ENGLISH 102: LITERARY ANALYSIS AND LITERARY TERMINOLOGY
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Literary analysis and interpretation begins at the level of the text. Therefore, it is imperative that you have a thorough understanding of what you’re reading. That, of course, requires an understanding of how to read. In short, the first thing to keep in mind when reading a work of literature is that all of the elements of a text—words, references, images, structure, setting, repetition, etc.—are important. This does not mean, of course, that all of the elements of a text are necessarily unified or whole, or that every facet of a text will directly relate to one specific idea or theme, but it does mean that an interpretation of a literary text is predicated on athorough understanding of its various elements. That being the case, I would make the following suggestions for reading:
- Read slowly and carefully
- Attempt to anticipate the action of a story
- Underline seemingly important words and passages
- Make notes in the margins
- Look up unfamiliar words and references
In addition, in order to conduct a literary analysis, you must also understand how the following literary conventions and elements contribute to a work:
Plot
As Chapter One of our text relates, fiction, at least traditionally, operates by certain conventions. In other words, most stories have a plot. Plot, of course, means the arrangement of the action of a story, and most stories, again, traditionally, follow a specific pattern:
- Exposition: opening portion of a story that introduces the characters, situation, and usually the setting
- Rising Action: events that complicate the situation that existed at the beginning of a work
- Climax: the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing; the highest point of the conflict or situation
- Falling Action: the point at which the complications of the rising action are untangled
- Conclusion: point at which the situation that was unstable becomes stable
Setting
Setting is defined as “the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play.” To be sure, a clear sense of the setting of a story will help you better understand the situation, plot, and characters. At the same time, the setting of a story is not always directly communicated, so you may need to make inferences based, for example, on historical, cultural, and/or social references.
Point of View
Point of view is the “point from which people, events, and other details of a story are viewed.” In other words, not all stories are written from the same perspective. For example, some stories are written in first-person, while others are written in second or third-person, and narrators, like characters, often display idiosyncrasies. True to form, then, some narrators are honest, while some are not; some make their “issues” known, and some do not. Regardless, it is imperative that you develop an understanding of who a narrator is, even if he or she takes on an omniscient perspective.
Symbolism
A symbol is defined as “something that represents something else.” As you might guess, symbols are used in literature for a variety of reasons. In one instance, a symbol may be used to represent something which is otherwise unrepresentable. In another instance, a symbol may be used to indirectly communicate something significant about a character or a situation. Regardless, the use of symbols in literature is both specific and deliberate, and, if a story is well-written, symbols will help the reader better understand the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the situation, as well as the theme(s) of a story.
Theme
A theme is defined as a “generalized abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work.” Theme, in other words, is the message or point of a story.
READINGBEYOND THE TEXT: CONTEXT
Many of you, I’m sure, have heard of the phrase “art for art’s sake,” and certainly it has been the prerogative of many literary critics and historians to insist that a work of art—a piece of fiction for example—exists entirely on its own. Literature, however, like other forms of cultural production, is not created in a vacuum. In other words, literature iscreated in a specific context (time, place, and situation), and therefore it is a product of specific historical, cultural, and social circumstances. This is not to say, of course, that a piece of fiction, for example, can not be read, enjoyed, or even understood without a clear sense of the context in which the piece was created. At the same time, without an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical context of a specific piece of literature, the experience and significance of the work is diminished. Context, in other terms, enriches and enlarges the meaning of a text.
LITERARY TERMS
Like other disciplines, the study of literature has its own specific jargon. Therefore, in order to conduct a literary analysis, it is important to understand its terms. Below is a list of some of the more common terms you will encounter, as well as use, throughout the semester:
Action--an imagined event or series of such events
Allegory--as in metaphor, one thing, generally abstract, is implicitly spoken of in terms of something concrete
Allusion--a reference to some famous person, thing, or event, in history, in literature, or in actuality
Anagram--a word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase
Archetype--a plot or character element that recurs in cultural or cross-cultural myths such as “the quest” or “descent into the underworld”
Climax--the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing
Colloquial Diction--a level of language that approximates the speech of “ordinary” people
Conclusion--the fifth part of plot structure, the point at which the situation that was destabilized at the beginning of the story becomes stable once more
Connotation--what is suggested by a word, apart from what it actually describes
Denotation--the dictionary meaning of a word
Doggerel--a derogatory term used to describe poetry whose subject is trite and whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed
Elegy--a mournful, contemplative lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead, often ending in consolation
Epiphany--a moment of insight or revelation by which a character’s life, or view of life, is greatly altered
Exposition--opening portion of a story that introduces the characters, situation, and usually the setting
Falling Action--the fourth part of plot structure, in which the complications of the rising action are untangled
Flashback--a plot-structuring device whereby a scene from the fictional past is inserted into the fictional present
Free Verse--also called open form, it refers to poems characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns
Hyperbole--overstatement characterized by exaggerated language
In Medias Res--in the middle of things
Initiation Story--a kind of short story in which a character first learns a significant, usually life-changing truth about the universe, society, people, herself or himself, etc.
Irony--a situation or statement characterized by a significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant
Magical Realism--a type of narrative in which the magical and mundane are mixed in an overall context of realistic story telling
Metaphor--a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without using like or as
Omniscient Narrator--point of view in which the reader has access to the perceptions and thoughts of all the characters
Parody--a work that imitates another work for comedic or critical effect
Personification--treating an abstraction as if it were a person by giving it human qualities
Plot--the arrangement of the action in a play, poem, or work of fiction
Point of View--also called focus; the point from which people, events, and other details of a story are viewed
Rising Action--the second part of plot structure, in which events complicate the situation that existed at the beginning of the work
Simile--an explicit comparison between two things, generally using like or as to draw the connection
Sonnet--form of poetry consisting of fourteen lines
Stanza--a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing
Symbol--something that stands for something else
Tone--the attitude a literary work takes towards its topic
Theme--a generalized abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work
Unreliable Narrator--narrator whose version of the details of a story is consciously or unconsciously deceiving