English Utopian Fiction

Possible Topics for Critical Research Paper - English Utopian Fiction

Topics:
Undergraduate students: Choose one of the topics listed.

Format and Research for English Utopia Fiction Research Paper:

1. The paper will require researching secondary materials and incorporating them into an analysis of the primary text or texts (e.g. Utopia by Sir Thomas More-Edited with an Introduction by David Harris Sacks, New Atlantis By Francis Bacon, New Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift).
2. MLA Documentation Style, 6th edition, is the required format. Format will be graded.
3. Secondary critical materials must originate in academic sources; some of your textbooks provide excellent bibliographies for reference.
4. Online sources such as Wikipedia are NOT acceptable for a formal academic critical paper.

Secondary Sources - English Utopia Fiction Research Paper:

1. Undergraduates: at least five secondary sources (this does not include the Primary text, though it should be listed on your bibliography or WC page).
2. Undergraduate students 8-10 pages ; The page count does not include the bibliography or Works Cited pages, so you should have a minimum of 8 pages (undergraduate) of text.
3. For your paper, you may choose to write on a single author or write a comparison-contrast of 2 authors.
4. Considering the length of this paper, it would not be conducive to a thorough analysis to write about more than 2 authors.

Topic for Utopia Paper:

Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendish, Jonathan Swift.
(Please choose two Authors).

1. The use of discourse to establish knowledge: theological, analytical-referential
2. The government of an ideal society
3. The issue of religion in an ideal society - compare/contrast
4. The difference of a female-authored utopia
5. The approach to warfare and political and social conflict
6. Construction of family unit and domestic affairs in the utopian ideal and how it reveals the position of the family in the author's society
7. The preservation of the class hierarchy and the purpose it allegedly serves in that society
8. The idea of property - communal, individually owned, etc.
9. The idea of authorship and its relation to creating new worlds
10. The representation of women and/or the construction of gender in the utopian narrative

The total number of Sources is two from the primary and five secondary.