A801: Research in English Studies

A801: Research in English Studies
Semester 1, 2017

TMA: 60 points
Cut-off date: week 8-9
Length: 2000 words
[Prepared by: Dr. Tahrir Hamdi]

TMA 01

In no more than 2000 words, discuss the importance of the history of a work of your choice. You should consider the nuances of the term “history” in all of its dimensions. How have these elements (whichever apply) influenced the meaning of your chosen text?

Student Notes:

These notes suggest some possible approaches you might want to take in response to the TMA question, and are intended to help you get started. They are not designed to be used as an essay plan, and you may well want to take a different approach.

You should approach this question only after you have thoroughly read and absorbed chapter 4 “History of the book" and chapter 5 "Editing Literary Texts" in the Handbook to Postgraduate Research in English Studies, the two chapters on evaluating and criticizing the text in D.C. Greetham's Textual Scholarship and Jerome J. McGann's essay "The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method in The Beauty of Inflections" in Rice's and Waugh's Modern Literary Theory. These works will have given you a good starting point for thinking critically about how the meaning of any work is more than just textual; any given text’s meaning is shaped by its context. It is essential to make reference to the critical readings mentioned above in addition to any critical and literary work of your choosing.

In your introduction, you may want to discuss the importance of the historical context of your chosen work and the affiliations of the text in general; however, you should then zero in on how the meaning of your chosen work is specifically shaped by its context and its affiliations. How is a text affiliated to its context? How does the context of a work influence its meaning? Make sure you choose a work to which you can easily apply all the concepts discussed above.

A thesis statement and a proper logical presentation of ideas are necessary.