Introduction to English Studies

Essay #1: Formalist Explication of Dracula

Length:       5 pages (approximately 1,250 words). Essays must be typed and stapled. 

Citations     Please indicate, beneath the title of your essay, the borders of the passage by referring to a couple words at the beginning and the end, e.g. “My patient being asleep . . . for you both” (118). If you are not using the edition that I have ordered for class, you must attach a photocopy of the passage. Use MLA style of page citation and include a Works Cited list.

            In this essay, your objective is to show how a short passage from Dracula develops a central theme of the novel in particularly interesting ways. Your essay should clearly articulate the theme that you perceive at work in the passage and illuminate how the passage develops that theme through literary interpretation.

            The selection of the passage represents an important part of this assignment. Avoiding those sections of the novel that we have discussed in class, choose one (not longer than a single page) that provides a rich source of diction and figurative language for you to interpret. If you are uncertain about whether or not such a passage would work, please ask me. Show that you appreciate the subtlety and complexity of the novel’s language by explicating the metaphors, symbols, images, and the meanings and connotations of words.

            Remember that this interpretation should, throughout your essay, support a specific claim about a particular theme or idea at work in the passage. A theme is a relatively complete idea, one of the messages that the work communicates. It requires a complete sentence to articulate. It would be insufficient to say that the theme of the novel is “vampirism,” for example. Try not to shoehorn your interpretation into one of the themes we have discussed in class. Let the passage dictate the idea that you find in it.

            The most successful explications offer a compelling organization. You might, for example, have one paragraph on the meanings and connotations of a group of similar words that appear in different places in the passage, another on a pattern of imagery that runs through it, another on the narrator’s tone, another on significant metaphors, another on symbolism, etc. I suggest that you use the OED (available on the library list of online databases) to help you establish the meanings and bring out the “color” of words.

            Do not consult other critics. Put your effort into developing your own interpretation.