Description
For this assignment, you must write an argument that provides your interpretation/ analysis of the work and supports that claim with appropriate and sufficient details (evidence) from the work. Your interpretation must come from your own reading and thinking about the work—not from critical or literary analyses you have read about it (including CliffNotes and SparkNotes).
• INVENTION
o Explore Your Topic
Examine what you already think about the text.
Consider what PERSPECTIVE you’d like to use to examine the work(s). Look up perspectives and their explanations in the Course Glossary. Some examples include the following:
Cultural Perspective
Historical Perspective
Psychological Perspective
Marxist Perspective
Biographical Perspective
Feminist Perspective
Formalist Perspective
Or, consider a SPECIFIC LITERARY TOOL that the author used that you’d Characterization
Language
Symbolism
• PLANNING
o Develop a Claim
You must develop a central, controlling claim—the main argument you plan to support in your essay. Without a clear claim, the essay goes nowhere—it rambles, making points that seem unrelated.
• DRAFTING
o Write a draft of your literary analysis.
Sandwiching Information: One technique for developing paragraphs in a literary analysis paper is to link your mini-claim to solid textual evidence. You must be sure to connect your evidence in your own words to the point that you are making. You cannot assume that your reader will see the connection between the evidence you cite and the claim you are making. To sandwich the body of your essay, state a mini-claim (supporting the major claim), then explain it and support it with information either quoted directly or paraphrased from the text. Next, explain the paraphrase or quote, and bring in more evidence. This explanation of material tells the reader what the paraphrase or quote means to your overall argument.
• REVISING
o Set aside your first draft for a while, then come back to it asking these questions:
What do you think is the strongest part of your literary analysis?
What do you think is the weakest part?
Think about your main claim:
Is it reasonable and logical?
Are you making a point you believe in or just trying to fulfill the assignment?
Essay 1
June 12, 2017
The Title of Your Paper
Then, begin to write your paper on this next line. All outside-of-class papers and rewrites are to be typed in a serif font and double-spaced. Use 1-inch margins. For specific information about formatting according to MLA Conventions, refer to your handbook from your Communications Skills classes, Rebecca Moore Howard’s Writing Matters: A Handbook for Writing and Research. If you do not have access to this handbook, you may use any other handbook or use the Purdue OWL website for MLA documentation. < https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/> In addition, you may refer to the model MLA papers included in the “Writing Literature Essays” link in your Blackboard course shell.
Sample Solution
