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Your objective in writing a literary analysis essay is to convince the person reading your essay that you have supported the idea you are developing. Unlike ordinary conversation and classroom discussion, writing must stick with great determination to the specific point of development.
GUIDELINES FOR ESSAY WRITING. These guidelines provide help with essay writing. Students might also find it helpful to consult the following (available in the University Library): Nigel Fabb and Alan Durant. How to write Essays, Dissertations and Theses in Literary Studies. Longman, 1993.
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- Step 1: Reading The Text and Identifying Literary Devices
- Step 2: Coming Up with A Thesis
- Step 4: Writing The Body of The Essay
- Step 5: Writing A Conclusion
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The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis. Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writi...
Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text. If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example: Your thesis statementsh...
The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.
Theconclusionof your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader. A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighti...
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When writing a literary essay, there are two types of sources you can use: primary and secondary. The primary source is the piece of literature you are writing about. For example, if you’re asked to write an essay about the portrayal of women in Jane Eyre, then Jane Eyre is your primary source.
Jeffrey R. Wilson’s Academic Writing is a no-nonsense guide to the long and complex writing process. Packed with concrete examples, helpful visuals, and practical tips, the book is an essential guide for academic writing at the highest level. Empowering writers to be creators—not just
The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to carefully examine and sometimes evaluate a work of literature or an aspect of a work of literature. As with any analysis, this requires you to break the subject down into its component parts. Examining the different elements of a piece of literature is not an end in itself but rather a process to ...
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A literary analysis is a critical analysis of a work of literature such as a poem, a play, a short story or a novel. A literary analysis starts with careful reading and examination of certain parts of the story in order to understand the whole story better.