2012-02-02 @ admin
Analyze the assignment you’ve been given. Some topics may be very general, others quite specific. Here are two examples; the first is more general.
Write a paper on any aspect of frontier literature.
Research the image of women in frontier literature.
The more general the topic, the more your teacher is looking for you to think about the specifics. Part of your research task is to narrow any topic as quickly as possible before you begin to take notes. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed with material, and have no idea where to go next.
“Frontier” can mean almost anything, so the first step is to define your boundaries. Stories as far ranging as Homer’s Odyssey, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land fall into some definition of “frontier” literature. As soon as you recognize that frontier doesn’t necessarily have to include cowboys and Indians, you can think of many interesting ideas, such as “How the frontier of the land compares with the frontier of the sea.” “The perils of the unknown in Homer’s Ulysses and Melville’s Moby Dick.” “The sea captain and the Indian scout as frontier hero.” “Wagon trains and space ships: similarities in crossing the wide frontier.”
Keep asking questions until there are no more to ask. For example, what does “image of women” mean? Is it Huck Finn’s image of his Aunt Polly, Mark Twain’s idea about the function of women in settling the frontier, or a psychologist’s analysis of the family unit?
Let’s assume that you have a general idea about your topic but don’t know how to proceed. You have decided to work on the second topic: women and frontier literature, which could include anything from mail order brides to Huck Finn not having a mother. What’s the next step?
One source designed to help you narrow a topic and locate sources is the Research Guide to Biography and Criticism. (Vols. I-II cover poets and novelists; Vol. III covers dramatists; the Update covers the most recent sources for the authors in Vols I-II; and Vol. V covers modern American poets and novelists.) These volumes are probably shelved in the reference section of your library.
Looking quickly at Appendix A beginning on page xi of the 1990 Research Guide Update, we find a list of important frontier writers under the category “Wilderness/Frontier,” including James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and Willa Cather. Since Cather is a woman, we’ll turn to her entry in the Research Guide Update to find the following entries (among others). The A,G indicate whether the work is most appropriate for an academic (A) or general (G) audience.
As we look at each entry we’ll write down the basic idea(s).
#1
Bloom, Harold, ed. Willa Cather’s “My Ántonia”. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Illustrating a wide range of critical approaches, these twelve essays address the novel’s structure, theme, imagery, mythic elements, and use of time and history. For the most part, these essays question the views of earlier critics who interpreted the novel as a celebration of frontier life and viewed Áatonia as the embodiment of pioneer vitality. (A,G)
Main idea in #1: Previous critics viewed Cather as a frontier writer and her character, Ántonia, as the ideal frontier woman. Modern critics do not think Cather responded so favorably to the frontier.
#2
Callander, Marilyn Berg. Willa Cather and the Fairy Talc. Ann Arbor: UMI Research, 1989. This study opens the door to provocative insights about the symbolic reach of many of Cather’s novels. Callander persuasively traces elements of fairy tales that “provide the primary symbols of romance,” including Cinderella in The Song of the Lark; the fairy talc journey in My Ántonia; Sleeping Beauty and Snow White in My Mortal Enemy; and the archetype of the two brothers in Death Comes for the Archbishop. (G)
Main idea in #2: Cather used fairy tales as one source of her stories, especially the ‘pure’ heroines, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White.
#3
Donovan, Josephine. After the Fall: The Demeter-Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. Persephone represents the “daughters” (feminine consciousness) that are whisked away into “patriarchal captivity” (the male world). This world is related to the women’s culture of the Victorian era, characterized by a segregated “male-less” web of romantic female friendships. Of special note is Donovan’s discussion of the ritual basis of Cather’s My Ántonia. (A)
Main idea in #3: In a society where men dominate, women form almost mythic friendships. Questions: who were Demeter and Persephone? What do Glasgow, Wharton, and Cather have in common?
#4
O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. In a late Victorian culture that provided few literary role models, Cather first attempted to imitate men, then achieved an identity with women. Initially, she was torn between two culturally opposed identifies of art and womanhood but ultimately reconciled them. (A,G)
Main idea in #4: Cather’s self-perception changed as she shifted her identity from men to women and accepted her role as a woman artist.
Now, compare the main ideas that you’ve just extracted and ask as many questions as you can think of, such as:
Early critics thought that Cather’s early work reflected the characteristics of “frontier” literature. What has caused critics to view her work differently?
Fairy tales are often as frightening as they are fanciful. How and why does Cather identify with Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella?
How are fairy-tale characters like Cinderella, Show White, and Sleeping Beauty (who are women without men) like or unlike other mythic women, such as Persephone and Demeter (who are symbols of female bonding?)
Is it unusual for women in male-dominated societies (such as the frontier), to first identify with men, then bond with women before achieving their own identity?
Any of these questions can become term paper topics. By extracting and combining ideas from our sources, we can write a thesis statement without having read any materials. An example of a thesis statement is:
Once Willa Cather realized that she was unsuccessfully identifying with a masculine, frontier sensibility, she gradually turned to women as role models, friends, and mythic symbols as she searched for her identity through her fiction.
Write several different thesis statements until you find the one that seems most appropriate to your assignment.
Now, using only the questions we generated from the Research Guide annotations, we can produce a working outline.
Outline
Cather’s sense of the frontier as reflected in her novel My Ántonia (sources #1 and #2)
Cather’s increasing dependence on women (source #4)
Cather’s recognition that frontier women were not allowed to be artists (source #4)
Cather’s use of female symbols, especially fairy tale heroines, as she seeks her release from men and the frontier (source #3)
We now have four different sources and a direction for beginning the research. However, you should keep several points in mind.
It is not necessary to read all four critical books — the function of a research paper is to locate the data that relates specifically to your topic. The table of contents and index in each source will tell you where to find the discussion related to each idea in your outline, and you will study only that portion of the book.
Your thesis sentence may change several rimes as you delve into the research phase. Since you have created your own topic, there is no reason to be stuck with an idea that is too difficult to research. Also, each section of the outline will become more specific as you begin reading the source materials.
If your library does not have the books that you have identified as sources for your research, you can ask any college library to borrow them through the inter-library loan system. If you cannot locate any of the books, you can still use the same ideas and adjust your topic to the books you do have.
At the very worst, if no books of any kind are available on your topic — Willa Cather, for example — you can scrap the whole idea and start over. This entire process of looking at the resources in the Research Guide, extracting the main idea, asking questions about the main ideas, then forming a thesis statement and working outline, should require no more than an hour, so you’ve lost little time even if you have to abandon your original idea.
Creating term papers really takes time. One should focus or else he won’t finish anything.