Writing Your Way into Literature--Analytically

Most of the time an academic course in Literature will expect you to write analytical papers of interpretation. Usually you will be expected to understand formal elements of literature and then to write an essay which applied that understanding to the work. Since this is the most traditional assignment, there are many sites online that attempt to give the writer guidelines for developing that kind of topic or assignment.

If you explore many of the bulletin board sites that invite students to ask questions, the questions are often like this: "Help, I need to analyze the symbolism in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" by next week and I have no idea where to start!!!"

In this writer's estimation, the cart is before the horse when a student suffers with this task. Analysis works best if the reader has an insight into a work, some sense of wonder or desire to puzzle over meaning which, in the process, pushes the reader to recognize, "Ohhh, that is an issue of symbolism! or characterization, or plot structure." My point is simple, story first, analysis of element second. If the story does not move you or intrigue you or make you want to reread it to understand it better, then you won't have much luck dragging yourself through a mechanical "analysis." But here are some tips of sites to visit to lay out the quidelines!

• First I highly recommend this site that accompanies The Norton Intro to Literature Pages on Writing about Literature: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb/write.htm
• Here is Seamus Cooney's page at Western Michigan University: http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/tchg/lit/adv/lit.papers.html
• OWL at Purdue: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_lit.html
• University of North Carlina at Chapel Hill: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature.html
• Here is a professor's page dealing advice to his students in his English Literature course: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/209/writinglit.htm
• The folks at the Citadel also give good tips: http://www.citadel.edu/citadel/otherserv/wctr/writinglit.html
• Hunter College's questions about Literature page: http://rwc.hunter.cuny.edu/writing/on-line/qfor-lit.html
• Jack Lynch's page on writing http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/links.html
• Humanities Interest Group at Berkeley: Good stuff here for links: http://www.itp.berkeley.edu/LitITP.html