Assignment 1 | Assignment 2 | Assignment 3 | Assignment 4

Assignment 4

For this assignment, you have a choice of two projects:

  • Instead of focusing on one topic for Assignment 3, focus on three topics.
  • Write a traditional essay following the prompt below.

Write a traditional analysis of one of the literary works you have examined for your web-based projects. The essay should focus on themes, language, and symbolism, and you should interpret these features to arrive at a theory about the meaning of the text. However, you interpretation should also be informed by the evidence available in the manuscript and historical context. In effect, you should make a claim about the importance of the material or social dimension(s) you discuss.

Requirements:

  • Your essay should be approximately 5 pages typed andd ouble-spaced with 1-inch margins and pages numbered.
  • The essay should be properly formatted in MLA or another accepted style for literary ctiticism with your sources cited appropriately.
  • Provide a title that indicates something about your approach or argument.
  • Provide a bibliography at the end which indicates all the sources you have used.*

* Note: If you have used an article from a printed journal or a book which exists in print, cite it as a printed source, even if you have acquired the source online. Hence, if you read provided on the course web site or by Project Muse, cite the source as according to the method you would use for a printed text and provide the page numbers as they are printed in that version published in print. You only need to provide a URL for web sites (i.e. sources which cannot be found in print).

Due Date: Thursday, May 14 by noon. If I am not in my office (Sierra Tower 803), please slip your essay under my door. If you choose to do the extended version of Assignment 3, your assignment should be submitted to me electronically, as specified in that assignment.

Assignment 3

Click here.

Assignment 2

Choose one of the following texts:

  • Cædmon's Hymn
  • Beowulf
  • The Poems of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (some or all)
  • The Paris Psalter (all or parts thereof) -- see supplemental texts on the "Readings" page.
  • Sir Orfeo

Construct a web site in which you discuss the text's historical and material (manuscript) contexts. Your web site should include the following components:

  • A thumbnail image of at least one page of the manuscript for your text, linked to a full-sized image on another web site or on the CSUN server. See the notes below. Next to the thumbnail image, you should give information about the source of the image and the manuscript, listed by its library shelfmark.
  • A physical description of the manuscript, including its dimensions, condition, the kind of handwriting, any decoration, punctuation, and so on.
  • A physical description of the page(s) you have represented in your thumbnail(s).
  • An analysis of how the historical and material context of the manuscript influences your reading of the text. You may wish to focus on the section of the text found in the thumbnail image(s) in your web site.Your discussion should be the equivalent of about three to four letter-sized pages printed in 12-point font.
  • Your name, a statement that you are responsible for the content of the web page and that no one is to quote it or use your ideas without proper attribution, a statement that it is an assignment for our course, and a link to the course web site.
  • A paragraph or "to do list" stating what you would further if time allowed (see the other considerations below).

You may wish to do outside research, particularly for the historical context. All sources should be cited.

Other considerations:

  • Your web site must be coded in XHTML, not HTML, and you may not use Dreamweaver or any other program that does the coding for you. You may take coding from web sites you find online, but any copyrighted code must be acknowledged.
  • Your web site may contain more than one page, as you consider appropriate.
  • If more than one of you are doing the same text, you may collaborate (make it a group project), with each person exploring a different aspect of the text. If you wish to do this, please come and talk to me about your plans.
  • Although you should do some research for this assignment, you do not need to be exhaustive. Just place things you would like to do but can't in your "to do list". You will have the chance to develop your research/analysis further in future assignments.

Notes:

  1. There are many images of Cædmon's Hymn and the Chronicle poems on the course WebCT site. Please let me know if you need help obtaining copies. The WebCT cite also has discussions of these texts by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe. The Oviatt Library also has facsimiles (see the supplemental texts on the "Readings" page), and they will help you obtain images.
  2. To my knowledge, there are no images on the Paris Psalter (the Anglo-Saxon one, not the Byzantine one in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. gr. 139). However, the Oviatt Library possesses a facsimile (see the supplemental texts on the "Readings" page), and they will help you obtain images.
  3. Images of Beowulf online are limited to a few pages. If you wish to use others, you can go to the facsimile by Julius Zupitza. The library will help you obtain copies in digital forms.
  4. Images of Sir Orfeo may be hard to find, other than thos in the Auchinleck manuscript.

Your web page must be posted to your CSUN web account, and you must send me the URL by <to be determined>.

Assignment 1

Choose 1 of the following texts:

Write a web page in which you represent the text in digital format.

Your web page code must be written from scratch in XHTML without the aid of web authoring programs like Dreamweaver.

It should begin with the following Document Type Declaration (DTD):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The first line of the <head> element should be:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

For the purposes of this assignment, you only need to reproduce the text as it appears in a printed edition. Underneath the text, write a paragraph or two in which you discuss some issues you would consider in representing this text more thoroughly for literary study or other sorts of investigation. Use your insights from our discussions in class and you may wish to consult translations of the text to guide you. However, you should consider this just a dry run. Further assignments will allow you to do some research on texts and to put your ideas into practice.

Your web page must be posted to your CSUN web account, and you must send me the URL by March 10, 2009.

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