Description: For your first essay, your job is to do a comparative analysis of how gender is represented in one of the selected pairings below. Each pairing gives you a poem and a song. In part, the idea here is to show how modern songs use poetic devices to achieve their effects. Choose from ONE the following pairings (you must write about both the poem and song in the pairing)
- Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror.” and Soccer Mommy’s “royal screw up.” Both song and poem involve females looking at themselves in mirrors and being critical of themselves. Both consider the ways in which femininity often involves self-criticism and particular views about what it means to be beautiful or appropriate. Also, anytime you have a woman looking into a mirror in the West, there is at least an implied, if not outright, allusion to Snow White (“Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all?” anyone?).
Alternative Pairings
Not Satisfied: Think my pairings suck? Want to choose some of your own or to exchange one of the poems or songs in the pairings above for one that you think will work better and/or be more compelling? I’m okay with that so long as your choices fulfill the following criteria:
- You MUST identify the new pairing when you choose your topic for this essay at the end of this module.
- Both the poem and song must be connected in some way, either by some aspect of their gender representation or something about the works that connects them. (Both works must have something insightful to say about gender.) If you just change one work—trade out the song, for example—the new entry must still have some connection with the remaining work.
- Both works must have a gender element in them. You must be able to say something about the gendered way in which they are constructed.
- Your works must have poetic elements—such as figurative language, vivid imagery, allusions, etc.–that need to be deciphered. (The goal of exchanging the works should not be to just make the assignment easier.)
Other considerations: I don’t think I have necessarily chosen the best pairings, and I would be happy to consider others. For example, I tried but could not find an effective pairing for a poem and song that comes from a gay perspective. The closest I came was attempting to pair Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 20” with Perfume Genius’s “Queen” but ultimately rejected it because I didn’t feel the Perfume Genius song could be analyzed by itself. (I thought it could have worked maybe with one or two other Perfume Genius songs included.) I also rejected the pairing of Rita Dove’s “I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land” and Kanye West’s “Wolves” because the second song might be especially offensive to some readers. (Although I thought the religious imagery in both would have made for an interesting comparison.) Finally, I rejected using Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 127” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Complexion,” both of which explore standards of beauty in relation to skin tone, but decided against these because some readers might find the song offensive. My point here (beyond sneaking in these pairings just in case someone might prefer them despite my misgivings about them), is that there are lots of ways that things can be paired. If you have an idea, run it by me at the end of this module. It’s your essay; you should be at least as invested in the interpretation as I am.
Assignment Goals
The goals of this assignment are:
- To help you better identify poetic elements such as allusion, personification, metaphor, and imagery.
- To enhance your knowledge of close-reading and observation in poetry.
- To use gender theory as a means of interpreting a literary text.
- To introduce you to writing about literature at a college level.
Further Guidelines
Guidelines: When you write your essay, be sure the final draft includes the following:
- An introduction that identifies and defines the unifying theme of the song and poem.
- A thesis that makes a claim about the way in which poem and song represent gender.
- Your essay should be clearly organized and do more than just summarize the song and poem or list the literary elements present in it. You need to show how the poem uses literary devices and connect this to how it constructs its gender representation.
- Topic sentences and transitions that clearly identify the main point of individual paragraphs.
- Support for your points in the form of clear and specific evidence from the song or poem you are using. This means you will use quotes effectively following MLA conventions.
- Include a Works Cited List that includes the song/poem and any secondary sources. (Secondary sources beyond those that I give you are not required but if you use them, you should cite them.)
Grading Criteria, Length and Due Dates
Grading Criteria: I will grade your essay according to its insight, clarity, logic, and attention to detail.
Length: Approximately 1800 words. (No less than 1500 words.)
Final Draft DUE DATE: Sunday, Oct. 1st at 9 p.m. in the “Essay 1 Dropbox.”