Thesis statement Step 1 Think of a broad

Thesis statement • Step #1 – Think of a broad subject and then narrow that subject into a more specific topic. E. g. I want to write about the subject of what skills a college student learns in college, and I want to focus on the skill of writing (topic). • Step #2 – Once the topic has been established, create a specific question that relates to the topic. E. g. Why is it important that college students learn how to write well? • Step #3 – Now, create an answer to the question above. E. g. Because writing is a skill that is required in most classes, college students need to learn how to write well in order to succeed academically. This answer becomes a potential working thesis statement for an essay. This exercise can be used to help create a thesis statement for any type of essay with any topic.

Ways to Revise Your Thesis Statement You can cut down on irrelevant aspects and revise your thesis by taking the following steps: • Pinpoint and replace all nonspecific words, such as people, everything, society, or life, with more precise words in order to reduce any vagueness. • Clarify ideas that need explanation by asking yourself questions that narrow your thesis. • Omit any general claims that are hard to support. Working thesis: Young people have to work hard to succeed in life. Revised thesis: Recent university graduates must have discipline and persistence in order to find and maintain a stable job in which they can use their talents and be appreciated for them. The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to work hard. The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what is suggested by success. By replacing those general words like people and work hard, the writer can better focus on his or her research and gain more direction in his or her writing.

Write a thesis statement for the following paragraphs: Nobody would doubt that Don Quixote is a classic (from Lat. classicus, ―belonging to the highest class). First released in 1605 and followed by a sequel in 1615, the book soon became popular in Spain and its colonies and translations followed almost immediately. But for a book (actually two books) published about five hundred years ago, Don Quixote is also a very ―modern text. In times of self-centredness, greed, corruption, political scandals and materialism, the protagonist‘s values stand as a cornerstone of fairness, honesty and justice, values that are closely sought for– but not always found in – our society.

Don Quixote could be read as a modern text with respect to the protagonist’s values which are aspired by the modern individual.

Teachers in the field of humanities must often defend the value of what they teach. Many challenge the inherent value of humanities subjects, usually based on subjective evaluations of the utilitarian purpose of the subjects studied. These challenges increase in number when the subject or literature in question is a new or popular form. That is, a Shakespeare scholar will have to do less defensive work than a Simpsonologist. There have certainly been negative reactions to my scholarship and to my classes on The Simpsons. However, given that the critically-acclaimed show, the first episode of which was released in 1989, is now older than most of my students, it has undeniably affected their world.

Despite the contemptuous view of teaching popular texts in class, some popular works, as in the case of The Simpsons, contain complex layers of meaning and therefore require a critical exploration to understand their influence on culture.

Jane Austen wrote her novels during the first decades of the 19 th century, when George III had been on the throne since 1760. He reigned until 1820; but for some of his reign, he was insane; so, his son, King George IV, was declared Prince Regent. Therefore, the period is known as the regency period which was the time that saw the end of the Agricultural Revolution and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was the period of the great estates owned by rich families, which were fictionalized as the backdrop of Austen’s novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma. The culture and imperialism was used as an approach in her novels, in which characters adjusted themselves into the roles of ‘mistress’ or the ‘gentlemen’ of the estates. She identified the internal structure of conflict over morality in which her sensibility could not deal with the issue of the “slave trade”, agriculture reformation that took place in the change of the new middle class. No longer deaf or blind to the reshaping of new Europe, Austen reflected “middle-class aristocracy’ or “pseudo-gentry’ raised through the colonialism and deep social transformation. Her novels offered a critique of racism, or any form of ethno-centricism or sexism in a complex criticism of the genteel society. She could not stay in a dead silence when slavery was spoken of, and the subject became central in a new understanding of what Europe was.

Jane Austen’s novels could be read as a criticism of imperialism and social change.

Philology was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as history, culture, art, and more. (from James Turner’s Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities)

As a field of study, philology comprises the study of the language of a particular country, within the context of that country’s literature, history, culture, and art.

J. R. R Tolkien was a philologist. While philology and linguistics are closely related, they are not the same. Some people mark philology as merely a subfield of linguistics, but philology is the study of language and its history within the context of literature and, by extension, culture. Tolkien’s specialty was Middle and Old English. He wrote what was for quite a while the definitive translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as an important reference work on Middle English vocabulary. His works in Old English are best exemplified by his Beowulf, which was only recently published, and thus was not widely known or influential, and his very well known, very influential essay on that work, «Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics» . He was also the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. Additionally, Tolkien has a fair legacy as the instructor and mentor of a whole host of English linguists and philologists. In sum, while he is certainly not a cult figure in linguistic circles the way Chomsky is, Tolkien was an important philologist, and is still a major figure in Middle and Old English philology, and the study, both from a literary and from a philological standpoint, of the Epic Beowulf.

