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To successfully interpret and analyze literary texts, you'll first need to have a solid foundation in literary terms and their definitions. In this article, we'll help you get familiar with most commonly used literary devices in prose and poetry.
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- Rhetorical Devices
- 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
- Other Interesting Articles
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...
If you want to know more about AI tools, college essays, or fallaciesmake sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
- Ask Questions. When you’re assigned a literary essay in class, your teacher will often provide you with a list of writing prompts. Lucky you! Now all you have to do is choose one.
- Collect Evidence. Once you know what question you want to answer, it’s time to scour the book for things that will help you answer the question. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to say yet—right now you’re just collecting ideas and material and letting it all percolate.
- Construct a Thesis. When you’ve examined all the evidence you’ve collected and know how you want to answer the question, it’s time to write your thesis statement.
- Develop and Organize Arguments. The reasons and examples that support your thesis will form the middle paragraphs of your essay. Since you can’t really write your thesis statement until you know how you’ll structure your argument, you’ll probably end up working on steps 3 and 4 at the same time.
The Introduction. The introduction to your literary analysis essay should try to arouse interest in your reader. To bring immediate focus to your subject, you may want to use a quotation, a provocative question, a personal anecdote, a startling statement, or a combination of these.
In this article, we'll share how to perform literary analysis on any text, as well as how to write a literary analysis essay (including worksheets for writing your thesis statement and body paragraphs).
Learn how to write a literary analysis by examining the author's use of literary devices and discover the elements of a strong analytical essay.
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What is a literary analysis?
Literary analysis looks critically at a work of fiction in order to understand how the parts contribute to the whole. When analyzing a novel or short story, you’ll need to consider elements such as the context, setting, characters, plot, literary devices, and themes.
