparative analysis of story endings in Carleigh Baker's Bad

Endings

2, Essay Question(s)
“Are the endings of the stozies in Bad Endings in fact bad? Or is there an openness to Baker's stories that permits an optimistic reading of the collection?

3. Working Thesis Statement
While the title of Carleigh Baker's 2017 short story collection Bad Endings creates the expectation that the stories will end badly for her characters, Baker's stories resist closure and resolution thereby creating the possibility of good endings through her open-endedness.

4, Projet Description
In this essay, I will complete a comparative analysis of the endings of the collection’s first-person stories to assess the degree to which my working thesis holds true. This will involve cataloging the climaxes and resolutions and noting the degree to which the endings are opened (possibility of good) or closed (irredeemably bad). This approach will permit me to, begin systematically answering my research question. I hope to show that while bad things Sample 2 happen or have happened to the various characters in the collection the endings themselves hint at different possible futures. I want to demonstrate that even with its invocation of “bad. endings” there is a kind of forward momentum in many of the collection stories that is arguably good or at least hopeful.

‘Throughout the essay, I will support and develop my thesis through direct references to and quotations from the selected first-person short stories. I will focus on the final 2-3 paragraphs of each story to compare what is happening — eg, where is the character, what are they doing, what are they thinking or saying, are they alone, etc. A close analysis of plot and setting (in combination with any other relevant literary elements) will assist me mapping out the degree to which ambiguity — or open-ness —is a positive force in Baker’s approach to storytelling

Topic 2. Literature often addresses pressing social issues and themes by dramatizing them in fictional works. In its elevation of play and inexhaustible meaning, literature helps us grasp the ways in which diverse parts form a comprehensive and complex whole, and it connects us with other ages and cultures.

Reflecting on the above statement, advance an interpretative claim centred on one of books abov exploring how it connects us with pressing social issues and themes and/or other ages and cultures.