Inquizitve-Writing about Literature: The Literary Essay

When generating essay topics, it can be helpful to draw on common types (even subgenres) of literary essays. Classify each of the following by whether it is one of these types of essays outlined in The Norton Introduction to Literature.

Common Essay Type or Topic the significance of something seemingly insignificant the worldview of a character and its consequences conflict and its resolution the ways a character evolves over the course of a literary work and why - Not a Common or Recommended Essay Type or Topic the way in which a story only reflects an author's biography

All assignment prompts include restrictions, which are guidelines about how to complete the assignment. Below are excerpts from the assignment prompt shown in the video. Classify each excerpt by whether it is a restriction.

Restriction - Not a Restriction

All assignment prompts include restrictions, which are guidelines about how to complete the assignment. Below are excerpts from the assignment prompt shown in the video. Classify each excerpt by whether it is a restriction.

Restriction You MUST integrate at least two secondary sources into your essay. Correct in-text MLA citation and a correct Works Cited are required. Length: 4-5 pages Not a Restriction English 2000—Writing about Literature

Literary essays require the right tone—formal but not boring, confident but not pretentious. Classify each of the following strategies by whether it tends to be successful or unsuccessful in establishing the right tone.

Tends to Be Successful in Establishing the Right Tone Use the word "I" carefully. Write in the present tense. - Does Not Tend to Be Successful in Establishing the Right Tone Use contractions and exclamation points. Write the way you talk.

Which of the following essay components is the most specific?

topic sentence

Whereas _________claims tend to be used in thesis statements and to focus on the meaning of a literary work and how it functions,__________ claims tend to bring in aesthetic assessment, personal preference, or moral, philosophical, social, or political judgment.

1. Interpretive 2. Evaluative

Getting started is often viewed as one of the most difficult parts of the writing process. While you can (and should) come back to each of the following steps as you write, what is the most effective way to approach getting started with a literary essay? Order each of the following from the first step to the last step.

1. scrutinize the assignment 2. choose a text 3. generate topics 4.formulate a question and a thesis

Although an interpretive essay should focus on a topic and argument that are quite specific, the stick figure shown in the video is a visual device for thinking about the need to balance relatively general and specific statements within the essay. Order each of the following components of a literary essay from most general to most specific.

1. summary or beginning of the intro. 2. thesis 3. topic sentence 4. evidence and explanation

Types of literary evidence include quotation, paraphrase, summary, and description. Whereas -Press Space to____ entails restating a specific detail in your own words, ____ involves concisely giving an overview of a broader portion—or even the entirety—of a literary work or source in your own words. A________of a literary work, on the other hand, goes beyond focusing on the content and pays particular attention to the form, style, or structure of a literary work.

1.paraphrase 2.summary 3.description

Classify each of the following statements by whether it accurately describes the stage of the writing process known as brainstorming and organizing.

Accurately Describes Brainstorming and Organizing An outline or web diagram should suggest the hierarchy of ideas and details as they will appear in the essay. Outlining can be a form of brainstorming and organizing. - Does Not Accurately Describe Brainstorming and Organizing Brainstorming and organizing should only occur before you start to write an essay. Brainstorming and organizing are optional parts of writing an essay that slow down the writing process.

Classify each of the following by whether it accurately describes the thesis statement, one of the five basic elements of the literary essay.

Accurately Describes a Thesis Statement A thesis statement can include more than one sentence. An essay about a literary work needs to have only one thesis - Does Not Accurately Describe a Thesis Statement A thesis statement always occurs at the end of the introductory paragraph. The primary purpose of a thesis statement is to summarize your opinion of a literary work.

The true motive behind Antigone's actions will always be debated. There are always at least two sides to everything, and it is essential that we consider different perspectives. Antigone can be viewed as hard-hearted and cruel, able to cut herself off from those who love and cherish her. However, she can also be seen as the type of heroine who does everything for the greater good of those she is closest to. In this view, she is compassionate, loyal, and unafraid to make sacrifices. Either way, Antigone remains a heroine who has made a huge impact not only on other characters in the play, but on those who read it as well. Which of the following best describes the strategy this author is taking in their conclusion?

Areas of ambiguity

Classify each of the following by whether it is an arguable thesis statement that one could use in a literary essay. Assume that any details from the story are conveyed accurately.

