- 24 Mar, 2021
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the curriculum at Brimmer
For the Major Author Study, once you have chosen an author, you need to read work by your
author, read some of the literary critics who have written about that author, form your own thesis
about the author’s comment on a particular theme, and then write a paper in which you argue for
your interpretation of the author’s idea on that theme.
You should choose a writer of poetry, fiction, or drama. You should choose a writer who is wellknown and respected, and you must choose an author about whom there is a reasonable body of
criticism to help you to situate your analysis within a larger, academic discussion. You should feel
free to choose an author you have read in the curriculum at Brimmer and May, but works that are
in our curriculum do not count for the purposes of this assignment. You may write about these
works, but must also address the requisite number of other works. Most importantly, you should
choose an author you like or who writes about a theme that interests you.
For this paper, you will use everything that you have learned about reading a literary text to build
your own argument about your author. In order to fulfill the requirements of this assignment, you
must:
• read two novels, a collection of poems (or a selection agreed upon with your teacher), a
collection of short stories (or a selection agreed upon with your teacher), or an equivalent;
• cite in your paper two scholarly secondary sources and situate your own argument
within that context;
• clearly identify a theme that is common to several works and discuss the author’s
comment on that theme.