Although Tolkien displayed a subtle understanding and knowledge of how the language works as much as a linguist, if not more, (as can be seen in his creation of languages such as Dwarfish, Elvish), he is mainly appreciated as a philologist rather than a linguist.

• Proper essays require a thesis statement to provide a specific focus and suggest how the essay will be organised. • A thesis statement is your interpretation of the subject, not the topic itself. • A strong thesis is specific, precise, forceful, confident, and is able to be demonstrated. • A strong thesis challenges readers with a point of view that can be debated and can be supported with evidence. • A weak thesis is simply a declaration of your topic or contains an obvious fact that cannot be argued. • Revise your thesis by ensuring all words are specific, all ideas are exact, and all verbs express action.

«A Society» , by Virginia Woolf, was published in 1921. By this time the writer had notoriously proved not only her well-known opposition to the recent Great War but also her outspoken criticism against the inferiority of women writers and artists. She was also well acquainted with both the ancient Greek language and literature, and she continually referred to them in her private diaries and letters, as well as in her novels, short-stories and essays. As a matter of fact, she had already had a review printed on a pro-suffrage adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1910) and had read and discussed the translation that her friend Roger Fry had prepared in 1918. The content of this paper is that «A Society» deploys the mechanisms and plots of famous Aristophanean comedies, such as Lysistrata and Women of the Assembly, in order to enhance its own utopian and critical message. Taking the genre of ancient comedy as a foil, the development of the story, from the comic idea to the various references to historical, as much as personal events acquires an enriched dimension that illustrates the writer’s learned and refined art of allusion.

Woolf’s «A Society» displays the author’s original and creative art of reception of the Greek classical comedy as a medium to critique the construction of gender roles in her society.

Katherine Mansfield’s «Bliss» , as many critics have pointed out, is somewhat superficial because of the actual events or occurrences narrated are so insignificant as to be almost trivial. The female protagonist Bertha is so simply depicted as to appear entirely devoid of any depth or personality. However, they only noticed the “surface” value of «Bliss» , and neglected the “deep” value of the tale. Aimed at readdressing that kind of bias, this essay tries to demonstrate how the delicately elusive surface of Mansfield’s short story «Bliss» only serves to hide more subversive themes and attitudes which show the author’s deep concern over historical as well as social issues. Under the delicate and light-hearted surface story of a day in Bertha Young’s life, the author includes more somber subtexts which question the heroine’s bliss. For all the heroine’s insistence on her happy state of mind, the story of «Bliss» is one of social and sexual alienation of women, of the ideology that silences women’s voices and represses their own desires.

Although the surface meaning of Mansfield’s story reveals a woman’s pursuit of happiness, the story in fact deals with the social and sexual alienation of women in a patriarchal society.

What’s wrong in these examples? «Pygmalion (1913), a play by George Bernard Shaw, looks at the superficiality of upper class society, a society in which social status is determined by the language that one speaks, one’s manners, and the clothes one wears. The play illustrates certain characteristics of class distinction which is represented by the characters, their situations, way of speaking, and manners. Thus, in this work, I am studying class distinction in Pygmalion because I studying because want to learn about Shaw’s socialist view in order to help my readers understand the artificiality of class distinctions better. »

There is a digression from the main topic. The essay is not about the «the artificiality of class distinctions» , it is how this is represented in Pygmalion (1913), a play by George Bernard Shaw, looks at the superficiality of upper class society, a society in which social status is determined by the language that one speaks, one’s manners, and the clothes one wears. The play illustrates certain characteristics of class distinction which is represented by the characters, their situations, way of speaking, and manners. Thus, in this work, I am studying class distinction in Pygmalion because I want to learn about Shaw’s socialist view in order to help my readers understand the artificiality of class distinctions better. Thus, this study aims to examine the representation of the power relations between the upper and lower classes in order to explore the ways in which Shaw critiques the artificiality of class distinctions in the play.