Arguable Thesis Statement Despite the suggestion of revelation within the last words of "Bartleby" ("Ah, humanity!"), Melville's short story as a whole reveals that the narrator has not, in fact, learned all that much about what it means to be human. Missing throughout is the recognition that we are all responsible for our neighbors. At first, Bartleby appears diffident and strange. He is the oddball who refuses to reveal anything about himself to others despite his boss's repeated attempts. "But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me?", the narrator asks in exasperation. The question is as much for Bartleby as it is for us because the story forces readers to question what behaviors, attitudes, and assumptions are "reasonable." - Not an Arguable Thesis Statement We have all had bosses like the one in "Bartleby," and I liked the refreshing perspective of the story that empowered the employees rather than the employer. If managers across America read "Bartleby," I believe labor relations would improve in the United States. "Bartleby" is a story that chronicles the disbelief of its narrator when a new employee refuses to say anything other than "I would prefer not to."

Revision involves assessing the five basic elements of an essay: tone, thesis, motive, evidence, and structure. This process allows you to look at the structure and execution of your essay with fresh eyes. Depending on the part of the essay you are focused on revising at a given time, you may ask yourself different questions—perhaps using a checklist such as the one featured in The Norton Introduction to Literature. Match each of the following parts of an essay with the series of questions for revision that best corresponds with that part.

Does each paragraph clearly state one debatable claim? Does everything in the paragraph directly relate to, and help support and develop, that claim? Are the claims logically ordered? -middle/body Does the paragraph indicate the implications of the argument, consider relevant evaluative questions, or discuss questions that remain unanswered? -conclusion Does the paragraph provide readers all—and only—the information they need about the author, text, context, and topic? Does every sentence either help to articulate the thesis and motive or to provide essential information? -introduction

Every essay should be structured in exactly the same way.

False

Revising is the same process as editing and proofreading.

False

You must have your thesis statement fully developed before you begin writing.

False

Paraphrase, summary, and description are the basic moves of any literary essay. Different sentences have different rhetorical purposes, and different moves produce different effects that can contribute to the argument. Match each of the following moves with the corresponding sentences from a sample essay about Tim O'Brien's short story "The Things They Carried."

In "The Things They Carried," First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reads mail from a girl he once knew. He allows himself to believe the letters are romantic. -paraphrase "The Things They Carried" presents the experience of the Vietnam War in a nonlinear fashion. Paragraphs that begin in the present end in the past. The white spaces between paragraphs signal even more disorienting jumps in chronology. As a result, the story's form keeps us at arm's length, forcing us to imagine the figurative associations between who these men are and the objects they carry. -description "The Things They Carried" tells the experiences of various solders of Alpha Company during the Vietnam War. Along the way, different soldiers carry items such as weapons, radios, Bibles, and love letters from back home. Yet following the death of a compatriot, it is clear that they also carry the burdens of their emotions related to war and death, including guilt, anger, and loss. -summary

The kind of claim you make depends on the rhetorical situation. When writing a literary essay, your claims should be interpretive. In other cases—such as writing a review for a student newspaper or giving a reading recommendation to a friend—an evaluative claim makes more sense. Classify each of the following statements by whether it is interpretive or evaluative.

Interpretive Through his words even more than his actions, the narrator unwittingly shows us why nothing much happens to him by continually demonstrating his utter inability to connect with others or to understand himself. - Evaluative Raymond Carver does a great job of characterizing the narrator-protagonist in his short story "Cathedral." Raymond Carver's story "Cathedral" fails as a story because of its lack of action and unlikeable narrator.

Active verbs that interpret focus on how a literary text works, whereas verbs that evaluate tend to assess based on the writer's preferences or judgment. Classify each of the following verbs by whether it tends to be interpretive.

Interpretive suggests invites poses - Not Interpretive is has

Which of the following is characteristic of a well-structured essay about a literary work?

It presents a clear idea and stays on topic.

Evidence is a key element to the literary essay because it forms the support for your claim. Yet evidence never speaks for itself. Classify each of the following by whether it is something you should do with evidence (especially quotations) in your essay.

To Be Done with Evidence Interpret it. Draw an inference from it. Explain how it demonstrates your specific claim. - Not to Be Done with Evidence Always end a paragraph with it.

