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Elements of Effective Papers About Literature

Things to Consider Before Beginning to Write

1. The Big Picture : An analysis of a text is not a book report or review. You are not being asked if you liked the book or what your experience was reading it. Rather, a literary analysis involves examining specific elements of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elements such as character, setting, tone, etc.—and ideas or larger themes or patterns at work within the text. The elements of story include: plot, character, conflict, setting, narrator, and theme, etc. The elements of style include: structure and organization, point of view, diction, syntax, tone, imagery, and figurative language, etc. Stick to an analysis of the specific text. Don't go off topic or make generalizations about literature as a whole or about society, etc.

An analysis must be credible. So, consider whether or not your thesis is one you can adequately prove and defend. If you have to force your argument overmuch to make it work—in other words, if there are glaring contradictions in your argument or between your argument and the source text—then you want to rethink your approach. Are you really revealing something that originates in the work, or are you projecting your ideas onto the work? There should be sufficient evidence in the text to support your claims, and you should offer enough concurrent analysis to make your claims explicitly clear and developed.

Focus on a specific aspect of a story, poem, novel, or play that is important to our overall understanding of the work as a whole. (What are the elements that make up the setting of a particular short story and why are they significant to the story's theme, for example? What characterizes the speaker's tone, and why is this relevant to our understanding of a particular poem?) Can you help us look at the text in a way that allows us to more fully appreciate its richness or complexity?

For a research paper, you want to consider what you're adding to the body of criticism that already exists. Keep in mind that a successful research paper engages with the ongoing scholarly conversation. Seek out and pay attention to what others have said before you, give them proper credit for their ideas, and add your own fresh perspective.

Practicing and mastering the art of close-reading a text and writing a well-crafted and convincing analysis of that text is generally difficult and time-consuming, but the process of doing so is one of the most effective ways to sharpen your critical thinking skills and to cultivate your capacity for logical reasoning and sound judgment.

2. Subject: What will you write about? Thinking about a text in general terms helps you to thoroughly explore and consider the different ways of looking at or understanding a story or poem. After you’ve thought about a work in a general sense, narrow down your ideas. Decide what interests you most about the work. Is it character development, thematic complexities, or an intriguing use of diction and metaphor, etc? Pick one or two aspects of the story, poem or play that you want to write about in depth and start brainstorming.

3. Sources of Information: If your paper requires the use of critical sources, decide the types of sources you will need. Obviously, you want to find sources of literary criticism. Books and journals in the library and databases such as Academic Search Complete, J STOR, and MLA will help you locate important articles. Narrow down your choices to the articles that will prove the most relevant to the topic of your paper. In addition to literary analysis, you may use other types of resources based upon your chosen angle of criticism. For example, if you want to take a historical or biographical approach to the work or its author, then obviously you will want to look at history books, biographies, interviews, or articles from periodicals, etc. If you want to evaluate a character’s psychology in a text, maybe you will need to read up on some psychoanalysis theory. If you want to examine the portrayal of women in a work, you may want to look up some feminist criticism. Figure out what you want to say about a work and form a research strategy. Feel free to discuss this strategy with me before you begin writing.

Research Tips:

1. Go to the library. The librarians at the reference desk will be more than happy to assist you.

2. Books are obviously a great resource. Here’s how you can find what you’re looking for. Log onto the USC library website. From the libraries homepage, go to the Thomas Cooper Library (main library). Go to books & more, and then select Thomas Cooper library again. Search by keyword. Write down the call number of promising books and seek them out. (If you find just one book on your topic, chances are that that book will be surrounded by other relevant books.) Remember that the works cited page at the back of the book—or at the end of the chapter or essay in an anthology—provides a good list of other resources you might find helpful.

3. Articles are another excellent resource, and they are readily available. If you click on the article databases & indexes tab on the library home page, you can do a broad search of available databases by highlighting English Literature in the Find Resources column. You can also search out specific databases by alphabetical listing. Click on J for JSTOR or M for MLA. Keep in mind that there are two MLA listings. One gives you a list of periodicals, the other actual articles. You want the one that gives you articles. Scroll down the page and click on the entry that reads MLA Modern Language Association International Bibliography (Literature). Enter your search terms. Start with the author and the work as your first two search terms. Your third search term should narrow and refine your search according to your particular topic. For example, the MLA database provides you with three boxes to fill in. Here's how you should use this and other search engines effectively. If you want to write about fashion in William Shakespeare's King Lear, for example, fill in the boxes thus:

· William Shakespeare

· King Lear

· fashion

Note: You should try searching under several terms in this third box to obtain the maximum number of relevant and useful results. For example, if the search term "fashion" fails to yield useful articles, then search under synonyms such as clothing, dress, apparel, costuming (costume), etc. In fact, you should always plan to search under several different search terms.

Many of the articles will have links to their full text versions, and virtually any article can be obtained via interlibrary loan if you start your research early. Other articles will be available in the library journal collections you can locate by call number. (Bring your USC card or cash to make photocopies.)

4. A Writer's Guide such as the The Scott , Foresman Handbook for Writers or Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference will have helpful chapters on how to conduct effective research that you might want to look into. Certainly, these types of texts will also be your primary resource to consult in regard to proper in-text citations and proper formats for the works cited entries on your works cited page. Keep in mind that I subtract points from your final grade if your in-text citations and works cited entries are formatted incorrectly.

