Research and Proposals

In the proposed thesis work, I intend to analyze the quest of Marlowe from a psychological and philosophical standpoint by studying the language and plot, characterization and symbolism in the text. I intend to justify that Marlowe’s quest is a archetypal and universal quest for knowledge and conquest of the world which normally turns into an exploration into the inner self of oneself.
4. Hypothesis: The hypothesis is a claim (and in some other kinds of researches, a question) that should be put into just one sentence if possible. The hypothesis is the heart of the research paper. Your research will be a study and documentation for justifying the claim made by this hypothesis. All the facts and research you put in your paper will have to relate to your hypothesis. A good hypothesis is more than just fact: it is an educated opinion about a subject.
Fact: Conrad is a writer of great significance.
Educated opinion: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an allegory of man’s quest for knowledge which turns out to be an exploration into man’s self.
Educated opinion: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a story of the western man’s ironic journey of knowledge into his own instinctual savagery, but this problematic should also be seen as a universal phenomenon about human nature and civilization.
Educated opinion: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a bold indictment against the white man’s colonial mission to civilize the oriental man.
This hypothesis is in reality the summary of the whole thesis in one sentence. It should be focused, but fully explained and supported in the length of your thesis. If you choose a hypothesis that is too broad, your paper will be weak. If it is too narrow, you will not have sufficient things to say. The hypothesis should:

• make a claim that you will and can justify: state a problem or issue that is worth exploring and researching
• indicate the perspective from which you will look at the problem, and solve it
• suggest a focus or delimit the issue that you will study and write upon

Joseph Conrad’s classic Heart of Darkness is an allegory of man’s quest into his own basic savage self, and so Marlowe’s journey into Africa should be analyzed as a philosophical and psychological quest that enlightens him with the ultimate truth about the essential human nature.
4. Literature Review: Provide an adequate literature review in order to highlight your issue and to give information on the subject. Your review of literature is not just a collection of quotations from critics. A review must take either a stance of critical disagreement with existing assessment(s) of the subject, or it may claim for a shift of emphasis or perspective. You must review the major critics from the viewpoint of your own hypothesis. After you have discussed several critical perspectives in the issue, you may like to say that they are incorrect, insufficient in their understanding, just tangential, or that they have not centralized the important issue that you are trying to explore. The proposal is a document where your efficacy for accurate documentation is tested, so you should make sure that you cite sources properly.
5.         Methodology: The method of the most common type research paper which is to be based on textual analysis will be on the method of library research. So here, you may mention this obvious side of the methodology section – that you will consult libraries and authentic websites, read books on relevant theoretical perspectives and on the writer and the selected text, consult the supervisor, develop critical tools in the discussion and apply them in the text in the analysis section, and so on. But, besides that obvious information about the mode of your research, you should also stipulate what particular of theoretical/ critical framework you will develop for looking at and analyzing the text or issue. In this section, you should tell what you want to achieve or justify and how. This could also be the place in the proposal for defining your terminology and discussing your perspective. This means that you will do these things in the ‘methodology’ section.

• What mode of research you will follow,
• What materials you will use,
• What theoretical perspectives you will borrow,
• What critical tools you will develop,
• What you will accomplish and how,
• What you will focus on: what you will actually include and what you will only study.

6. Bibliography/ Works to be Cited: The bibliography may include materials that you plan to read as well as those that you have quoted in the proposal or read while developing it. You may also include materials that are not available to you at the moment but you will need to find and read sooner or later to write your thesis. In the bibliography, you may include not only books that are written upon the text that you want to research/ analyze, but also books about the writer (if they do have something to say about your issue in the selected text) and books on the theory and perspective that you will develop (if they will throw light on how to look at and deal with the problem you have raised).

Suggestions:
All text must be in Times New Roman, font size 12.
All titles, including thesis title, must be in bold face and should be left-aligned (not centered).
The whole text must be double spaced.
(You may leave one line space before a title.)
Leave one-inch margin on all four sides of the page.

The title should be a phrase, and not a sentence or clause; you may use a colon for focus or elaboration.
The hypothesis should be very precise (just one or two sentences).
The statement of problem should also be precise (This may be 1-3 short paragraphs).
The critical review of literature should include sufficient coverage of existing literature on the text/ issue. (This may also be 2-5 paragraphs, depending on how many areas of criticism you cover).
The methodology may be one or more paragraphs, giving one paragraph each for raising one issue or discussing one category of critics.
The ideal length of the proposal is 5 pages.
Proper in-text citation is essential.
The work cited/ bibliography must be in the standard MLA format.

Sample:

Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and Individual Talent”: Essays on the Creation of Knowledge. Ed. Shreedhar P. Lohani et. al. Kathmandu: Ekta Books, 1998.

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