Paper topics for English Lit

[Mercutio]

Any ideas? I need a topic for my term paper in English (British) Literature. I like things that are religious in some way...but that's not a must.

My brother wrote on imagery in some of T.S. Eliot's poetry back when he took this class.

I was thinking about comparing Dorothy Sayer's and Agatha Christie's writing styles in their murder mysteries (the Lord Peter and Poirot ones). They both lived and published at the same time. Their style's are pretty different, I think. Could I find enough info for this topic? I am kind of at a loss for other ideas right now. My mom suggested Pilgrim's Progress: not the basic blatant imagery, but how it ties in with the ideas of the Protestant Reformation and such.

Btw, last year (in American Lit) I wrote about the treatment of the church in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

[inked]

Dorothy L. Sayers is an excellent choice for British literature. If you have read her novels and Agatha Christie's, you could make the comparison in the specific realms of characterization, settings, and relationships. But you might prefer to stick to one and not try all. There are some excellent web sites if you search under her name. Do NOT forget that she produced an excellent translation of Dante's DIVINE COMEDY. She was also one of the first women to graduate OXFORD.

[Beren3000]

How about comparing the Sil. (modern english "mythology") to Beowulf?

[Mercutio]

Originally Posted by inked

Dorothy L. Sayers is an excellent choice for British literature. If you have read her novels and Agatha Christie's, you could make the comparison in the specific realms of characterization, settings, and relationships. But you might prefer to stick to one and not try all. There are some excellent web sites if you search under her name. Do NOT forget that she produced an excellent translation of Dante's DIVINE COMEDY. She was also one of the first women to graduate OXFORD.

not Shrewsbury, was it?

Yeppers. I've read all of Sayer's novels and short stories (many times ) and some of Christie's.
It seems like Christie's are just who-dun-its. Sayers has much more character development, underlying themes, etc. The mystery itself sometimes becomes merely a backdrop for everything else.

Originally Posted by Beren3000

How about comparing the Sil. (modern english "mythology") to Beowulf?

Hmm...I hadn't thought of anything like that...Oh wait: on a list of possible topics my teacher had Tolkien's use Beowulf. Thanks Beren.


p.s. yes I know that Shrewsbury doesn't actually exist, lol

[inked]

Ah, Mercutio, a true Sayers afficianado! I am most delighted. Then you could consider the role of the Church of E in the novels and see how DLS depicts clergymen as a topic. Since her Father was a priest in CoE, her comportment in that literary department would be instructive and entertaining I think! If you should do DLS as a topic I should like to read it, if you would not mind!

[Mercutio]

Originally Posted by inked

Ah, Mercutio, a true Sayers afficianado! I am most delighted. Then you could consider the role of the Church of E in the novels and see how DLS depicts clergymen as a topic. Since her Father was a priest in CoE, her comportment in that literary department would be instructive and entertaining I think! If you should do DLS as a topic I should like to read it, if you would not mind!

Brings to mind "The Nine Tailors," and Fenchurch St. Paul (I believe?--I haven't read that one in a while). I think it was one of the best. 3 of her books are based on a lot of info from her life: Murder Must Advertise (she worked in an ad agency for a spell), Nine Tailors (life growing up where her father was a vicar) and Gaudy Night (women's college at Oxford).

I'm looking up books on the university website right now about Sayers/Christie.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by inked

Ah, Mercutio, a true Sayers afficianado! I am most delighted. Then you could consider the role of the Church of E in the novels and see how DLS depicts clergymen as a topic. Since her Father was a priest in CoE, her comportment in that literary department would be instructive and entertaining I think! If you should do DLS as a topic I should like to read it, if you would not mind!

AH, THe Nine Tailors!! Remains one of my fav Whimsey novels!

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

not Shrewsbury, was it?

Hmm...I hadn't thought of anything like that...Oh wait: on a list of possible topics my teacher had Tolkien's use Beowulf. Thanks Beren.

What a good teacher you must have!

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

Brings to mind "The Nine Tailors," and Fenchurch St. Paul (I believe?--I haven't read that one in a while). I think it was one of the best. 3 of her books are based on a lot of info from her life: Murder Must Advertise (she worked in an ad agency for a spell), Nine Tailors (life growing up where her father was a vicar) and Gaudy Night (women's college at Oxford).

I'm looking up books on the university website right now about Sayers/Christie.

YOu could do a history of the genre, from Doyle and Wilkie Collins to the heyday of CHristie, Sayers, and Allingham.

[Mercutio]

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

What a good teacher you must have!

