3: Writing About Literature
- Page ID
- 318976
\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)
\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)
\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)
( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)
\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)
\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)
\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)
\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)
\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)
\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)
\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)
\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)
\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)
\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)
\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}} % arrow\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}} % arrow\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)
\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)
\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)- 3.1: The Literary Landscape- Four Major Genres
- This page explores four literary genres: poetry, drama, fiction, and creative nonfiction, each defined by unique features that allow for intermingling. Poetry focuses on imagery, drama on dialogue, fiction on imaginative narratives, and creative nonfiction on true stories. Additionally, it highlights the theme of dehumanization in Frederick Douglass's narrative, illustrating how enslaved individuals were denied basic knowledge.
- 3.2: The Writing Process for Literary Essays
- This page stresses the iterative nature of writing and the importance of flexibility in the writing process. Successful writers refine their work through various stages, including drafting and revising, and should seek feedback to improve their skills. It encourages embracing individual approaches to writing—whether through outlining or exploring ideas during the process—and sharing methods with peers.
- 3.3: Prewriting for Literature Essays
- This page highlights the significance of active reading and reflection for students in literature classes, advocating for strategies like annotating, summarizing, and note-taking to enhance comprehension and writing skills. It stresses that passive reading can hinder understanding, while active engagement fosters a deeper connection to texts.
- 3.4: Writing About Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
- This page offers a comprehensive guide to writing a literary analysis, emphasizing the complexity of interpreting narratives with multifaceted meanings. It outlines the importance of detailed note-taking, supporting claims with relevant evidence, and developing a clear, insightful thesis. The text encourages readers to explore deeper themes and human issues, and to articulate their interpretations in their own words while avoiding superficial conclusions.
- 3.5: Outlining for Literary Essays
- This page provides essential guidelines for essay writing, focusing on the importance of structure for organization and clarity. Key components include a clear thesis, topic sentences, supporting evidence, and adaptability. It outlines a basic essay template consisting of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, while offering tips on specificity, topic relevance, sentence flow, and ethical attribution to avoid plagiarism.
- 3.6: Literary Thesis Statements
- This page discusses the importance of literary thesis statements for persuasive essays analyzing texts. They should be debatable, specific, and anchored in observable facts while focusing on literary devices or themes. Common pitfalls include generalizations, unrelated societal critiques, summaries, quality judgments, and author-biography references. A strong thesis is an observation or analysis that highlights significance.
- 3.7: Essay as Argument
- This page emphasizes the importance of crafting effective literary arguments in academic writing, highlighting the need for a clear claim supported by evidence. It stresses the value of addressing counterarguments respectfully to enhance credibility and understanding. Developing strong arguments requires critical thinking, clear communication, and awareness of bias through critical reading. This skill is essential for academic success and fosters analytical abilities across disciplines.
- 3.8: Summarizing vs. Analyzing Literary Works
- This page highlights the distinction between summary and analysis in academic writing, noting that while summaries provide context, they should be limited in thesis-driven assignments. Many writers favor summaries for their simplicity, but analytical writing involves breaking down texts and engaging critically. The text offers strategies to reduce excessive summarization, emphasizing the importance of a strong thesis and techniques to clearly separate summary from analysis.
- 3.9: Essay Type - Literary Response
- This page discusses the response essay as an informal literary analysis tool for students, promoting engagement with texts through personal reflection and close reading. It emphasizes relaxed requirements, like the use of first-person language and the lack of a formal thesis, while encouraging questions about characters, tone, and literary devices, supported by textual citations. The goal is to enhance students' ability to analyze literature and recognize literary elements within a single work.
- 3.10: Essay Type - Literary Analysis
- This page emphasizes New Criticism, advocating for close reading and objective analysis of literature rather than relying on authorial intent or personal emotions. It highlights the importance of examining the interplay between meaning and form through character development, plot, and imagery. The approach aims to uncover thematic unity and encourages critics to engage deeply with texts to reveal complexities, as illustrated by Cleanth Brooks's analysis of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn.
- 3.11: Essay Type - Comparing and Contrasting Literature
- This page outlines the structure and approach for a Compare and Contrast Essay, which examines multiple works connected by a common theme. It emphasizes a formal tone, minimal first-person usage, and MLA formatting. The essay can be organized by either literary works or themes, with each paragraph supporting the thesis and balancing the comparison.
- 3.12: Essay Type - Literary Research
- This page discusses a research essay that combines literary analysis and criticism, emphasizing topic selection, brainstorming, outlining, and source tracking through an Annotated Bibliography to avoid plagiarism. It highlights a specific example: Margaret Cavendish's poem "The Hunting of the Hare," which critiques human cruelty and reflects her experiences as a female writer.
- 3.13: How to Perform Literary Research (Navigating Secondary Sources and Library Databases)
- This page highlights the process of finding literary criticism, comparing it to informal research for song lyrics. It stresses consulting expert critics and using resources like libraries and online databases, particularly the Oxford English Dictionary. Effective search strategies are recommended, such as brainstorming terms and maintaining a research log or annotated bibliography to track sources and prevent plagiarism.
- 3.14: Writing About Poetry
- This page explores the unsettling qualities in Robert Frost's poem "Design," analyzing its imagery and structure to reveal themes of disruption and death in nature. Close reading helps uncover deeper meanings and fosters engaging discussions about the text. It also emphasizes the flexibility in writing approaches, encouraging authors to revise their content based on comfort.
- 3.15: Analyzing Poetry
- This page discusses poetry as a personal form of expression that allows for diverse interpretations shaped by readers' backgrounds. It emphasizes the importance of grounding interpretations in the text and suggests a three-step approach for analysis: reading for sound, general impression, and deeper meaning. Key aspects to consider include the speaker, tone, purpose, and overall impact, which help in understanding the poem's nuances and intentions.
- 3.16: Compare and Contrast Poetry Assignments
- This page emphasizes the value of comparing elegies, particularly John Milton's "Lycidas" and Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Felix Randal," to explore their differing treatments of death. It notes the formal tone of "Lycidas" versus the more personal feel of "Felix Randal," along with how their titles signify their subjects—public versus ordinary figures. The analysis indicates that such comparisons deepen the understanding and appreciation of the poems' themes and stylistic approaches.
- 3.17: Writing About Drama
- This page outlines how to write an effective play review, emphasizing the need for a balance between audience engagement and critical analysis. Reviewers should attentively observe key elements during the performance and record their impressions afterward, assessing direction, acting, and design. The review should begin with an introduction of the play, followed by a methodical discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, addressing significant critiques while avoiding minor issues.
- 3.18: Literary Essay Titles
- This resource teaches students about the micro-genre of literary analysis essay titles
- 3.19: Research for Literary Analysis
- This page outlines a structured approach to literary analysis, stressing the significance of a clear thesis and thorough research preparation. It highlights civil rights as a key area of study, providing resources such as overviews, historical videos, and educator discussions. Additional materials on civil rights are included to deepen understanding of the topic.
- 3.20: Writing as a Process - Breaking it Down
- For many students, approaching a writing assignment can be overwhelming. They know that there are many tasks that must be completed, such as gathering information about the topic, forming a perspective on it, brainstorming ideas to be included in the paper, organizing those ideas, integrating the evidence, and articulating the argument with clarity and eloquence, not to mention accommodating the assigned format guidelines.