Organization

1. Type up an Outline: First and foremost, type up an outline before you begin writing your paper. Know the points you are going to argue and the evidence from the text that you will use to support those points. Figure out how you’re going to structure your argument and what your claims are going to be. An outline seems like more work initially, but it provides you with a clear direction for your argument, helps you to develop that argument, and saves you a lot of work during the revision stage. Starting with an outline makes the writing process easier and almost always improves your final grade.

2. Introductory Paragraph: Your introduction should situate the reader and let him or her know what to expect. What book or poem or play are you discussing? What aspects of it? What topic will you be addressing? Keep the introduction brief, but make the major focus of the paper clear to the reader by stating your thesis. An effective paper grounds the reader in the work and in your topic. Your introduction may summarize the central elements of the work that you're going to discuss, provide your reader with historical or biographical information about the work and its author (judiciously), or highlight the contemporary reception of or primary critical stances in regard to the work, etc. There are numerous ways to effectively draw in an audience. Visually you may want to think about the introduction as an inverted pyramid. It starts with general information about the text, its author, its history, perhaps its current critical reception, etc. to orient your reader. Then, it narrows its focus down to the specific argument you are going to make about the work (i.e. your thesis).

(Don’t announce your topic: "In this paper I will argue…" or "My subject is…." Your topic should be clear from you thesis alone.)

3. Thesis Statement: A thesis statement is a position or proposition that you put forward. In classical essay structure, it comes at the end of the first paragraph. This should be the topic that your essay hinges on. Everything in your entire paper should reflect upon the central ideas presented in this statement. This is your main topic. Be precise, not vague.

ü Precise: While depicting the present moment in Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf carefully situates significant economic and political changes in British society in regard to a radical but fundamental paradigm shift in spatiotemporal perception, distinguishing a prewar, mechanistic world order from a postwar, relative order.

X Vague: In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf makes some interesting parallels to contemporary science.

ü Precise: Bram Stoker fashions Mina as a character that embodies the Victorian ideal of feminine virtue while contrasting this ideal to the female vampires he creates which are aggressive and promiscuous.

X Vague: Bram Stoker depicts female vampires differently than he does Mina.

4. Body Paragraphs: Each paragraph in your paper can be considered its own independent entity. A body paragraph should center on one facet of your main idea. Typically, body paragraphs develop the sub- points underlying your main claim; they build your argument by supporting and enriching the depth and quality of your thesis.

Topic sentence: The first sentence in the paragraph introduces the main idea of the paragraph; like your thesis, your topic sentences should always make a claim. What particular sub-point are you going to defend and develop? You should be able to cover up the entire paragraph and still be able to say what that paragraph is about just by reading the topic sentence. (Topic sentences make or break a paper.) The paragraph that follows should fully and completely develop this one claim. Do not skip around in your paragraph from topic to topic. Develop one sub-point at a time.

· The more specific your thesis and topic sentences are, the stronger your argument.

X Plot Point: Shortly after dividing his kingdom, Lear finds himself lost in the wilderness and wearing a crown of weeds. (Beginning a paragraph with a plot point inevitably leads to plot summary and not to effective analysis.)

X Vague: Fashion plays an important role in the play. (Vague statements fail to tell your reader what you're really writing about and often make it difficult for you as a writer to give your argument a clear direction and to make compelling points.)

ü Precise and Concept-centered: Lear's clothing and dress change throughout the play to indicate both his loss of political power and his descent into madness. (A precise, concept-centered topic sentence gives your argument a clear direction and allows you to fully develop your ideas.)

X Vague: Other qualities besides his fighting ability contribute to Beowulf's success as a warrior.

ü Precise: Though it is not as essential a quality as his fighting ability, Beowulf's keen wit also contributes to his success as a warrior.

(Your thesis and topic sentences should answer the "so what?" question. It should be clear why the topic is important for a richer understanding of the text.)

Concluding line: The last sentence of the paragraph touches upon the ideas contained in the paragraph, connects it to the thesis, and wraps up your sub-point. Generally, the last line of a paragraph should not function as a transition to your next paragraph. Indenting a new paragraph is a visual indication that the writer is moving on to his or her next sub-point. However, the topic sentence of the paragraph that follows may provide a transition if one is necessary. In the above example about Beowulf, for instance, the author's topic sentence succinctly makes the transition from a paragraph about the importance of Beowulf's fighting ability to his status as a successful warrior to the importance of his wit. One possible concluding line that would fit with the subject of the paragraph that begins with the topic sentence above could read:

ü By thwarting Unferth's attempt to shame him, Beowulf demonstrates not only his superior rhetorical skills but, by extension, his superior ability as a warrior.

(Notice that the concluding line finishes making the point with which the author began. It does not lead into his or her next point. That is the job of the author's next topic sentence.)

5. Conclusion: A conclusion is one or more paragraphs highlighting the ideas you presented in your paper. The conclusion should support and reflect upon the original thesis statement. Furthermore, an effective conclusion provides additional analysis and insight pertaining to the work as a whole.