British Literature paper - Help please! :)

[Happy87]

Hello All,
as my title suggests, I have to write a term paper (approx. 10-12 pages)
with the overall topic "British Literature" - which is where my problem starts.
Since this topic is SO wide I have no idea where to start and what to do.
I can do anything from the Anglo-Saxons to postmodern Literature, from intertextual questions, comparing different books or analyse just one aspect of a certain book I pick.
I think I'd prefer something more recent (20th century maybe or even 21th).
I know it's very vague, I'm just hoping for some ideas that will help me.

I'd greatly appreciate your help, since I'm quite desperate...
Thanks.

(Excuse my English, it's not my mother tongue)

[Red-Headed]

You could start here.

[kelby_lake]

Hello All,
as my title suggests, I have to write a term paper (approx. 10-12 pages)
with the overall topic "British Literature" - which is where my problem starts.
Since this topic is SO wide I have no idea where to start and what to do.
I can do anything from the Anglo-Saxons to postmodern Literature, from intertextual questions, comparing different books or analyse just one aspect of a certain book I pick.
I think I'd prefer something more recent (20th century maybe or even 21th).
I know it's very vague, I'm just hoping for some ideas that will help me.

I'd greatly appreciate your help, since I'm quite desperate...
Thanks.

(Excuse my English, it's not my mother tongue)

I'd go:
- Well, you could do 19th century. If you choose that, authors to go for are Dickens, Austen, Thackerey, and the Brontes. They're quite wordy but you may like them. I'm assuming literature includes poetry and plays too, so you could look at the Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge).

- Could always do Shakespeare. If you do that, look at one tragedy (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth are the most famous), one comedy (Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, etc.), and a history (Richard III, Henry V, etc.). You could also look at some of the sonnets. If you want to go into a particular genre of Shakespeare (such as tragedy), you could also touch on the problem plays and see where they fit in.
Romeo and Juliet is called a tragedy but it doesn't have a tragic hero and the deaths are not caused by flaws in their characters.

- Now for 20th century. There's not that much decent 21st century British literature. I would say that the best works were between 1920-1960. Choose a period in the 20th century which you know something about, history-wise, and which interests you.

Out of novels, short stories, poetry and plays, which would you rather look at?