Term paper proposal

The proposal is a preview of your term paper. Its purpose is to encourage you to explore preliminary ideas and set a direction for your paper. The proposal should be about two typewritten pages and must consist of sections corresponding to each of the following:

A. A proposed title for your term paper that communicates your focus.

B. The specific question about the two novels that you hope your paper will answer, captured in one sentence that begins with a question word.

C. A preliminary statement of thesis. This statement of one or two sentences should directly answer the question you have posed in B above. The thesis statement should mention specifically the novels you will be exploring, encapsulate your central argument about them, and be capable of detailed support from those novels. In your term paper, this statement will appear in your introduction, probably as the last sentence, and will be developed and supported throughout the body of the essay by appropriate evidence from the texts. It is a golden thread, weaving steadily through the entire paper and kept in view throughout. Make sure that it is an interpretive and analytic statement, not a descriptive or explanatory one and not a statement of plot.

D. The plan for the rest of the paper. Take the thesis statement and divide it up into the four to six component parts through which you will develop your argument. These topic ideas should be expressed as complete sentences and presented in the order you expect to address them in your paper. They too should be interpretive and analytic statements, not descriptive or plot summary. Be sure that you divide your discussion reasonably between the two novels so that each receives fair and balanced attention in your analysis of the main issue at the heart of your paper.

E. Your biggest concern(s) or question(s) about the paper.

F. A list of secondary sources that you’ve consulted or expected to consult. Please note that you are not expected, nor even encouraged, to use secondary sources in writing this essay, but if you choose to do so, these sources must be documented accurately in your paper.

Your proposal will be graded on the depth and seriousness of your ideas and the clarity of your presentation.

Background to essay topic: On the surface, The Wind in the Willows and The Golden Compass seem like profoundly different books, the one a gentle animal fantasy rooted in Edwardian England, the other an heroic fantasy beginning in a place described as the English city of Oxford but moving quickly into an imaginative Northern battleground of good and evil. Yet both are works of profound truth-telling. What grounds them both is their utter believability, their rootedness in the truths of human nature. They take themselves seriously and we respond by upholding the worlds they offer us with the deep seriousness they demand.

Your task: Compare and contrast a significant aspect of the fantasy worlds created and sustained in these two books(The Wind in the Willows, The Golden Compass). To do this, find an element that intrigues you and explore the ways in which it is enacted within these two books. You might wish to narrow and focus your topic to one of the following:
-a theme or big idea explored through the fantasy worlds- the journey theme, for example, including the contrast between home and journey or the relationship and implications of place, journey, and security; the summoning voice; friendship/camaraderie; wildness.

-the nature of the setting(s) or landscapes that characterise the fantasy worlds.

-the nature of the characters who people the fantasy worlds.

-the implicit rules of the fantasy worlds, the limitations imposed upon them and the consistency with which the rules are maintained.

-symbolism, symbolic objects or symbolic imagery within the fantasy worlds.

Audience and Communicative Purpose: You are writing to an academic audience familiar with the two novels – an audience like your classmates, for example, who have read the novels seriously but may not be approaching them through the same lens as you are. Your aim in writing is to deepen their understanding of the novels both individually and in comparison with each other.

*you have to read two books -“The Wind in the Willows” and “The Golden Compass”. They are both children’s literature so would be easy to read.

I need to hand in this paper by Nov.12 10:00am so I need to get this done before 7:00am tomorrow.

If you can choose the title of the paper, that would be great.