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Jan 30, 2020 · Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.
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.
- 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.
Literary analysis is the foundation of high-level English classes—but what, exactly, is literary analysis, and how do you do it? 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).
- Read the text and identify literary devices. As you conduct your literary analysis, you should first read through the text, keeping an eye on key elements that could serve as clues to larger, underlying themes.
- Develop your thesis. If you’re writing an essay for your literature class, you’ll likely be given a prompt or question to answer with your essay. If you’re not assigned a topic, you’ll have to think of one yourself.
- Create an outline. Once you have your thesis, it’s time to make a plan for how you’ll prove your argument. Look back at your notes about the literary and narrative devices above.
- Cite the evidence. When you’re making your argument, it’s important that you have concrete evidence from the text to support your claims. When you can, provide direct quotes and other concrete details.
When writing a literary analysis, you are not just identifying elements in a text, but analyzing those specific elements. Step 1: Identify the Author’s Purpose
Aug 27, 2021 · Literary Analysis, Close Reading, and Rhetorical Analysis are three critical thinking approaches with, for all intents and purposes, the same meaning. The major difference is that literary analysis is specific to the field of literary studies.