The statements below include a topic and a thesis related to each of the following works: Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," Emily Dickinson's poems, and William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Classify each of the following statements by whether it is a topic or a thesis.

Topic Shakespeare uses imagery throughout Hamlet. Emily Dickinson uses formatting in her poems. Self-identity is a prominent theme in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl." -- Thesis Statement The few times that the girl in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" speaks indicate that she does have a definable self-identity. Shakespeare uses nature imagery throughout Hamlet to represent discord in the state of Denmark. The use of dashes in the poems of Emily Dickinson often suggests how sections of a work are connected.

Match each prompt to a potential topic or thesis that it might suggest. Assume that the details suggested about each literary work are conveyed accurately.

Trifles could be staged such that there were obviously separate masculine and feminine spaces in order to ... -Choose a play we have studied for class and describe how it might be staged in such a way as to communicate important themes from the work. ---------- Billy Collins's somewhat satirical poem "Sonnet" uses form in both traditional and nontraditional ways. -Suggest how use of a specific poetic form or subgenre contributes to the meaning in a work from our anthology. ---------- The role of self-identity is especially prevalent in the short story "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid. -Discuss how characters or speakers in one of the works we have read as a class this semester view themselves in relation to the world. ------------ In both "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Boys and Girls" the main characters ... -Write a comparison essay that covers two works from our anthology that we have studied for class this semester.

Effective literary essays tend not only to argue and analyze but also provide a motive for the reader.

True

Literary essays should thoughtfully explore what a literary work communicates and how it does so.

True

When adopting a particular tone and voice for a literary essay you write for class, who should you consider your audience?

a general audience of peers

My favorite poem in "Reading, Responding, Writing" is Aphra Behn's "On Her Loving Two Equally"—not because it expresses my ideal of love, but because it challenges conventional ideals. The main ideal or assumption explored in the poem is that true love is exclusive and monogamous, as the very titles of poems like "How do I [singular] love thee [singular]?" or "To My Dear and Loving [and One and Only] Husband" insist (emphasis added). The mere title of Behn's poem upsets that idea by insisting that at least one woman is capable of "Loving Two Equally." In fact, one thing that is immediately interesting about Behn's poem is that, though it poses and explores a question, its question is not "Can a woman love two equally?" The title and the poem take it for granted that she can. Instead, the poem asks whether equally loving two people lessens the power or quality of love—or, as the speaker puts it in the first two lines, "How strongly does my passion flow, / Divided equally twixt two?" Every aspect of this poem suggests that when it comes to love, as opposed to math, division leads to multiplication. This answer grabs attention because it is so counterintuitive and unconventional. Forget love for just a minute: It's common sense that anything that is divided is smaller and weaker than something unified. In math, for example, division is the opposite of multiplication; if we divide one number by another, we get a number smaller than the first number, if not the second. Although Behn's use of the word flow to frame her question compares love to a river instead of a number, the implication is the same: When a river divides into two streams, each of them is smaller than the river, and its flow less strong; as a result, each stream is more easily dammed up or diverted than the undivided river. So the way the speaker initially poses her question seems to support the conventional view: love is stronger when it "flows" toward one person, weaker

click It's common sense that anything that is divided is smaller and weaker than something unified.

Differently but equally disturbed by the thoughts and emotions stirred by the natural scene before them, both speakers turn to the past, without finding much consolation in it. In Coleridge's poem, that past is specific and personal: what the speaker remembers are his school days, a time when he was just as bored and lonely and just as trapped inside his own head as he is now. Then, as now, he "gazed upon the" fire and "watch[ed] that fluttering" ash (lines 26-27), feeling no more connection then to his "stern preceptor" than he does now to his sleeping baby (38). In Arnold's poem, the past the speaker thinks of is more distant and historical. What he remembers are lines by Sophocles written thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. But in his case, too, the past seems to offer only more of the same instead of any comfort or relief. Just as he now—standing by a "distant northern sea" (20)—hears in the waves "[t]he eternal note of sadness" (14), so "Sophocles long ago"—"on the Aegean"—"[h]eard" in them "the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery" (15-18).

click But in his case, too. In Coleridge's poem, both speakers In Arnold's poem

Although literary essays require interpretive claims as their ultimate concern, that does not mean that evaluative claims have no role whatsoever in literary essays. Where is the most appropriate moment to offer an evaluative claim in a literary essay?

conclusion