English Cultural Artifact: Literary Analysis Paper
Attached here is an English paper on “Wuthering Heights and its Hellish Boundaries,” written by Erica Goldman during her freshman year while she was an English major. The paper involves literary analysis of boundaries and liminalities in Brontë’s novel, and the ways they may cause suffering. It employs credibility by referring to specific plot, image, and character details that evidence a close reading of the novel, as well as citing numerous quotes from the novel with page numbers and integrating them into the analysis.
Essentially, the student uses concrete evidence from the novel to support her opinions about Brontë’s possible intentions. She uses examples to demonstrate the plausibility of her ideas. Goldman’s arguments, for example that Wuthering Heights may warn readers against constructing boundaries around themselves, are also posed as hypotheses or possibilities to consider (“may,” “it seems as if”) rather than as definite claims. Finally, she links her own ideas about the novel to those in a critical essay, “Wuthering Heights: Repetition and the ‘Uncanny’,” written by an established scholar, as well as insight from an 1850 review of Wuthering Heights, near the time of its first publication.
When considering this cultural artifact alongside the Mechanical Engineering lab report, what seems to be apparent is that in Engineering, credibility relies on an objectively correct answer or workable design, whereas credibility in an English paper need not mean one “right” answer. Any number of opinions about a novel may be supported as long as the critic uses textual evidence and demonstrates plausibility in a thoughtful way. Literary criticism also involves taking the work and opinions of other scholars into account, but carefully giving them credit for their ideas.
Essentially, the student uses concrete evidence from the novel to support her opinions about Brontë’s possible intentions. She uses examples to demonstrate the plausibility of her ideas. Goldman’s arguments, for example that Wuthering Heights may warn readers against constructing boundaries around themselves, are also posed as hypotheses or possibilities to consider (“may,” “it seems as if”) rather than as definite claims. Finally, she links her own ideas about the novel to those in a critical essay, “Wuthering Heights: Repetition and the ‘Uncanny’,” written by an established scholar, as well as insight from an 1850 review of Wuthering Heights, near the time of its first publication.
When considering this cultural artifact alongside the Mechanical Engineering lab report, what seems to be apparent is that in Engineering, credibility relies on an objectively correct answer or workable design, whereas credibility in an English paper need not mean one “right” answer. Any number of opinions about a novel may be supported as long as the critic uses textual evidence and demonstrates plausibility in a thoughtful way. Literary criticism also involves taking the work and opinions of other scholars into account, but carefully giving them credit for their ideas.