Literary Analysis

A Literary Analysis

British Literature: 19th through 21st Centuries

The book is “The Norton Anthology English Literature”

 

Assignment. Write a 850-1250 word paper doing a literary analysis of one (or two) texts from the first half of the term. Please do not use outside resources except a dictionary (or perhaps the Bible, if you choose). This should be your own reading and is not a research essay.

 

Explanation. One of the skills that often get ignored in writing longer literary research papers is the ability to read a text closely and draw meaning from that reading. For this reason, this essay will allow you to engage deeply with a particular text. A literary analysis of a text explains in detail how the text communicates to the reader. Such a reading will require you to understand all aspects of the text and to have a grasp of the meaning of individual parts of the text in relation to the entire work. You are not, however, striving to be exhaustive in your "explanation" of the text, but rather you should strive to be selective in considering only those details that are significant to your own thematic understanding of the text.

Details. A literary analysis shows how certain aspects of the text contribute to a unified meaning.  Each part of your essay, then, must relate to a clear, central idea. You are not, however, writing a paraphrase—do not just put the text in your own words. Instead, you are trying to get a sense of an overall meaning, the way the text communicates.

This essay should be easy to organize; working through the text from beginning to end makes the most sense (although in some cases, another organizational pattern works better). You should begin with an introduction indicating the main idea of the work—your take on the poem’s meaning.  The rest of the paper will be a point by point analysis of how you arrived at that particular reading.  Remember to mention lines, images, word choices, and other devices as your examples which justify your points.  Show how all the writer’s tools come together to create the meaning you see in the text.

 Prompt Questions and Ideas:

· What literary devices does the author use to create meaning: figures of speech, symbolism, allusion, sensory description, etc.?

· What issues or themes seem the most important, and what details support them?

· Is there a particular character, symbol or element in the poem worth analyzing in detail?

· What does the poem sound like? What effect does that sound have?

· What is the structure, meter and rhyme scheme of the poem? Why is it significant?

Sample Topics that you can use:

· Coleridge’s use of symbolism in “Kubla Khan.” 

· An analysis of the speaker in “My Last Duchess.”

· Tennyson’s portrait of an artist in “The Lady of Shalott.

Make sure you refer to “Tips for Quoting Literature” in the Course materials which are below:

Using Quotations from Literature

(parts adapted from Hacker, Writer’s Reference, 5th Ed., 334-335)

Readers need to move from your own words to the words of a source without feeling a jolt. Avoid dropping quotations into the text without warning. Instead, provide clear signal phrases, usually including the author’s name, to prepare readers for a quotation or paraphrase.

Dropped Quotation

Wordsworth, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, explains his views on poetry. “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (1439).

Quotation with Signal Phrase

Wordsworth, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, explains his views on poetry. He writes, “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (1439).

To avoid monotony, vary both the language and the placement of your signal phrases. The models that follow suggest a range of possibilities. Notice the differences in quoting poetry, and notice in your paper, everything (even block quotes) should be double spaced.

1. According to Wordsworth, poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (1439).

1. Wordsworth defines poetry in his Preface: “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (1439).

1. Wordsworth asks the question, “What is a poet?” (1443).

1. “[The poet] is a man speaking to men,” writes Wordsworth (1443).

1. Wordsworth explains his views on poetry:

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be true, poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. (1439)

1. Wordsworth provides the context for his poem in the first lines: “Five years have past; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters! and again I hear / These waters . . .” (1-3).

1. Wordsworth reveals how Nature has comforted him:

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft---

In darkness and amid the many shapes

Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—

How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

Oh sylvan Wye! (49-56)

1. For plays, use act.scene.line numbers (3.4.25-27)