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For this assignment, you must write on any one of the following topics:
Lewis and women/gender
Lewis’ religious beliefs
Tolkien’s depiction of women
Tolkien’s view of the environment/nature
Tolkien’s impact on modern pop culture (video games, movies, etc.)
Paganism/pagan influences in Tolkien’s work
Tolkien’s idea of myth/fairy stories
Your paper must be about 5-7 pages of double-spaced text (approximately 1250 – 1750 words), and you’ll need to use at least four scholarly sources (books and/or articles). PLEASE DON’T USE ANY OF THE ASSIGNED READINGS FOR OUR CLASSES AS SOURCES FOR YOUR PAPER. To find good scholarly sources (sources written by persons affiliated with a university), start by typing any of the above topics, or some variation thereof, in the MRU Library catalogue search engine. You can also sometimes find good information about these topics in several of the biographies that have been written on Lewis and Tolkien. As well, two of the MRU online books that many of the assigned readings for this course come from (Stuart D. Lee’s A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien and Shanna Caughey’s Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth, and Religion in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles) contain good articles pertaining to many of the above topics. Don’t under any circumstances use Wikipedia or some other encyclopaedia as a source, and don’t even look at amateurish or otherwise non-credible websites. Again, you must consult scholarly sources (again, sources written by persons affiliated with a university!).
Your paper should revolve around a central argument. It could be as simple as something like, “Although Lewis shared many of the patriarchal assumptions of his day, his view of women was actually quite progressive in some respects.” The argument must be clearly stated in your introductory paragraph, and the body of your paper should directly demonstrate the validity of your argument. A concluding paragraph should reiterate that argument and sum up how your paper’s main points supported it.
If the authors of your sources have different opinions or perspectives about your topic, great! Summarize their positions right at the beginning of your paper, then introduce your main argument and indicate how it is similar to, or different from, one of the positions in your sources. In the body of your paper, you could even try to refute the scholarly position(s) you disagree with!
For this assignment, you must use Chicago-style footnotes or endnotes to document your sources. You don’t need a footnote or endnote for factual information or “general knowledge” about Lewis or Tolkien such as the publication date of one of their books, but you will need footnotes or endnotes for specific information about your topic as well as any quotes you cite (again, don’t cite too many quotes!) and any ideas or interpretations you borrow from your sources. For this paper, you should probably have a total of 12-15 footnotes or endnotes.
In your footnotes or endnotes, it’s absolutely crucial that you have specific page numbers indicating exactly what pages you’re drawing information or taking quotes from in the sentence(s) leading up to your footnote or endnote number. So, for example, I want to see something like “p. 3” or “pp. 16-17.” Don’t, under any circumstances, put all the pages of a journal article or a book chapter in your footnotes or endnotes. Thus, I don’t want to see something like “pp. 4-29.” If a journal article you use doesn’t have any page numbers, include the relevant paragraph number in your footnote or endnote. For example, if you borrowed some

thing from the fourth paragraph in an article, write “para 4” where you would normally write the page number in a footnote/endnote
What I’ll look for when marking the research paper
Did you carefully follow the instructions for this assignment in the course syllabus? This is crucially important. If you do this, you should be fine; if you don’t, you’ll go off track.
Is your paper substantial? Super short papers (well under the five-page “minimum”) probably won’t get a good mark because they’re insufficiently developed or lack sufficient detail/analysis. So, shoot for the 5-7 page range, and if you want to go over that length, no problem.
Is your paper well researched? Are your sources scholarly (written by scholars)? And did you consult at least the minimum number of books and/or articles? If you consulted four good sources and effectively used them, it’s quite possible to get a really high mark, even an ‘A+’, but if you consulted more than four good sources, you’ll get a bit of extra credit.
Does your paper revolve around an argument (a thesis)? Is that argument clearly and explicitly stated in the introductory paragraph, supported throughout the body of the paper, and reiterated in the conclusion along with a summary of the main points you made to support the argument?
Did you grapple with a scholarly debate about your topic? If you see opposing opinions about your topic in your sources, summarize those opinions right at the beginning of your paper, and then introduce your main argument and indicate how it is similar to, or different from, one of the opinions in your sources. In the body of your paper you could even try to refute the scholarly opinion(s) you disagree with!
Did you polish your writing? Most students have no idea how important good writing is. A paper full of errors in grammar and punctuation and with awkward/imprecise phrases is hard to follow and unclear and thus is not a good paper. It’s as simple as that. On the other hand, good writing not only clearly expresses ideas but forces the writer to formulate clear ideas. Sometimes students write poorly because their ideas are mushy and vague! So, do your very, very best to hand in a well-written paper.
Did you cite too many quotations? This a common high-school problem. It involves putting a whole bunch of quotes in a paper for no good reason. Quotes should always be used very sparingly and judiciously — usually only if a person or your source said something in a particularly unique or interesting way. So, for this assignment, you probably should have no more than five or so quotes, and maybe fewer or even none. In other words, your paper must be entirely or almost entirely in your own words. A research paper is not a compilation of other people’s work or statements!
Did you properly document your sources with Chicago-style footnotes or endnotes? See the course syllabus for instructions on using footnotes/endnotes and for a link to find examples of them. Don’t forget: Footnotes/endnotes aren’t just to show where quotes came from; they’re also to show the exact page(s) you borrowed an idea or specific information from. Don’t worry too much about making small errors in your footnotes/endnotes (eg commas in wrong place), but don’t, under any circumstances, include all of the pages of a journal article in a footnote/endnote. And, of course, if you have no page numbers at all in a footnote/endnote, that’s just as bad. If, by chance, a journal article you use lacks page numbers, put the paragraph number (eg para 4) where you would otherwise put the page number.