English 425-020 - Chaucer
Summer II 1995 - Edwin Duncan

RESEARCH PAPER ASSIGNMENT

Assignment: Write an original research paper relating in some way to one or more of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. The topic must be selected and approved by the instructor no later than July 21. Changes in topics must be approved by July 28. Several sources both from books and periodicals should be consulted, and at least some sources should be relatively recent, i.e. from the eighties or nineties.

Length: 1600-2200 words of text.

Due Date: The beginning of class on Tuesday, August 8.

Format: The submitted copy must be typed, double-spaced, on 8 1/2" x 11" typing paper. Do not use onion-skin paper or erasable bond. Students using word processors should use character fonts with both capital and lower case letters, and dot-matrix printouts should be correspondence quality (i.e. double strike). Margins for text should be approximately 1«" on top and left sides and 1" on bottom and right. A cover sheet done according to suggested MLA guidelines should precede the paper. The sheets of the paper should be fastened with a staple or paper clip in the top left-hand corner; otherwise, one-third of a letter grade will be deducted from the overall grade for the paper. Do not put your completed paper in a folder or plastic cover, and do not include fly sheets (i.e. sheets with nothing on them).

Citations: Use the MLA (Modern Language Association) parenthetic documentation style instead of footnotes. Include a Works Cited sheet at the end of your paper. Details concerning MLA style can be found in The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (1984 or later) or in recent (1985 or later) handbooks of writing style.

Late Papers: One letter grade will be deducted for each class meeting that the paper is late.

Plagiarism: Failure to document sources properly will definitely hurt your grade and could result in a grade of F for the course.