Assignment: Genre and " The Yellow Wallpaper "

Purpose: The assignment ask students to perform a critical/in-depth reading of a given piece of fiction and organize it into an analytical essay that uses multiple scholarly sources. Student should follow standard formats for paper appearance, including regular MLA citation methods, and sentences should be mostly free from error.

Readings: from Backpack Literature

Charlotte Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Kennedy and Gioia, eds. Ch 29: "Writting about Literature"

Various articles from Legitimate sources

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL): Writing in Literature (including Critical Theory)

Topic: In this assignment, you will demonstrate your ability to make a literary argument using a combination of close reading and outside sources. You must research the "reception" of Gilman's story and identify at least two articles that interpret the story as an example of a type of "genre" of fiction. Your task is to argue in favor of reading the story from the point of view of a specific literary theory over a competing theory. Your interpretation will be supported by evidence derived from the story itself, as well as from outside articles obtained via the campus library.

Writing Task:

Write an argument for reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a certain genre of story and include an interpretation of the story from that perspective (i.e., what is the "meaning" of the story if it is told in that genre).

The most popular choices of genre for this story are: medical critique, psychological case study, ghotic above into some kind of hybrid genre, if you wish. You should use multiple exams and illustrations from the text to support your argument, and you may enhance the argument by using one or two scholarly sources as supplemental support. This paper should be at least 1250 words in length, with standard formatting and a complete Work Cited page.