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Some Guidelines and Techniques for Writing about Works of Literature
Getting
an Idea
How do you get an idea? To begin, read the text carefully, as many
times as you can. (If you are working with a long work of literature,
like an epic poem or a novel, select a passage from the work that
seems important to you, and re-read it several times.) React to
it: try to understand your reactions. Underline, in the text, any
words, phrases or ideas that strike you as interesting or significant,
and then take notes in which you try to record and analyze your
responses. Read over your notes to see if any pattern is developing
in the way that you're thinking about the work.
You may wish
to focus on an aspect of the work that for you is troubling, confusing,
or inconsistent. Clarify for yourself just what the problem is,
for you, with this image or idea or use of language. Then concentrate
on this particular aspect of the work, trying to see how it fits,
how it operates in the work as a whole. That is, define a problem
for yourself and attempt to solve it. Your solution to the problem
will be the topic or focus of your essay; this solution may suggest
an idea about the meaning or significance of the work as a whole.
Because you
are dealing with a carefully composed text, you may want to concentrate
on how it works. How is it structured? What sorts of images or symbols,
or figurative language, or rhetorical techniques, or narrative strategies
does the author employ? Does he or she use any of them consistently
in conjunction with a specific emotion or idea? To what end? How
effective is the writer’s use of these techniques? How well
are the writer’s methods suited to his or her purposes?
Some
Techniques for Writing the Essay
When you begin the process of pre-writing, you probably will not
really have a clear thesis, and your organization may be confused.
But as you work through your ideas, more and more clarity about
your thesis and organization will emerge. Here are things to keep
in mind as you are writing, but especially as you are revising the
essay.
1. Thesis (what
it's not): Your essay should not just summarize the story’s
action or the writer’s argument; your thesis should make an
argument of your own about the poem, story, or play. Paraphrase
the poem’s lines (or summarize the story’s or play’s
events) only when you need to do so for the purpose of commenting
on them or of supporting an assertion you've made. When
you are writing on a difficult text, you may need to summarize the
writer’s argument in order to clarify the meaning of the text
for your reader. At times, it is alright to do this before going
on to make your own argument. But to establish another writer’s
meaning is not the same thing as asserting a point-of-view of your
own. Your own argument must go beyond
establishing the text’s literal meaning, even though an understanding
of the literal meaning is the foundation of your whole argument. Be sure that you have the literal meaning of the text right before
you begin to develop your own interpretation. If you have any questions
about what the text’s literal meaning is (or about the difference
between literal meaning and interpretation), check with your teacher.
2. Thesis (what it should be)::Your thesis should assert some point
of your own about the way form and content relate to each other
in this text. Your thesis should answer some question that you have
about the text.
Beware of making statements that merely describe but don't
assert or explain anything (e.g., "Solomon uses similes from the
world of nature in Song of Songs"). Once you've made this observation,
you'll want to discuss how and why he does so, and to
what end. You will probably find yourself moving from comments and observations
about technique or rhetoric or language to a consideration of what your
analysis means or signifies in the work as a whole. This is an attempt
to answer the most important question, "SO WHAT?"
3. Organization:
You should not structure your essay according to the chronology
of the story’s or play’s plot or according to the order
of the poem’s lines or stanzas, but according to the dictates
of your own argument. Your thoughts should control everything in
the essay, rather than being only a reflection of (or explanation
of or explications of) the author's or artist's ideas. Your transitions
should help make clear the logical progression of your argument,
rather than charting a temporal progression (e.g. "and then").
Unless you have an especially good reason for moving through the
text or story in the order that the writer has written it, don’t.
If you do do so, then you are probably just paraphrasing rather
than making an argument of your own.
4. Evidence: Always
support your assertions with details from the text (in the form of brief
paraphrase or short summary or short quotation or, when necessary, longer
quotation). Set up the quotations you are using, by giving us some sense
of who is speaking and when. Allow us to see the context from which you've
taken your quotations. Don't expect quotations to speak for themselves;
you need to explain them, so that we can see them in the way you want
us to.
Credits: This
guide is based on one written by the staff of the Writing Program
at the University of Virginia in the 1980s. Since then it has been
revised many times, using the principles of writing agreed upon
by faculty in the English department and the Writing Program at
Millsaps College. |
