English 200
Critical Essay
This semester you’ve studied character, plot, theme, setting, and other literary elements. You have designed projects for target audiences and read a diverse selection of children’s literature. Now you will synthesize your skills into a formal research paper. Your objective is to present a literary analysis of Cinderella in the Grimm’s fairy tale; a secondary objective it to connect the themes and other literary elements to the Movie, Maid in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez.
PURPOSE
• To analyze literature and to compare common elements in a text from a different genre
• To develop research questions and organize and write an essay in response
• To find, evaluate and integrate scholarly sources into an analytical essay
AUDIENCE
Academic—members of your English 200 class and others interested in children’s literature.
LENGTH AND FORMAT
➢ Your essay is worth 100 points-20% of your course grade
➢ 1,500-2,000 words: double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font, one-inch margins
➢ MLA-style format for in-text citations and a Works Cited page
➢ 3-4 outside sources, plus your Tatar text: all sources must be listed on your Works Cited
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1. Choose one modern story to use as a comparison text to the fairy tale that you are going to analyze. (My fairytale is Cinderella and my modern choice is Maid In Manhattan.) Remember the major themes for both
2. Choose an overall topic and a research question for your essay.
3. Break your research question into 4-5 points that you want to investigate for this paper.
4. Use the library databases to find at least three sources that you could use in your essay. Example: Proquest, JSTOR, Academic One File.
5. Note all bibliographic information for use in your final Works Cited.
6. Create an annotated bibliography for these sources.
Write your conclusion. You have analyzed an ancient text and applied your knowledge of literary elements to a modern text. How are the stories similar? Different? How are folk stories connected to stories of the 21st century?
I want the research question to be “What can Cinderella teach this generation”
I want it something like that if that is possible.
For class we used the book…The Annotated Brothers Grimm (The Bicentennial edition.)
