Some suggestions to get you thinking as you work towards essay topics. You are, of course, responsible for the careful articulation of your own argument. Do not forget that the title of your essay constitutes an important part of the essay; the title should be carefully conceived so as to entitle your essay to the rich display already promised by the title. Suggestion 1) below could be applied to most of the works we have read, and illustrates how a topic idea can be developed; this example is followed by a couple of skeletal suggestions for topic consideration still in need of appropriate development, etc. Irrespective of your topic interests, responsibility for the fabrication of a cogent argument remains yours in any particular case. 1) Short version: write an essay on concealment / revelation in two of the works on our list; if necessary, use one as a foil, and concentrate on the other.Slightly more developed version:It seems to me that a fundamental contradiction — or perhaps it’s a paradox — always lurks at the very heart of fictional narrative: the narrative impulse towards disclosure (that allows the story to unfold in all its detail) conspires against the impulse towards concealment (that seeks to preserve some mystery and that keeps interest alive by promising more). Along similar lines, I would think one could say that in any text style and structure flirt with ideology, sometimes revealing and sometimes concealing (more or less consciously) the ideological issues they encounter along the way of their gradual revelation. In an essay that describes the differences in narrative structure between Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart, say, (other textual possibilities come to mind also), comment on the ways in which stylistic method in each of your chosen texts engages with ideological issues, paying particular attention to some of the more striking contradictions or paradoxes that emerge in the course of this engagement. Referring by way of concrete example to at least three of the works in this course and perhaps to Edgar Allan Poe’s “Importance of the Single Effect” (widely anthologizeditll be on the internet), write an essay on the function of literary titles and / or, the architectonics of narrative beginnings.