Yep he's wonderful.

One of my friends is doing his paper on Tolkien & Beowulf.

[Mercutio]

Inked/Forkbeard--interested in reading my paper? It's in the final stages of revision right now . I'll post it later tonight (probably). Any suggestions you'd have would be helpful.

[inked]

I would be honored Mercutio! I'm working up the notes for a Confirmation class and would appreciate a thoughtful Tolkien break and to help out!

[Mercutio]

I need a title now...here's my first paragraph:

Writing during the Golden Age of detective fiction, British authors Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie had some similarities but many differences on matters of style, plot, character development, and theme. Sayers’s style is considered more literary, her characters are more human, she has less emphasis on detection and more emphasis on character development in her plots, and her themes are deeper. On the other hand, Christie’s writings are whodunits and usually nothing more. Her whodunits are, however, thoroughly ingenious (ranging from simple to complex) though her characters rarely change in nature from one book to the next and her works are quite limited in theme.

[Mercutio]

Note the lack of a title and conclusion sentence! (I also left out the works cited page, assuming you didn't want to read publishing info.).

Any suggestions are welcome.

Btw, the spacing gets kind of messed up; I tried to fix it the best I could.
It's also easier to read when double spaced.

An Astonishingly Brilliant Title

Writing during the Golden Age of detective fiction, British authors Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie had some similarities but many differences on matters of style, plot, character development, and theme. Sayers’s style is considered more literary, her characters are more human, she has less emphasis on detection and more emphasis on character development in her plots, and her themes are deeper. On the other hand, Christie’s writings are whodunits and usually nothing more. Her whodunits are, however, thoroughly ingenious (ranging from simple to complex) though her characters rarely change in nature from one book to the next and her works are quite limited in theme.

Agatha Christie, the “Queen of Crime,” published her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920. In it, she introduced her major series character, Hercule Poirot. Since that time, Christie has risen to become the second most printed author in English, only following Shakespeare (Maida 1). In general, Christie’s writings were limited to detection. She published 60 novels, approximately 150 short stories, and six plays (as well as stage adaptations of novels) in the detective genre. Outside of this, she wrote six psychological romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, the nonfiction book Come, Tell Me How You Live, two volumes of poetry, a children’s story, and an autobiography (Bunson).

In 1923, Dorothy Sayers published her first detective novel, Whose Body, featuring Peter Wimsey. She wrote fewer detective works than Christie: only 12 novels and four collections of short stories, in addition to editing a three-part anthology, The Omnibus of Crime. However, after 1936, Sayers moved on to write religious plays (for example, The Man Born to be King and The Zeal of Thy House), theology (The Mind of the Maker), many essays on topics such as Christian apologetics (in volumes like Creed or Chaos? and Unpopular Opinions), poetry, and literary criticism. In addition, she completed translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy and The Song of Roland (Fitzgibbon 9, Reynolds ix, and Herbert 171-72).

The “Golden Age” of detection, of which Christie and Sayers were major parts, was primarily British and spanned the two World Wars. It involved a style of detective writing closer to “literature,” the rise of detective novels as intellectual puzzles, the development of rules of fair play, and the use of motivation, in addition to method and opportunity, in solving crimes. Both Christie and Sayers were members of the Detection Club, which was started in 1928 and included G.K. Chesterton (Durkin 21). One of the club’s major purposes was to encourage the rules of fair play. The oath administered to new members of the club included, “Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them…not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God?” (Dubose 73). Christie and Sayers generally followed all the rules of fair play, including that all facts and clues be made known to the reader and all possible suspects be introduced early in the plot.

The construction of Christie’s and Sayers’s plots varied. Christie is unsurpassed for ingenuity in plotting. One of her great strengths is deliberate though fair misdirection. She is a “master at manipulating the rules of the game or conventions of the genre, generally laying clues before her readers’ eyes while guiding their scrutiny in the wrong direction.” She has been accused of cheating in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for the narrator is the murderer. But to the contrary, throughout the entire novel the narrator is just as geniune a suspect as anyone else; it is the uncareful reader who merely glances over his motive, method, and opportunity. Another ingenious novel is Murder on the Orient Express. The events surrounding the murder take place on a stranded train in a closed car; the murderer therefore must be one of the passengers. No clue, however, points to one specific person aboard; everyone has a motive. Eventually we discover that the passengers all took part in killing the victim. It was a group execution, for the victim had pulled off an infamous kidnapping back in the United States and escaped to Europe, outside the reach of the formal law. H.R.F. Keating wrote in his article of Christie that “her prime virtue is unoriginality in everything bar plot. But hers is an unoriginality presented always with exceptional rightness” (206). In contrast, Sayers’s plots were sometimes traditional but othertimes extraordinary.

to be continued...

