Week 5 – Literary Analysis
Literary Analysis
Why Write a Literary Analysis?
Literature teaches us about the value of conflict. We experience conflict in our personal relationships and in our interactions with society. Literary analysis helps us recognize the conflict at work in literature, which gives us greater insight into the personal conflicts that we face. In addition, learning how to closely read, analyze, and critique a text is beneficial beyond a literature course in that it improves our writing, reading, and critiquing abilities overall.
How to Write a Literary Analysis
It is important to understand that some conflicts in literature might not always be obvious. Considering how an author addresses conflict via literary techniques can reveal other more complex conflicts or different kinds of conflicts that interact in multiple ways. Analyzing those more complicated elements can help you discover what literature represents about the human experience and condition. With this in mind, consider that your thesis might be a claim about how two pieces make similar representations, or it can show two different points of view on a similar issue.
The literary analysis should be organized around your thesis (argument), which is the controlling idea of the entire essay. In the Week Three assignment, you identified two conflicts and created an initial thesis statement in relation to two of the literary works from the List of Literary Works. In this assignment, you will refine that thesis even further and build on your overall argument utilizing the literary techniques below. Reflect on feedback from your Instructor and peers in previous weeks to help you revise your rough draft into a final paper.
For this literary analysis, write a 1250- to 1600-word essay in which you do the following:
List of Literary Works
For your Literary Analysis, select at least two works from the List of Literary Works that share the same type(s) of conflict(s). Remember, one of them must be a short story. You can either compare two short stories, a short story and a poem, or a short story and a play.
List of Types of Conflicts Found in Literature
In the document Types of Conflicts Found in Literature, you will find a list of possible conflicts to explore in your Literary Analysis. Please note that you must write about one of the conflicts in the list of literary texts provided. To help you better understand each conflict and how it might be apparent, examples from popular culture have been provided. However, please note that your Literary Analysis must not be about popular culture, television, or movies. The examples provided are just that–examples. Please also note that it is possible for a text to have more than one conflict at work. The repeated references to conflicts in The Simpsons provide further context on how multiple conflicts might be present in a single work. Other examples of conflict are also provided.
List of Literary Techniques
In your analysis, address at least three of the literary techniques (as defined in Chapters 2 and 4) listed in the document Literary Techniques, describing their relationships with the conflict(s)–which provide deeper insight into possible meaning(s) found in literature–you are addressing in your paper.
Assignment Requirements