Learning Goal: I’m working on a english question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.
-Prompt: Richard III displays a Machiavellian prince in action, in anarrative. Having read The Prince first, the logical way for us to read Richard IIIwas with Machiavellis book in mind, looking for ways that Richard himself (andother characters) follows or breaks the rules that Machiavelli lays out. In otherwords, the standard question here would be, How did your reading of ThePrince affect your understanding of Richard III? But lets consider this the otherway around. How did your careful reading of Richard III affect yourunderstanding of The Prince? Be specific in your answer.
-Paper must be typed/word-processed and double-spaced, employing a simple12-point font. The margins of your paper should be no more than 1 (top and bottom)and 1.25 (right and left). Please supply an appropriate title, and remember to includeyour name and the date at the top of the first page. There is no need for a cover page.Your paper should be no less than four full pages long and no more than five full pages long (somewhere between 1400 and 1800 words long.
-All quotations must be clearly identified; please use in-text parentheses for yourcitations. All citations of The Prince should be to the page number of the edition we areusing for this course. A simple reference such as (p. 45) is sufficient. For Richard III,you may cite the text either by page number (just as with The Prince) or by Act, scene,and line numbers: for example, 1.2.203208. Be consistent.
-I will provide the two readings as pdfs in the following links:
The Prince
Richard III
-Do not use, in any way, ChatGPT or any other AI service, in the writing of your paper.This paper should be your own work, from beginning to end.
-Some tips: -Dont waste space and effort summarizing the plot unless your point specificallyconcerns the order of events. Lengthy summary is almost always unnecessary; if youfind yourself describing the events of the poem for more than a couple of sentences,stop and revise. In any case, Im not going to fault you for not including enoughsummaryyou should assume that I know what happens in both texts. Summary,moreover, is not the same thing as analysis and argumentation; dont confuse the two.
-Dont unload a host of generalizations and unsubstantiated opinions onto the reader.You must support your arguments with specific evidence from the text. You might thinkof your paper as a kind of argument in court before a judge, who is of course interestedin evidence, not spin. You have a question youre trying to answer in this paper andyoure laying out the best case for your answer. Without supporting evidence for yourargument and a logical organization and presentation of your ideas, itll be difficult topersuade the judge (me!) that what youre arguing has merit.
-When you cite a text, the quotations function and purpose in your paper should beclear to your reader. Dont just jam together quotes without discussion of themthiscan easily turn your paper into a laundry list of quotations instead of the exposition ofyour own ideas. Always ask yourself why youre citing a particular passage, and be sureto make it clear to the reader why this particular quotation is important to yourargument.
Criteria: Paper will be evaluated according to six criteria: the overall strength of yourargument, mechanics (grammar and syntax), style, the strength of your introduction,the overall organization of your argument, and your use of evidence from the text. Eachof these criteria receives a separate score; your final score on the paper is an average ofall six of them.