[Mercutio]

EDITY EDITY EDITY: APPARENTLY THIS IS MY 1000th POST!!!
(the numbers were screwed up and finally fixed, only the fixing jumped it past #1000.). I'll post in Teacup to celebrate!

Sayers’s first four novels employed some of the standard conventions of the detective genre in her day: murder without a trace of the victim (Whose Body?), murder in which time of death and alibi are central (Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club), murder by unusual means (Unnatural Death), and country-house mystery (Clouds of Witness) (Kenney 47-48). Critics believe some of her plots were too ingenious—that the murder methods would not actually work (Herbert 172). This particularly applies to Unnatural Death, in which the victim is killed when air is injected into her vein with a hypodermic needle, blocking circulation. Sayers’s novel Strong Poison, introduces a new character into her novels about ameteur detective Peter Wimsey—detective novelist Harriet Vane. In Strong Poison, Vane has been accused of murdering her ex-lover Phillip Boyes; only Wimsey believes in her innocence and finally proves it. When introducing Vane, Sayers’s intent was to marry Wimsey off and end the novels. She kept them for three more novels and two short stories, however, partly because feminist and intellectual Vane would not be that quick to accept Wimsey. Secondly, through Vane, Sayers was able to write about issues concerning herself: character, integrity, academic life (as a woman at Oxford), and thwarted love. Vane also inspired further development of Wimsey’s own character (Herbert 200-201). In addition to Strong Poison, the Wimsey-Vane plot is detailed in Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night (where Vane and Oxford, rather than the crime, dominate the story), and Busman’s Honeymoon, as well as in two short stories.

In comparison to Christie, “of all detective novelists, [Sayers] is perhaps the most reread. This suggests that the murder method and the solving of the mystery are the least important elements in her work” (Hannay 172). Sayers’s novels are more than whodunits. Instead, many offer critiques of modern culture such as Whose Body? (examining the role of science in modern day life), Clouds of Witness (the place of English law and the House of Lords), and Unnatural Death and Gaudy Night (the changing staus of women in society). The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club includes bits of satire on modern biology and postwar nihilism (Hannay 16). Also, Sayers constructs in all her books believable settings (in England) and realistic scenes; Murder Must Advertise skillfully illustrates the workings of a London adverstising agency; Gaudy Night portrays college governance and academic life for women at Oxford; postwar English life is described in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. The Nine Tailors which depicts life in the small parish of Fenchurch St. Paul in remote England is more than an admirable mystery story. With it, Sayers “created a novel in its truest form, set in a sympathetic and persasive community peopled by characters possessing the range of absorbing human qualities;” “the minor character sketches are among the best she ever did” (McGregor 153, Reynolds 239). For example, there is the lovable Mr. Venables, rector of St. Paul’s, and his wife Agnes:
Mrs. Venables, a plump and placid figure in the lamplight from the open door, received the invasion with competent tranquility.…
“Agnes, my dear, have you explained to Emily that Lord Peter will be staying the night?”
“That will be all right,” said Mrs. Venables, soothingly. “I do hope, Theodore, that you have not caught cold.”
“No, no, my dear. I have been well wrapped up. Dear me, yes! Ha! What do I see? Muffins?”
“I was just wishing for muffins,” said Wimsey….
Wimsey gratefully took in the cosy sitting-room, with its little tables crowded with ornaments, its fire roaring behind a chaste canopy of velvet overmantel, and the silver-tea-vessel winking upon the polished tray. “I feel like Ulysses, come to port after much storm and peril.” (Nine Tailors 8-9)

Sayers’s writing style has been called “too literary” to belong in the detective genre and “intellectually resourceful and highly refined” (Herbert 172, Benstock 18). Sayers approach to detective fiction can be seen in Gaudy Night, where Wimsey challenges Vane (also detective novelist) to give her characters emotional complexity and make the hero real. Vane answers, “Yes—he’d be interesting. But if I give Wilfrid all those violent and lifelike feelings, he’ll throw the whole book out of balance.” To this Wimsey responds, “You would have to abandon the jigsaw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.” Wimsey reflects Sayers position on the subject (322).

