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A literary analysis essay is an academic assignment that examines and evaluates a work of literature or a given aspect of a specific literary piece. It tells about the big idea or theme of a book you’ve read. The literary essay may be about any book or any literary topic imaginable.
The elements to be analyzed are plot, setting, characters, point of view, figurative language, and style.
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:
The purpose of a literary analysis is to demonstrate why the author used specific ideas, word choices, or writing structures to convey his or her message.
Start with the title of your work and its author’s name. One or two sentences will suffice. Stress on the main idea of the analyzed work to make these sentences more hooking. Briefly tell what the work is about or how it influenced the world literature.
The elements that make up a literary work are closely examined for their meaning and significance. Some of these elements are theme, character, and plot. Regardless of what aspect you choose to discuss, your analysis will focus on one controlling idea that, if writing, can be stated in one direct sentence.
In general, your essay will comprise three parts: introduction, body, and conclusion.
Literary analysis encourages students to branch beyond their own experiences and beliefs, and in doing so it allows students to build empathy. … Because we are naturally inclined to look inward and tie truth to our own experiences, it is incredibly important to be exposed to other perspectives.
The elements are the plot, conflict, characters and the setting.
Use formal, academic diction (word choice) in a literary analysis. Therefore, write in the third person. First person (I, me, our, we, etc.) and second person (you) are too informal for academic writing, and most literature professors prefer students to write in third person.
The fundamental characteristic of a literary analysis essay is interpretive. Since the essay is analysis you have to interpret the work.
When you’re asked to analyze something, for example a piece of literature, you are being asked to examine and evaluate the work to answer some how or why questions. When you’re asked to make an argument, you must investigate a topic, collect, generate and evaluate evidence, then establish a position.
Exposition β The opening of the story that sets up the characters, setting, (time and place), and basic information in introduced. Conflict β The protagonist struggles between oppos- ing forces.
The plot is one of the most significant elements of the literary essay. It provides insight into how the story unfolds and discusses the pattern of events that eventually make up a story. Sometimes, the authors use a nonlinear plot, i.e., they include flashbacks or future events to make the story more captivating.
A plot summary is a brief description of a story’s plot. It does not contain discussion of any deeper meaning, opinions, or even extensive details about the work. A literary analysis is where the student explores deeper meaning and examines the different elements of a piece of literature.
The primary source for a literary analysis is the work which you are writing about and which is the central focus on your paper. Secondary sources are resources that discuss the primary source or discuss other information such as theories, symbols, social and historical contexts, etc.
There are four core components you need to know when learning how to write an analytical essay: your outline, introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
identify some of the literary elements used within a particular selection, including characterization, setting, plot, and theme. practice analyzing how character, setting, plot, and theme affect one another. develop evidence from a literary work to support a thesis statement.
Audience Definition
In literature, an audience is who the author writes their piece forβin other words, the reader.
Good literary analysis essays contain an explanation of your ideas and evidence from the text (short story, poem, play) that supports those ideas. Textual evidence consists of summary, paraphrase, specific details, and direct quotations.
The goal of literary analysis is to help students understand how story parts are working together, impacting one another, and shaping the whole work. When selecting texts to use in a literary analysis unit, think about what students could use them to analyze.
hermeneutics | exploration |
---|---|
interpretation | investigation |
revealing | unmasking |
exegetics | psychoanalytic criticism |
Literary analysis skills are the actual strategies you use to analyze the parts (characters, plots, setting) that bring meaning to literature. These skills allow you to understand the meaning of the text and then form your own perceptions of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-4nXDYg570
Synthesize, don’t summarize.
Include a brief summary of the paper’s main points, but don’t simply repeat things that were in your paper. Instead, show your reader how the points you made and the support and examples you used fit together. Pull it all together.