A literary criticism essay is also known as a literary analysis essay, and its success depends mainly on your ability to do two things well — 1. Familiarizing yourself with approaches and concepts of literature and 2. Bringing your unique interpretation to a literary work. These two things should be carefully balanced.
It has been said that literary interpretation is personal and that no one meaning can be assigned to a poem, short story, or novel. While this may be true to a certain extent, for your work to be taken seriously, you need to place your analysis within an established theoretical framework that anyone who studies literature can recognize or contextualize.
This means learning about the different approaches to literature. This has been outlined in a fine book called A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, which I lean on heavily for my article. In addition, you should also be familiar with literary concepts such as rhetorical devices and how they work toward contributing to the greater effect and meaning of a literary piece as a whole.
What is a literary analysis essay?
A literary analysis essay is a critical form of academic writing that seeks to analyze the literary merits of a work. Literary analysis and criticism is a unique form of academic writing. In a previous article — Academic vs Professional Writing — I outlined how academic writing, compared to business writing, can be more formal and restrictive, as in the case of scientific writing meant for academic journals. However, it’s different for literary criticism.
While science writing avoids ornate forms of expression, the best literary criticism embraces it. Let’s take an example from Edgar Alan Poe:
Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo with a very caustic review of a very admirable poem. The god asked to be shown the beauties of the work; but the critic replied that he troubled himself only about the errors. Hereupon Apollo gave him a sack of unwinnowed wheat — bidding him pick out all the chaff for his pains. Now this fable does very well as a hit at the critics; but I am by no means sure that the Deity was in the right.
This is the exact opposite of the approach that is often taken in scientific writing. Poe is making use of grandiloquent expression, that is language meant to impress. He uses allusion to make reference to two things. The first is an obscure literary work (Bocallin’s Advertisements from Parnassus), which only a handful of highly educated men would be aware of.
The second is to classical Greek mythology and literature. Mount Parnassus in Greek legend was sacred to Apollo and the Muses, the God and spirits of poetry and beauty. Also, Poe’s strong opinion is worth paying attention to: “I am by no means sure that the Deity was in the right.”
He is doing nothing short of challenging a God. Apollos’s opinion to an average reader would seem commonsensical and logical. However, Poe uses disagreement with Apollo as a chance to establish his personality as a critic — contrarian, mischievous, querulous, and nitpicky.
Maybe you should not go as far as Poe, but there is nothing wrong with allowing your personal opinion to shine through in your literary criticism. Sometimes, your professor may even require you to express how a literary work personally affects you in terms of mood and emotion. After all, you first have to experience and understand this personal effect before communicating it using universal literary concepts.
Steps to writing a literary analysis essay
As mentioned earlier, writing proper literary analysis begins with your familiarity with literary concepts and approaches. This basis is required for the work of reading, analyzing, and understanding a literary work. The diagram below shows the steps to follow to complete this process:
1. Be familiar with necessary literary concepts
Literary concepts such as literary devices, critical approaches to literature, tone of voice, perspective/point of view, irony, and so on are indispensable in literary analysis. These are the necessary tools you need to understand and describe what authors' intentions are, how they tried to achieve their intentions, and how effective they were in doing so.
Common literary devices include metaphor, simile, imagery, alliteration, allegory, and so on. Critical approaches to literature include the biographical-historical approach, the formalistic approach, the psychological approach, and so on.
Long before you even start writing your literary analysis essay, you should become familiar with these literary devices and concepts. This would mean that you’re able to recognize them in the works that you have to analyze. In addition to this, you should also be familiar with literary approaches.
2. Choose a literary approach
The next step is to choose a literary approach to tackle the assignment. By now, it should go without saying that your assignment has already been chosen. Now, you need to decide what literary approach to apply to it.
In all, there are roughly nine literary approaches depending on how you look at it. These approaches range from traditional approaches that simply look at the basics of character, setting, and plot. Other approaches focus on the historical and biographical contexts of the work.
Other more avant-garde approaches will look at cultural perspectives. For example, looking at texts from the perspective of minorities whose views were previously ignored, such as women, African Americans, and indigenous tribes in the case of the United States. The table below gives a brief over of seven different approaches to literature:
Literary approach | Description | Example |
1. The Classic Approach | I use this term to describe traditional literary concepts such as 1. Setting, 2. Plot, 3. Character, 4. Style, 5. Atmosphere, and Themes. Each one of these components are discussed in terms of how to contribute to the overall impression of the literary piece. | How does Poe use plot in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to shock the reader? |
2. Historical-Biographical | This takes into account the historical and biographical context of the literary piece. | How did Elizabethan attitudes toward Jews affect Shakespeare’s characterization of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? |
3. Moral-Philosophical | This attempts to teach a lesson through a story or character flaw | What does the fate of Antigone say about the nature and consequences of pride? |
4. Formalism | Close reading of a text that stands on its own merit without reference to historical context or authorial biography. | How does Ben Johnson’s “My Picture Left In Scotland” prove the conceit “Love is ather deaf than blind” in terms of form, meter, and “conceit”? |
5. The Psychological Approach | This uses concepts of the subconscious as discussed by Freud to discover the hidden motives of the character | How does the Oedipus complex influence the thinking, desires, and actions of Hamlet? |
6. Mythological and Archetypal Approaches | This is based on the idea that all human stories across cultures are connected by universal myths and tropes that stem from a collective ancient human memory. | Hamlet’s death and that of his immediate family members represent the hero sacrificing himself and family to purge the body politic of the original sin of the ing being slain by his own brother. |
7. Cultural Studies Approaches | This represents criticism based on formerly suppressed or newly emerging cultural perspectives | How does The Color Purple shed light on how the struggles of Black women stand apart from those of Black men? |
| This is criticism based on Feminist perspectives | In the Twelfth Night, the plot device that requires her to take on a man's disguise also turns Viola into a woman with unusual levels of autonomy in a man's world. |
Now, this is by no means the definitive list of literary approaches. However, the important thing is to ensure that you are fully familiar with every aspect of whatever approach that you decide to go with. This involves a close and careful reading of several examples of the approach that you find most appealing.
