A Second Reading from the Book of John

My proposal for this class attempted to outline a thesis of sorts, much the way I might have written it during a rough draft.  I didn't copy-paste it into my original paper but I might have, which makes the errors in it more appalling.  (My actual paper, thankfully, does not seem to have this type of mistakes in it.)

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether his claims are justified, it brings up the question of how “a new Province of Writing” might be founded.  The majority of genre scholarship that I have been able to find so far focuses on the use and adaptation of pre-existing genres; my interest at present is focused instead on the origins of new genres.  Fielding’s Tom Jones can serve as an interesting case study not merely because he stands near the beginning of the English novel, but because he frequently interrupts the plot of his novel with musings on the nature of writing, both in general and specifically with respect to genre.

The paragraph is servicable but slips into the passive voice at times when it really doesn't need to.  I also sometimes use two words where one would do, saying that "my interest at present is focused" instead of simply saying that "I am interested"; this careless wordiness stems from the fact that I was letting my verbs get lazy, as it were.  Worse, the first sentence includes an obscure agent.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether his claims are justified, the question arises just how “a new Province of Writing” might be founded.  The majority of genre scholarship that I have found so far focuses on the use and adaptation of pre-existing genres; I am interested in the origins of new genres.  Fielding’s Tom Jones serves as an interesting case study because Fielding frequently interrupts his novel with musings on the nature of writing, both in general and specifically with respect to genre. 

In addition to the corrections outlined above – which generally make the text tighter – I've also ditched the bit about Fielding's historical situation near the origins of the English novel because I feel that it disrupts the flow of the sentence and is probably not really all that necessary anyway.