Literary Analyses

1. Key Features Literary Analyses

2. An arguable thesis • Analysis is a type of argument • That your analysis of a literary work is valid. • Example: “[Shelley uses metaphors of grim distortion and radiant incandescence to expose the counterfeit nature of our world” (Huff). • It is NOT a summary • “Shelley writes about a person who sees reality and seeks love but never finds it.”

3. Careful Attention to the Language of the Text • Look carefully at the language: the foundation of its meaning. • Specific words • Images • Metaphors • Identify contextual information • Cultural • Historical • Biographical facts • Similar texts • Close reading: reading with the assumption that every word of a text is meaningful

4. Tips for a Close Reading • Find specific, brief passages that support your interpretation. • Interpret those passages in terms of their language, context, or your reaction to them as a reader. • Questions the text as you read.

5. What language provides evidence to support your thesis? • What does each word (phrase, passage) mean exactly? • Why does the writer choose this language, these words? What are the implications or connotations of the language? If the language is dense or difficult, why might the writer have written it that way?

6. What images or metaphors are used? What is their effect on the meaning? • What patterns of language, imagery, or plot do you see? If something is repeated, what significance does the repetition have? • How does each word, phrase, or passage relate to what precedes and follows it? • How does the experience of reading the text affect its meaning?

7. What words, phrases, or passages connect to a larger context? What language demonstrates that this work reflects or is affected by the context? • How does these various elements of language, image and pattern support your interpretation.

8. Attention to Patterns or Themes • Evidence of meaningful patterns • Themes within a text or among several texts • Example: In Shelley’s poem, images of light and shadow and artifice and reality create patterns of meaning, while the poem’s many half rhymes (live/believe, love/approve) create patterns of sound that may contribute to the overall meaning.

9. A Clear Interpretation • Should demonstrate the plausibility of its thesis by using evidence from the text and, sometimes, relevant contextual evidence to explain how the language and patterns found there support a particular interpretation. • Show readers one way the text may be read and understood • This is YOUR interpretation.

10. MLA Style Literary analyses usually follow MLA style.

11. RECAP

12. Purpose • Show that you have examined the text carefully. • Offer your own interpretation

13. Audience • What do you need to do to convince your readers that your interpretation is plausible and based on sound analysis? • Can you assume that readers are already familiar with the text you are analyzing, or do you need to tell them about it?

14. Stance • How can you see your subject through interested, curious eyes—and then step back in order to see what your observations might mean?

15. Matters of Style • In informal papers, it is okay to use the first person. • “I believe Frost’s narrator has little basis for claiming that one road is ‘less traveled.’” • Formal papers require direct assertions; claim authority to make statements about the text. • “Frost’s narrator has no basis for claiming that one road is ‘less traveled’

16. Discuss textual features in the present tense even if quotations from the text are in another tense. • “When Nick finds Gatsby’s body floating in the pool, he says very little about it: ‘the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool.’” • Describe the historical context of the setting in the past tense • “In the 1920s, such estates as Gatsby’s were rare.”