«This study aims to explain God Complex, a behavior disorder, on a cause and effect principle through its reflections in the protagonist doctor of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To this end, the defense mechanisms, which give rise to God Complex, are found out to be reflection and sublimation. As a result of this, the doctor, who suffers from narcissist personality disorder, has a God Complex. The reason which triggers all these behavior disorders is seen to be the struggle to survive against the fear of death. »

Descriptive, argument is not clear. This study aims to examine the representation of god complex through its reflections on the protagonist doctor of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and argue that the protagonist’s narcissistic personality disorder, a condition related to his god complex, could be seen as a way of mitigating the fear of death.

Descriptive, argument is not clear. This study aims to examine the representation of god complex through its reflections on the protagonist doctor of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and point out that the protagonist’s narcissistic personality disorder, a condition arguably related to his god complex, functions as the protagonist’s defense mechanism to suppress his fear of death.

Sample essay Marriage as a Dubious Goal in Mansfield Park Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park begins and ends with the topic of marriage. In this regard it seems to fit into the genre of the courtship novel, a form popular in the eighteenth century in which the plot is driven by the heroine’s difficulties in attracting an offer from the proper suitor. According to Katherine Sobba Green, the courtship novel “detailed a young woman’s entrance into society, the problems arising from that situation, her courtship, and finally her choice (almost always fortunate) among suitors” (2)¹. Often the heroine and her eventual husband are kept apart initially by misunderstanding, by the hero’s misguided attraction to another, by financial obstacles, or by family objections. The overcoming of these problems, with the marriage of the newly united couple, forms the happy ending anticipated by readers. Sometimes, as in a Shakespearean comedy, there are multiple marriages happily celebrated; this is the case, for example, in Austen’s own Pride and Prejudice. 1. See Green, especially 1 -7, and also Hinnant, for further description and discussion of the courtship novel. Green considers Mansfield Park a courtship novel, including it in a list of such novels in the period 1740 -1820 (163 -64). Further references to the novel will be given in brackets.

Despite the fact that Mansfield Park ends with the marriage of the heroine, Fanny Price, to the man whom she has set her heart on, her cousin Edmund Bertram, the novel expresses a strong degree of ambivalence toward the pursuit and achievement of marriage, especially for women. For Fanny, marriage may be a matter of the heart, but for other characters in the novel, marriage—or the desire for marriage—is precipitated by, among other things, vanity, financial considerations, boredom, the desire to “disoblige” one’s family (5) or simply to escape from it, and social and parental pressure to form a suitable match. Although readers are meant to understand that Fanny’s desire for Edmund is based not on financial ambition but on her “fond attachment” (75) to him, the narrator makes sure that we are also aware of the poverty that Fanny has escaped by being adopted into her uncle’s household as a child. When Fanny angers her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, by refusing an offer of marriage from the wealthy Henry Crawford, he sends her back to visit her struggling family in Portsmouth. It is plain to the reader, and seemingly to Fanny as well, that she faces a difficult, dreary, and perhaps dangerous life without either an advantageous match or the continued protection and support of her uncle, neither of which, at this moment in the plot, she can take for granted.

If marriage can have the effect of saving a woman from economic hardship, it also can have the opposite effect. The novel’s note of warning about marriage is sounded in the first few sentences, with the comparative history of the three Ward sisters of Huntingdon (Fanny Price’s two aunts and her mother), beginning about “thirty years ago, ” when the eldest sister, Maria, although possessing an income of “only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income” (5). From the beginning, readers learn the factors influencing the marriage market for the daughters of respectable country families in lateeighteenth-century England. A woman was expected to bring a dowry to a marriage—and the higher the better. As Elizabeth Bergen Brophy explains, “Depending on the circumstances dowries ranged from vast fortunes and estates—especially if the bride were the sole heir of the family—to a few hundred pounds (or less), enough to help the young couple stock a farm or set up as tradespeople” (99).

… In Mansfield Park, the plot propels the heroine, Fanny Price, toward marriage, even though the novel gives us glimpses of conjugal infelicity. Indeed, marriage is not always the most beneficial outcome for a woman in Jane Austen’s time. Even when infelicity in marriage was not the problem, «the prospect of constant childbearing could make marriage a dangerous choice for women» (Tomalin 205). At around the time that Austen wrote to Cassandra of the impending marriage of “poor Catherine, ” Jane and Cassandra’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Knight had just died, at the age of thirty-five, following the birth of her eleventh child.

Works Cited Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Edited by Kathryn Sutherland. Penguin Books, 2014. Brophy, Elizabeth Bergen. Women’s Lives and the Eighteenth-Century English Novel. U of South Florida P, 1991. Green, Katherine Sobba. The Courtship Novel 17401820: A Feminized Genre. UP of Kentucky, 1991. Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. Vintage, 1999.