Lens Writing a Comparative Analysis In your final assignment, you will use Othello to discuss Season of Migration, writing a lens or keyhole essay. Othello will be the lens through which you analyze Season.
Before beginning your paper, read about the discussion of the lens essay in “Writing a Comparative Analysis” (Harvard Writing
Center: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-write-comparative-analysis).
Lens Writing a Comparative Analysis
The focus of your essay will be on Season of Migration, but you will integrate an analysis of Othello into your paper to address the following question: In what sense
can Season of Migration be considered a postcolonial revision of Othello? That is, how and why does Salih rewrite the story of Othello and Desdemona in Season of Migration?
Your essay should be at least five pages, double-spaced, not including the MLA Works Cited page, and you should use a 12- point Times New Roman font. You should have a title.
1. An introduction which makes your frame of reference clear. Your frame of reference for this essay will be the postcolonial theory
. Read “Postcolonial Criticism” (in Course Resources) before beginning this paper. You will want to give the reader a brief understanding of what postcolonial literature is, and explain why Season of Migration to the North is a postcolonial novel. The dates in which it was set and published should be mentioned, and the British colonial period (1899-1956).
2. The paragraph following the introduction: Here you will transition from a discussion of Season as a postcolonial text to a discussion of Othello as a parent text for Salih (your grounds for comparison). Briefly introduce the reader to Othello, and discuss how and why Salih borrowed and reappropriated motifs (themes and characters) from Othello. In this paragraph, you should answer the question above (In what sense can Season be considered a postcolonial revision of Othello?) in 2-3
sentences, your thesis statement.
Lens Writing a Comparative Analysis
3. In the body of your essay, you will develop your argument using a text-by-text organizational structure. Discuss Othello first, analyzing how Othello represents Othello and his marriage to Desdemona (1-2 pages). Then, the transition to a discussion of Season, focusing on textual allusions to Othello within Season. How does Salih define Mustafa Sa’eed and Jean Morris against Desdemona and Othello? (1-2 pages).
In your conclusion, discuss the broader implications of your analysis. How does Season, a classic postcolonial Sudanese text, make us read Othello, a canonical European play, differently? How does it constitute an act of “writing back” to the colonizing culture?
You will be graded on your ability to create an effective lens argument that is grounded in postcolonial theory. Style, organization, and grammar also count. If your paper has so many grammatical errors that its meaning is lost on me, the reader, I will not accept it.
