ENG 380 Week 2 Critical Analysis of a Scholarly Article

Critical Analysis of a Scholarly Article. Locate a scholarly article which you think could contribute to the development of your final paper. The article may reinforce your own understandings of the work(s), it may stand in complete opposition to your interpretations, or it may both share commonalities and be distinct from your own views of the literary work(s).

The purpose of this exercise is to help you critically analyze the scholarly article, to determine how the article relates (or not) to your own thesis, and to decide whether and/or how you will use the article to strengthen your own paper.

Consider this assignment as an opportunity to explore and to think through your evaluative and interpretive process. After locating the article and determining that you believe it could be of use to you in your analysis, write a paper which addresses the following tasks and questions.

1. Provide the full APA citation for the article.
2. What was the article’s argument? Did the thesis answer the question? In other words, did the thesis address a
   larger significance to itself (e.g., address a serious social or political concern; reflect on, for example, human
   nature, human relationships, or society)?
3. Did you find the argument convincing? Why or why not?
4. What assumptions did the author make in the article?
5. What literary or critical approaches did the paper use? Were these approaches appropriate and well-founded?
   Why or why not?
6. Would a discussion of the article contribute to your paper? If so, how? When addressing this question,
   consider how, if incorporating this source into your paper, you would relate it to your thesis.
7. Given the relationship between your thesis and that of this source, what explicit connections (or
   disconnections) would you need to make between your work and the article? How would you introduce the article, while still placing at center stage your thesis? Identify a specific point(s) in your paper where discussion of the article would be beneficial.