Also, you don't necessarily have to choose or go with just one approach. You can synthesize various approaches in your analysis. The only thing that matters is that the approach you choose serves the purpose of creating an analysis that is accurate, original, and insightful.
Example using the Historical-Biographical Approach: “The Harlem Dancer”
We can use Claude McKay’s “Harlem Dancer” (1917) as an example of the Historical-Biographical approach. The poem at first glance has a straightforward interpretation. A man at a bar or club feels lonely and alienated despite being in a crowded place of merriment. He sees that alienation and loneliness reflected in the face of a dancer in that club or bar.
But how does a Historical-biographical approach bring anything new to the interpretation of this poem? Let's take a look at the poem one more time to see.
Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.
The poem’s mood is decidely lonely and alienated. In the dancer, we have a young lady with a “falsely-smiling face” putting on a dazzling performance that mesmerizzes everyone, while she stands apart from the atmosphere of mirth and merriment depicted in the poem.
A Historical-Autobiographical approach would discover that Claude McKay was projecting unto the dancer his own feelings of alienation and homesickness. Claude McKay was born in Jamaica and lived an unhappy life in big cities all over Europe and the United States.
The “sound of blended flutes” (Line 3) would have been reference to his home in Jamaica. However, Lines 7-8 makes this more clear:
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
As a Jamaican, the poet would have experienced several hurricanes and witnessed how the thinnest and tallest of coconut trees often survived these storms. Therefore, we can conclude that McKay saw in the dancer someone deracinated and alienated from surroundings in which they are unable to feel happy or content.
Sometimes, you can benefit from using a mixed approach. This means analyzing the literary piece from different angles based on the various critical literary approaches. For example, you could mix the biographical-historical approach with a feminist approach. Let's take an example.
The mixed approach: Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea
I will attempt a critical literary analysis of Wide Sargasso Sea. It is a novel written by the English-Caribbean author Jean Rhys in 1966. It can be seen as an answer to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which was published in the Victorian era in 1847. One of the characters in the Brontë novel is Bertha Mason.
She is portrayed as a crazy wife living in the attic. The heroine of the novel Jane Eyre is deprived of marriage and fulfillment with the "noble" hero of the novel named Rochester because he is obligated to this mad wife that he cannot get rid of legally.
Everything is resolved when Bertha, in a fit of insanity, sets Rochester's Thornton mansion on fire and dies by jumping off the balcony. Finally, Jane and Rochester can marry and live happily ever after. Not everyone agreed with this happy and convenient ending. Who was Bertha Mason? How did she go mad? What role did Rochester play in her demise?
Wide Sargasso Sea attempts to answer this question. Bertha Mason was a character with a Creole background. This means she was a white woman born in the Caribbean, belonged to the plantation class of the society, and was associated with slavery.
Jean Rhys was also of Creole heritage. She grew up the child of a Welsh doctor and a White Creole mother of Scottish ancestry on the island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean. The character of Bertha spoke to her.
This motivated her to write a novel that gave Bertha a background and motivation. A literary analysis essay that ties teh historical facts of Rhys' life can help explain her motivations for writing the novel.
We see that Bertha's madness is the result of her alienation even before she meets Rochester. Bertha is not even Bertha. This was a name given to her by her husband Rochester. Her original name is Antoinette.
She is first alienated from the society that she grows up in. She is a White woman who grows up in a society where she and her class are understandably despised by the Black descendants of freed slaves. Jean Rhys because of her knowledge and experience of growing up in the Caribbean provides a vivid description of the region's landscape, beauty, and complicated racial tensions.
She later is married off to Rochester, who is only interested in her family's wealth. Because of the patriarchal nature of the marriage system of that era, she now belongs to Rochester. She is deprived of her name Antoinette and given "Bertha."
Bertha is a creation of Rochester. This alienation first from society and then from self leads to her madness. In the last chapter of Wide Sargasso Sea, the act of arson featured in Jane Eyre is recounted as a dream by Antoinette:
In my dream I waited till she began to snore, then I got up, took the keys and let myself out with a candle in my hand. It was easier this time than ever before and I walked as though I were flying. . . . All the people who had been staying in the house had gone, for the bedroom doors were shut, but it seemed to me that someone was following me, someone was chasing me, laughing. Sometimes I looked to the right or to the left, but I never looked behind me for I did not want to see the ghost of the woman they say that haunts this place.
