Guidelines for Writing Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism 1. Pay attention to your reactions as you read. Whatever interests you or grabs your attention within the story (whatever element: a character, a detail, a mistake, the language) should be the beginning of your analysis of the story. 2. Begin to interpret that element of the story by asking yourself questions and talking it over (with yourself or others). What interests you about it? What is it doing in/for the story? What does it mean? Is it related to anything else in the story? What does that other element mean? How do these elements go together? 3. Continue this until you begin to understand what you think the story means, until you have an interpretation of the story as a whole rather than just one element. 4. Once you feel like you know what the theme of the story is, what it is about, then you want to decide the focus of your essay: you will probably analyze the way some individual or group of elements contributes to the overall theme. Brainstorming will help at this stage. 5. Consider your target audience and whether you expect them to have read the work in question. This will affect how much plot summary you will provide. If you expect the reader has not read the story, it is customary to provide some information about the plot of the story, the major events, but you should never let plot summary dominate or overwhelm your essay. Provide only as much plot summary as necessary for your argument and to keep your reader oriented to your analysis. For the essay you will write for this class (on the nal), you should assume the reader has read the story, so plot summary should be minimal. 6. Introductions for literary criticism should include the title and author of the work, the general focus (which aspect of the work you will analyze), and your thesis or main claim about the work and about that aspect of it. If plot summary is necessary it can go in the introduction or, more likely, in a separate paragraph immediately following your introduction. Make sure your thesis statement is short and directly states your main idea. Save the details you will discuss for the body of the essay. 7. Choose a method of organization for the body of your essay that will make your main idea clear and well-supported. The most common methods of organization are: chronological, where you follow and interpret the events (and elements) of the work in order; importance, where you order your points by which you think is the most important (putting that either last for rst); and comparison, where you order your ideas around points of contrast between the work or elements of the work and another. 8. For the most part, your evidence will be examples and quotations from the text. You will refer to events or elements of the story and provide your interpretation of their meaning, signicance, or function within the overall story. It is these details from the text that will make your ideas clear and persuade readers that your interpretation has merit. When you refer to a literary work, it is customary to use the present tense as if it were all happening right now, as it would be if one were to open the book and start reading again. 9. Utilize all the elements of good essay writing that you have learned in this and other classes: use transitions and other tools of coherence; revise for unity, coherence, clarity, depth (provide warrants), and completeness; and edit for grammar, usage, spelling, and syntax. 10. Finally, title your essay so that it references the work you're analyzing without simply repeating the title of the work.