Annotated Bibliography Assignment: As I Lay Dying
- As I Lay Dying is a somewhat
difficult novel. This novel is set in the deep South in a fictional county
in Mississippi. The people and setting are quite different from that of
Hurston's novel. There are passages whose meaning is enigmatic, but that
we, as readers, cannot dismiss. The narrative structure is fragmented,
narrated by the family members and others. There are some questions about
that: Why does Darl narrate some scenes he could not have witnessed? Darl
narrates much more than anyone else. If Darl is as odd as the others say,
how reliable is his narration? What is the effect of a fragmented narrative?
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- Unlike the last assignment, you will be determining your
own topics for the annotated bibliography. Like last time, you need to
arrive at a research question to guide your inquiry, to compose
an introduction to your bibliography explaining the question and
issues you investigated. And you need to include six good sources.
The annotations need to relate closely to your research question.
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- Please avail yourself of the links to Faulkner sites
I provide on the research sources page of the
course site. They are excellent and provide lots of useful guidance, bibliographies,
maps. By now, you are familiar with the library databases and interface,
how to conduct limited searches, and should be developing skills in locating
sources in the library, critical reading of their arguments, and fair and
legitimate summary of the claims relevant to your inquiry. You are honing
your skills in the use of quotations and in MLA citation conventions. In
this assignment, you want to further practice these skills and move your
abilities up a notch.
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- Perhaps the greatest challenge will be to arrive at a
topic and from that, to formulate a question. I suggest doing some searches
to see what critics have written about. What are the critical issues? As
important, pay attention to your interests in deciding on a topic. Obviously
the theme of death and dying in AILD is important and there are possible
topics there. Use the MLA
database and any bibliographies you can find.
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- As with the Hurston assignment, it is important to share
sources, so I'd like you to e-mail the listserv (ENG307AR@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu)
and tell your mates what books and articles you have found.
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