Antoinette has just escaped Grace Poole, who acts as her jailer. She is the woman snoring in the excerpt. Taking keys is seen as an act of liberation. In the last two sentences, it is suggested that she is being haunted. Something is going on here. The person "chasing me, laughing" is actually Bertha.
Bertha is the mad self that Rochester has created for Antoinette. There is a battle between Antoinette and Bertha. The fire and suicide in the novel are portrayed as a moment of clarity and sanity where Antoinette liberates herself from the mad woman that Rochester created. Such an approach would result in a literary analysis essay that fuses feminist concepts with the socio-biographical history of a region.
3. Devise your thesis statement or main idea
After choosing your approach, you need to develop your thesis statement. The thesis statement is the most important part of your essay. You need to first write the thesis statement and create a detailed outline based on that thesis statement.
When writing your outline, you should continually go back to your thesis statement to make sure that you are not losing track of the nuances developed in the main idea of the thesis statement. As a guideline, here are four steps to follow when writing a thesis statement.
1. Do the reading. Locate credible books and sources on the topic to familiazrize yourself with the topic. Think of asking your course lecturer for recommendations. Don’t rely on just a lazy Google Internet search. Also, think of visiting the library.
2. Develop your position carefully. After doing the reading, apply critical thinking to synthesize your own postion or new ideas on the topic. It would be best to consider opposing viewpoints and compare and contrast them to come up with a middle ground or even novel position.
3. Refine your position. After writing down your initial thesis statement go over it and see how it can be improved. You can even think of asking for opinions from friends or professors to see what changes or improvements can be made.
Ideally, a thesis statement should be a single sentence. But considering how hard they are to formulate, it is OK to develop a thesis statement that includes one to three sentences. Below, we provide examples of literary thesis statements.
Examples of literary thesis statements
1. Thesis statement comparing Marrysong and Silver wedding. Marrysong" by Dennis Scot and “Silver Wedding” by Vernon Scannel both emphasize the frustrations of marriage from a male perspective; however, Marrysong manages to preserve a romantic and even inspiring view of marriage, whereas "Silver Wedding" descends into heavy resignation and even despair.
2. Thesis statement on Brooks use of rhetoric in “the mother.” In “the mother,” Gwendolyn Brooks uses repetitive rhetorical devices to express a mother’s ambiguity, grief, and mourning over her aborted babies, and in the process crafts a moving dramatic monologue and elegy with a lasting impression.
3. “The Wild Swans at Coole” as personal allusion. W.B. Yeats’ Wild Swans at Coole represents subtle personal allusion that involves the poet contemplating on Wild Swans and their companionship and how it reflects something deep and personal that he has lost and now mourns.
4. Contextualize concerning other literature
When writing literary analysis, always refer to the relevant works of others. In any class, your instructor or professor would expect you to engage with the major works of commentary or criticism in a text. Literary analysis at its best represents dialog or conversation with the author and his intentions, as well as with the other critiques who have commented on your work.
Your literary essay provides you with the opportunity to show how skillful you are in engaging other’s commentary. How much do you agree with what they have to say? How do you think their argument can be improved, and lastly what unique contribution can you make?
The following is an excerpt of Andrew Gates’ literary criticism of Yeat’s Wild Swans at Coole:
William Butler Yeats’ “The Wild Swans at Coole” appeared during a significant moment in the poet’s life and stands therein as a crucial turning point in his relation to the poetic task. Daniel Tobin comments on the unhappiness of the poet during its 1916 composition; Yeats faced a rejection by Iseult Gonne after years of equally fruitless courtship of her mother, his beloved Ireland was in the midst of turmoil and rebellion, and, at the age of fifty-one, Yeats saw his autumn years rapidly descending upon him (Tobin, 57).
Here, the author relies on Tobin to justify his historical-biographical approach in giving context to the sadness that Yeat displays in the poem. Andrew Gates cites a credible author to support his historical-biographical approach to analyzing Yeats’ poem.
5. Bring your unique Interpretation to the analysis
More important than anything else, you should bring your own unique perspective to an analysis. This does not mean reinventing the wheel. There is no need to come up with weird and outlandish new theories for your analysis. Instead, pay attention to how the piece of literature personally affects you and try to give voice to that feeling.
Instead, your analysis should be based on deep familiarity with the text, deep knowledge of the broad principles of literary theory, and conversation with the broader literature or commentary on the literary text. Sometimes, it’s enough to contrast and compare two interpretations that you find appealing and find a middle ground, as I mentioned earlier. The more deeply you study the text, the more likely, you can come up with insightful or interesting commentary.
References
Farnsworth, W. (2010). Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. David R. Godine.
Guerin, W. L. Labor, E. Morgan, L., Reesman, C.J., & Willingham, J.R. (2005). A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford University Press.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, October 25). How to Write a Literary Criticism Essay. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-write-a-literary-criticism-essay |
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