For your first assignment in here I would like you to write a brief (3-5 page) essay on some aspect of these first texts which has caught your eye.  I would be particularly interested in you looking over the "Introductions" to Otranto and Northanger Abbey, as well as the cultural material at the end of the latter, so that you can connect the literature to something larger in the culture.  Failing that, I would be content with a smart and detailed look at one theme of one of the pieces, generating not only a vision of how that theme occurs and develops but, as always, a solid sense of why it's important to understand that theme in the first place.

Other than the items named above, no outside sources may be used for this essay.