For any comparative analysis, it is never enough simply to identify similarities and differences across texts. Instead, consider what is the value and purpose of the juxtaposition (placing two texts side by side) itself. What can we learn from juxtaposing the two texts that we would not have known from just analyzing one of them? Because this is a short assignment, I recommend organizing your paper around ONE particular basis of comparison across both texts. For example, you could investigate representations of cultural oppression in the music video ″Montero″ and ″The Devil′s Cleansing.″ Or you could compare God′s character across Genesis and Johnson′s poem ″The Creation.″ Or you may consider discussing a theme or question relevant to both texts, such as the origin and meaning of evil in Voltaire′s poem and Pope′s. Part of the challenge of this paper is finding an interesting point of comparison across two different texts. Here are some possible intertextual pairings: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Lil Nas X′s ″Montero″ Genesis and Johnson′s ″The Creation″ Lil Nas X′s ″Montero″ and Hughes′s ″The Devil′s Cleansing″ Pope’s “Essay on Man” and Milton’s Paradise Lost Genesis and Paradise Lost Pope’s “Essay on Man” and Voltaire’s “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” This essay should provide in-depth textual analyses by zooming in on particular moments (quotations) from your chosen texts. Feel free to try out the ″analysis pack″ technique, in which you select specific scenes or ″moments″ in the texts and organize the body paragraphs on those particular scenes/moments. For example, you could analyze the temptation scene in Genesis where the serpent tempts Eve, and compare it to the corresponding scene in Paradise Lost.
