William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation

Passage analysis

Analyze a brief passage from one of the primary texts of the first three weeks of the course in 500-600 words (about two, double-spaced pages; the word count excludes your works cited).

William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation

Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature”

Hernan Cortes, 54-56

William Bradford & Edward Winslow, 71-75

John Smith, 81-99

Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative

Anne Bradstreet, “The Flesh and the Spirit,” “In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659,” “To My Dear Children”

John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”

Edward Taylor, “The Soul’s Groan,” “Christ’s Reply”

Chose a passage that embodies the style or themes of the work of the whole or which plays a vital part in the whole (e.g., “the city on a hill” in Winthrop).

Although the syllabus restricts you to “no more than four sentences,” I have lifted that restriction. Your passage should be up to one third of a page for prose and a quarter of a page or a single stanza for poetry. You may analyze one of the passages we discussed in class, but note that the rubric for this assignment limits your credit for repeating the analysis of class discussion. Include the passage in an appendix to your paper after your works cited page.

The length of your paper means you need to narrow your analysis. You may want to discuss meter, rhyme, and figurative language in a stanza from Taylor, for example, but you haven’t the room. Choose one of those literary features.

Steps
1. Select your passage with care. As above, it should strongly represent the whole in some way or should play some key part in the whole.
2. Print off the passage and mark it up by hand. This will force you to account for parts of the passage you might otherwise overlook. You’ll end up with more material than you can fit into your paper, but that’s fine.
3. Use resources at Norton’s Study Space and the Purdue Online Writing Lab to remind yourself of the obligations of literary analysis and the components of a clear, convincing argument.
4. Measure your draft by the rubric on the reverse. It’s the standard by which I’ll grade this paper.

MLA Formatting and Style Guide (Purdue Online Writing Lab):
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/