Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.
What it is: The research paper is an argumentative paper with support from other writers. Your argument, or thesis, will be your own idea about at least the play Antigone by Sophocles. In other words, you will express your opinion, and then defend that idea by quoting, paraphrasing, and/or summarizing the literary work (primary source) and the work of later scholars who have written about the same works and whose opinions match, complement, or contrast with your own (secondary sources).
Why it matters: This paper is worth 30% of your grade. Learning to argue with the help of other scholars is critical for several reasons; it gives experience in joining a community of learners, it teaches us how to give ethical credit to others, and it helps us develop our own minds and distinguish our original thoughts from those of others.
What I can write about:
tl;dr: Your required primary text is Antigone by Sophocles. You may argue anything you like about it, as long as you write about and research this text.
You should be writing about at least the play Antigone; you may also add further literary works from the anthology or from elsewhere (these would become additional primary texts). Our course texts already contain a number of excellent articles about Antigone, and the play itself is enormously rich. You are welcome to write about any of the numerous issues that the play raises—heroism, anarchy vs. state control, women’s roles in the classical world, religion and family vs. public duty, the glories and limits of human achievement, the possibility of achieving true wisdom, and many more. You may also want to add a secondary lens or concept from the present day (e.g., Antigone and contemporary protest movements; Antigone, anarchists, and Antifa; Antigone and the various protest movements organized around public health measures; comparing the character of Antigone to other young women who have played rebel/activist roles, like Joan of Arc, Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Anna Kwok, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya etc.); if you choose this route, your secondary sources can include research on the present-day topic. You may also write about Antigone in connection with another text (or texts) from the course, or in conversation with another serious creative work in which you find similar themes or concerns. You are welcome to compare it to another play (let me know if you would like links to further plays by Sophocles, from ancient Greece, etc., or look to other playwrights like Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, etc.), a novel, a short story, a poem or several poems, a film, a song or album, a work of visual art, etc. There are rewrites of the play itself, by Jean Anouilh and Bertolt Brecht, and several film adaptations, but you can choose anything in which you notice similar themes, characters, situations, etc. In this case, some of your minimum of five sources would concern the additional work, while some will concern Antigone. In any case, most of your sources should be about Antigone; do not let your works cited be taken over by sources about some other text or topic.
You must have five secondary sources for this paper; this does not include the primary text (Antigone) or any other primary texts you use, but you still must list primary texts on the works cited page. In other words, with primary and secondary sources, you will have a minimum of six entries in your works cited page. You may also use any of the articles posted to D2L as secondary sources, although I want you to be sure to find at least two of your minimum of five from the TC library (online or in print). All five secondary sources must be from the class D2L collection OR from library databases/print collections.
Specifications and tips:
Length: the paper should be a minimum of 1100 words in length, exclusive of works cited.
Works Cited: the works cited page is a list of all works you actually cite (remember, you cite any work that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized). There should be at least six sources (five secondary sources + primary text) on your works cited page. You should alphabetize your entries by the author’s last name and use hanging indents to format the list. Do not use numbers when listing sources.
Dimensions: use a standard 12-point serif font such as Times New Roman, Palatino, or Garamond. Set all document margins to one inch. These will often not be the default settings, so check carefully.
MLA: your paper needs a proper heading (on the first page only), your last name in the top right header, and page numbers in the top right corner. Do not write a separate heading for the works cited page; simply start a new page and label it “works cited.”
Parenthetical citations: use parenthetical citations when you quote, summarize, or make use of verifiable data. If you use an idea from another author, it must be cited, even if you have not quoted the author. Use the standard parenthetical without commas, the abbreviation “p.” or anything besides the author’s last name and the page number or line number (Author 55). Failure to cite is the most common reason why students fail Composition II, except for nonsubmission of major assignments.
Block quotes: if your quote runs over four lines of text, you should reformat it to a block quote. These are indented one inch, do not include punctuation marks, and are followed by a parenthetical citation after the period.
A good rule of thumb is to use frequent, precise, and relatively brief quotations to support your point. Do not let any paragraph be composed of >50% quoted material; try to ensure that the paper is populated with regular quotation, but without allowing chunks of quotation to exceed 30% of the total word count. Quoted material supports your writing, but does not replace it.
Grammar and punctuation: I expect this paper to be polished and professional. This means no comma splices, no sentence fragments, no failures of parallelism, no awkwardly incorporated quotes, and especially no spelling errors or typos. You are responsible for checking your own style, even if a peer reviewer does not catch the issues with your paper.
Plagiarism: when you submit your paper to Dropbox, it will be automatically submitted to Turnitin.com; I will evaluate every Turnitin originality report to ensure that you have been treated fairly. Remember that plagiarizing any of your research paper will result in automatic failure of the paper, without exception. All you need to do to avoid plagiarism is to use parenthetical citations (Author’s Last Name, page or line number) any time you use or refer to a source in any way, and quotation marks (“”) whenever you use exact words.
Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.