Paper Topics
Critical Research Paper
English 452/545

Directions: Choose one of the following topics for your critical research paper. Once you have selected a topic, please speak with me about it for suggestions about research sources and possible ways to approach the topic. You should email me your thesis statement before Thanksgiving. If you are developing an idea from one of your earlier papers, you should still speak with me before Thanksgiving so that I know what you are working on.


1) Narratives about narrative.

2) Sociability and the problem of manners.

3) The moral life as a threat to the social order.

4) Asceticism and its relationship to the erotic imagination.

5) High Realism and the problem of the non-symbolic.

6) Representing history in the novel.

7) Psychological fiction and social class.

8) Victorian fiction and infatuation with origins.

9) Fiction as critique of adulthood.

10) The child as fantasy object.

11) Darwinism and the problem of pity.

12) Gendering the intended audience for fiction (especially Jane Eyre and The Master of Ballantrae).

13) History as the story of loss.

14) Representation and the problem of closure in the novel.

15) Childhood sexuality and/or asexuality.


Return to English 452/545 Syllabus.