Hopefully, by this point in the semester, you have demonstrated your ability in two key areas of literary studies. The first is your ability to perform a close reading of a single text. All of the reading posts and your poetic form essay aimed at developing that skill, which is the foundation of everything literary critics do. The second is your ability to weave a sophisticated argument between multiple sources by the same author. The intertextuality essay addressed that requirement, which is important because literary analysis does not just stop at the level of the single work but requires drawing larger conclusions of one kind or another, whether on the level of the author, period, genre, theme, or some other attribute.

One last task remains, and that is to make use of the work done by others in the field, your predecessors and colleagues. Being a skilled close reader of texts and making connections between them are worthy activities, but many have engaged in them before you, and if you ignore their work, you are almost certain to make arguments that others have long ago either made or debunked. Beyond that, reading existing criticism can deepen your own understanding of the topic and act as a catalyst for your own thinking, just as the synthesis posts have. I expect that your thinking will become deeper and more complex due to your research, not that you will find sources that merely support what you have already said.

Your goal in this assignment is to perform the research required to transform your intertextuality essay into the kind of professional academic paper routinely read at conferences and published in journals. That means you must find not only appropriate critical sources but also choose the specific passages you plan to quote. Then, you must decide exactly how you plan to use them in your essay. In the process, you may need or want to modify your essay’s thesis. Finally, you must cite your research according to MLA guidelines. However, you do not need to write the essay; at this point, the combination of the intertextuality essay and this document is enough to allow me to judge the project.

You must find at least six sources, including

Scholarly books: This means single volumes written by a single author (or occasionally a pair of authors). You can find books of four types that will be useful:
1) a book with a broad focus, such as a genre or period of literature (postmodern fiction, for example) or a particular critical approach
2) a book devoted to some or all of Calvino’s works
3) a critical biography, meaning in this case a book that examines Calvino’s life and in the process examines his works as well.
4) a critical volume of essays, essays or articles that an editor has decided should be included in a book. Sometimes the article has been published before; sometimes it is commissioned especially for the book. The book itself may address a single work, author, period, theme, critical orientation, or be united by some other criterion. Obviously, at least part of the essay should deal specifically with one or more of the works you examined in your intertextuality essay. Note: multivolume reference works (literary encyclopedias and the like) are unacceptable for this assignment. Note: Calvino’s own works are primary sources for this project, not secondary sources, so they do not count toward your requirements.

Articles published in scholarly journals: This means essays or articles you find in a journal devoted specifically to literature. Databases such as Expanded Academic, LION, ProQuest, and J-STOR are good places to find these. MLA Interntional Bibliography can help you find sources, but you will sometimes need to take an extra step (such as using the Electronic Journal Finder) to obtain them. The article usually will not have been published before, unless it is a translation. The journal’s focus may be specific or broad, but again at least part of the article should deal specifically with the novel. You may obtain these sources in hard-copy or electronically, provided they initially appeared in print. You may use up to two of the critical sources we read for class to count toward this category.

Optional sources — Electronic sources: This can be an on-line journal or a scholarly web-site.  (But not just any web-site: just because Steve lists Calvino as his favorite writer doesn’t make him worth quoting, especially if right next to his comments on the poetry he lists Nickelback and Soulja Boy as his all-time favorite musical artists and Olive Garden as his favorite restaurant.)

You must find a total of eight quotations you could foresee using in an essay on your topic from the sources you find for this project, and no more than two can be from any one source. These quotations should be long enough to give you something to work with but not so long that they would overwhelm your essay. No more than two of them, therefore, should be long enough to requre setting off, and even those two must be no more than 100 words each.

To be useful, a quotation must require citation. Therefore, it must either offer the author’s judgment or present information that resulted specifically from the author’s efforts. Basic biographical information or historical facts do not require citation (unless you use the author’s phrasing, but that is not what I am looking for here). 

A quotation also must be comprehensible: quote in a way that the ideas in the quotation are clear. If in order for that to happen you need to set up a quotation with a brief introductory phrase, conclude a quotation with a few words that complete a thought, or insert a one or two word bracketed explanation somewhere within the quotation, please do so.

Your document should list the quotations, organized by the categories of the sources. Within each category, list the quotations alphabetically by author’s last name. Each quotation must be properly formatted and cited with a parenthetical citation.

For each of the quotations, write a short explanation of how you plan to use it. You have two basic options, and within each of those options you have two options as well:

1) You agree with your source:

A) Extension — You plan to build on the source’s argument in some way that the original source does not, using the point the quotation makes to help you make a point of your own. A good test of this use of the quotation is that you can mentally insert the phrase “If this is true, then” between the quotation and your commentary (note that I said mentally). In this case, you should of course explain what that point is in some detail.

B) Application — You plan to apply the quotation in a way the original source did not. For example, if you quote a critic’s comment on a particular novel, then discuss how that same observation applies to a different novel, then you are applying the quotation in a new way. A good test of this use of the quotation is if you can mentally insert the phrase “This comment also applies to” between the quotation and your commentary (again, mentally). In this case, you must explain how the quotation is relevant to the work you are discussing.

2) You disagree with your source:

A) Logical Rebuttal — You think your source draws a false conclusion because of faulty reasoning.

B) Evidentiary Rebuttal — You think your source draws a false conclusion because of faulty use of evidence, usually not because the evidence provided is wrong but because the author ignores contrary evidence

You must rebut (for either reason) at least one quotation. For the remaining quotations, the choice of how to use them is up to you.

Put your comment on each quotation directly under the quotation. Label each comment Extend, Apply, Rebut Logically, or Rebut with Evidence. Then write your explanation. This should require at least two or three sentences, but don’t stop there if you need more to explain your point. Often, quoting the relevant primary text (meaning a work by Calvino) during your explanation will be helpful.

After all the quotations and commentary, type “Thesis:” and then create a one or two sentence thesis that you think will give you an opportunity to use all of the quotations you have analyzed in your project as support. Of course, the thesis should be concise, well-written, and conform to all the principles on theWriting Center ’s Thesis Statement Guidelines page. I expect it will be similar to your thesis for the intertextuality essay, but you may change it to any extent you wish.

Your works cited page should include correct and complete MLA-style works cited entries for each of your sources, and it should be properly formatted: double-spaced (as the quotations should be as well), alphabetized, but not separated into categories.

16 May, by midnight. Note: because I am extremely busy during the last week and have only a short time to submit final grades for my courses, I will not accept any late submissions. Late submission will result in a zero for this assignment.

Here is an example (used with permission) from a previous semester of this kind of project that earned an exceptionally high grade: Measure for Measure Annotated Bibliography and Research Project. Although it was created for a different work, you would be well advised to use it as a model of approach, organization, format, and style.

40% of the grade will depend on the quality of the research: Did you fulfill the categories? Do the quotations make sense out of context (or did you set them up so that they make sense), are they interesting and useful, and do they require quotation? Are they all relevant to your thesis?
40% of the grade will depend on your comments on the quotations and your thesis: Do I see a coherent argument emerging from them? Are they well written?
20% of the grade will depend on the format of your quotations, citations, and works cited page: Are they all correct?