Megan Cooke
English and Media Specialist
ENGLISH WORK
Below, you can find examples of my essays and research projects based on different English Literature classics, as well as contemporary literature based on a range of different topics and genres. My main interest within literature surrounds the representation of gender which is evident in my work. I enjoy researching and studying literature as it improves my literary skills for the future.
To what extent can theories of the Gaze be applied to critical readings of film? Discuss with reference to the cinema of two or more of the directors whose work has been studied on this module.
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ESSAY
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ESSAY
Discuss how masculinity and/or femininity are connected to issues of race and/ or class in two texts studied on the module.
This essay was completed during the course of my gender, sex and culture class in the English section of my degree. The text considers the cultural positions of women and gender roles in regards to other societal issues which also affect a woman's experience in society. The text considers other factors that contribute to the oppression of women in society and different authors responses to this.
An essay concerning the narrative structure in relevance to the plot in accordance to Bordwell's comment.
‘…classical omnipresence makes the cognitive schema we call “the camera” into an ideal invisible observer, freed from the contingencies of space and time but discreetly confining itself to codified patterns for the sake of story intelligibility.’ (David Bordwell, Narrative in the Fiction Film, 2008, p.161) Does this description of narrative form apply to films studied on this module? Discuss in terms of key similarities and differences among these films.
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ESSAY
This assignment was completed during the course of my film class as an English module and focused on how Laura Mulvey's Gaze Theory could applied to narrative devices of the films studied on this module. It considers how the directors have embedded ideas of women and gender roles into the structure of a film.
Explore how the representation of women in Gothic texts has been influenced by their historical position.
This essay focuses on how the role of women in different time periods affected how they were represented in literature. This essay does this with a focus on the gothic genre as I argue how the gothic genre provides escapism. Authors can transgress roles of women or reinforce women's struggle and identify the problems of gender roles within the time they were writing. This essay also gives a brief history of the gothic genre in literature and how it originated.
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Oppression of women in poetry
This is an anthology of annotated poems which relate to the topic of the oppression women. Each poet reflects their view of the oppression of women in the society of which they were writing or experience of their own oppression. The annotations identify the poetic devices used which relate to this topic. The annotations also analyse the metaphors used within the poem and how this relates to the authors experience.
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Comparative poetry
This is a comparative poetry essay which discusses William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 and John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. The essay compares the themes, structure, devices and meanings of the two poems using academic sources to support my annotations and interpretations. This essay argues how the structure and linguistics within the poems relate to the major themes identified: life, death and love.
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Comparative prose
This essay discusses the topic of secrets and secrecy within three novels and how this contributes to the storyline, as well as how the different authors use this topic in different ways in order to address different social contexts. The essay focuses on the novels Affinity by Sarah Waters, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.