ENG 102: Literary Analysis Assignment Sheet

GENRE: Literary Analysis

OVERVIEW: Hacker and Sommers note, “Responding to literature starts with becoming an engaged and active reader. Read through the work once, closely and carefully. What is it telling you? Asking you? Trying to make you feel? With these questions in mind, go back and read it a second time. As you reread, interact with the work by posing questions and looking for possible answers” (L-3).

DEFINITION: The purpose of literary analysis is simple: “All good writing about literature attempts to answer a question about the [reading]. The goal of a literature analysis should be to answer such questions with a meaningful and persuasive interpretation” (Hacker and Sommers L-3).

THE WRITNG ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES: This is an MLA format; see the MLA tab in A Writer’s Reference. The literary analysis should consist of 3-4 pages. All quotes and paraphrases from the text must use MLA in-text citations, and the essay’s document must conclude with a properly executed MLA Works Cited page for the work you’re analyzing. NO SOURCES other than the work you’re writing about are allowed in this essay.

WRITING PROMPT: Consider any of the works from this module, but choose only one of the three. (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown or “The Minister’s Black Veil,” or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”) Create an interpretively significant analysis of an integral aspect of that work. “Interpretively significant” means that you can justify the claim you make in the thesis: you can offer reasons the reader should read the work as you do. [Note: Your thesis should be contestable. “Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is about an old man who uses supernatural powers to tell his story” is not contestable: it’s simply a true statement about the poem. However, “Hamlet’s failure to act is a moral failure that stems from his inability to accept ambiguity” is contestable.]

ESSAY WRITING NOTES:

Introduction:

The introduction must introduce the literary work you’re writing about, its author, and its initial publication year. What are some of the relevant contexts for the work? (During what literary era or historical period was this written? Why does that matter?) Move to the general premise of the work: what is this story about? (You do not need a full summary, just an overview will do). Then, contextualize your thesis: the interpretively significant, contestable claim you’re making about this argument. The final sentence of the introduction should be the thesis, which must be clear, direct, specific, and contestable.

Body Paragraphs:

Use PIE to develop excellent body paragraphs that provide a POINT (an aspect of your thesis that you establish to persuade readers to your argument) in the topic sentence. ILLUSTRATE the point by contextualizing and then showing evidence from the literary work you are analyzing. EXPLAIN your textual evidence by interpreting it for the audience in terms of the POINT you’re making.

Conclusion:

The conclusion sums up the claims made in your analysis and shows how they add up to demonstrating the validity of your thesis. Always leave the audience with something more to think about at the end of the essay, too: why do readers need to see the text as you do? What insight or understanding do they gain if they adopt your reading of the text? What happens if readers ignore your thesis?

Works Cited

Greene, Stuart, and April Lidinsky. From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 5th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2021.

Hacker, Diana, and Nancy Sommers. A Writer’s Reference. 10th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2021