Sayers’s and Christie’s characterization and character development were very much different. Sayers was brilliant at creating characters that were completely human. She believed that “not ingenious problem-solving, not arduous legwork, but rather the presentation of the character” was what made a detective good (Slung 949). Sayers’s characters read what she read, quoted poets she knew, and enjoyed the same music. This “vivid conviction of fact,” as she called it, induced the reader to accept the imaginary (Herbert 172). Sayers’s major series detective, Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, combined the characteristics of fellow writer E.C. Bentley’s Philip Trent, as well as P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. Sayers gives him an amateur attitude; in The Nine Tailors, he “has reached within himself and found the capacity to be a truly decent human being”—he aquired a soul (McGregor 117). Unlike other serial detectives such as Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Wimsey develops and matures throughout the novels (DuBose 198). In Poirot’s final cases, Christie describes his aging; in Curtain, Poirot actually dies. In contrast, Sayers created characters (including Lord Peter) who remain immortal. None of the Wimsey novels or stories portray a decline or weakening in any way.

Sayers once said of Christie, “to compel belief in her characters [is] the great gift that distinguishes the novelist from the manufacturer of plots.” She noted that Christie created such characters “at the top of her form” but that this quality faded through her career (Kenney 47). Christie herself believed that her own works were merely puzzles told in the form of stories (Benstock 4). She left the characters mainly up to the imagination of the reader.

The biggest theme present in Christie’s works is protection of the innocent. Christie maintained that “It is innocence that matters; not guilt.” She states, “[I] am full of a delighted triumph when I have delivered a near-victim [wrongly accused suspect] out of the valley of the shadow of death” (Dubose 157-158). As previously stated, Sayers’s themes include indepth looks at social insitutions and society in novels like Gaudy Night. All her books, though, incoporate the theme of bringing the guilty to justice. In her first four novels, Sayers often uses extralegal means like suicide or accidental death to kill criminals who otherwise might not get the appropriate punishment. Almost all of the criminals in her novels are punished or at least apprehended with no doubt of conviction (Hannay 1-2).

Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers emphasized different aspects of the detective novel. Christie focused on the whodunit and the cleverly contrived plot. Sayers did the same in her first novels, however in later ones (such as Gaudy Night and The Nine Tailors) she used the mystery as a backdrop. In these, her real story involved the lives of the characters like the endearing Mr. Venables or the intellectual Harriet Vane. Sayers novels may have been more complex, however ______________ ?

NOTE: There are already some tiny grammatical fixes and un-confuse-ness-ed done to it since this posting.

[inked]

suggested title: Suspect Ladies, Golden Fingers
Golden Ladies Finger Suspects

suggested closure: While both authors were doyens of crime, I contend that DL Sayers achieved the most dramatic and realistic portraiture of humans caught in the web of life, crime, deceit, and experience. She is read over and over again for her characters and assessments of life. Agatha Christie is, on her own admission, a wildly successful puzzle maker who entertains, but does not contemplate the vast and perilous estates which humans inhabit physically, emotionally, psychologically, morally, or spiritually. Ms Sayers is, IMHO, the compleat novelist, whereas Ms. Christie is the authoress of detective fiction. Both at the top of the form, the golden age of detection authoresses who fingered and collared the gold hidden in life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An excellent paper, Mercutio. Obviously well-researched and nicely constructed. The ides flow logically and connectedly without gaps or rough water! If my conclusions are what you intended, representing what I understand your major premises and drive towards, then YOU DID IT!
I think particularly the demarcation of the detective fiction versus the detective NOVEL is exceedingly well constructed and argued. Out of a possible NINE TAILORS, I award you NINE!

[Mercutio]

You're conclusion is similar to mine.

There are a few changes I made (other than typo corrections) to what's above. For a title I did something like

Queens of Crime: Differences in the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie

[inked]

An excelling title, I think! Would you post your final conclusion, or did you edit above post?

[Mercutio]

Sure...I could probably upload or link the real copy (a lot easier to read when double spaced, paragraphed, etc.). But right now I'm on another computer...so...maybe later today or tomorrow.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

not Shrewsbury, was it?

Yeppers. I've read all of Sayer's novels and short stories (many times ) and some of Christie's.
It seems like Christie's are just who-dun-its. Sayers has much more character development, underlying themes, etc. The mystery itself sometimes becomes merely a backdrop for everything else.



Hmm...I hadn't thought of anything like that...Oh wait: on a list of possible topics my teacher had Tolkien's use Beowulf. Thanks Beren.


p.s. yes I know that Shrewsbury doesn't actually exist, lol

I hate to throw a spanner in the workings of your good self,
but Shrewsbury most certainly does exist!
it is a town in Shropshire, which is a county in england, between
staffordshire and wales