“The Willows” is a story of numinous awe, “The Call of Cthulhu” of existential dread, “The Voice in the Night” of visceral revulsion. Returning to Radcliffe’s distinction between terror and horror and to Poe’s emphasis on emotional effect, how do one or t
Paper details:
THE FINAL RESEARCH ESSAY
For the Final Research Essay (20%), write a 1750-2000 word essay on one of the topics below. Your essay should include:
• An introduction with a strong critical premise – an argument about the text.
• Well developed paragraphs using the claim, evidence, analysis structure.
• A conclusion.
• Two scholarly, peer-reviewed sources related to your topic (note: do not duplicate the arguments of these sources – see pages 65-80 of the textbook for details on how to use sources!), documented correctly using MLA 8th edition style, including parenthetical citations and a Works Cited. Make sure that your citations are properly formatted!
TOPICS
For the final research essay, you may write on any of the stories in the course, provided you have not already written a major assignment (the Close Reading Essay or Comparative Essay) on that source. So, for example, if you wrote your Close Reading Essay on “The Yellow Wallpaper” and your Comparative Essay on “The Voice in the Night” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” your Final Research Essay cannot deal with these stories.
1) “The Willows” is a story of numinous awe, “The Call of Cthulhu” of existential dread, “The Voice in the Night” of visceral revulsion. Returning to Radcliffe’s distinction between terror and horror and to Poe’s emphasis on emotional effect, how do one or two of the texts discussed evoke these particular emotional responses? To what greater purpose are such effects utilized? How do the emotional cores of these stories work to produce meaning?
