Paper details
Your midterm essay should use your critical theoretical lens to explore and analyze either TWO (2) poems
or ONE (1) short story from our textbook, and you should select something we’re NOT reading in class
together. If you’re selecting two poems, you should try to identify ones that are closely connected or allow
you to make a more focused argument about them in the paper.
Your paper should follow proper MLA guidelines for formatting and in-text citation, and should include a
Works Cited page that lists off your primary source(s) (the poems or short story) and at least 2-3 secondary
sources (research about your poems/short story, or research about your critical theoretical lens). The paper
should use direct quotes from all of your sources to help explain your analysis to the reader. You should
provide support for your theoretical approach, but you should not provide support that RESTATES OR
PARALLELS your analysis of the text itself. In other words, your analysis should be your own and as
original as possible, and secondary sources should be used only to provide details about the theoretical
approach as it applies to your text(s)
The paper should be at least 1250 words.
“The Peace of Wild Things 1968” and “Spring 1921”
the theory I am using is ecocriticism