Literary Analysis Project
Read the novel of your choice from the list. Take notes on the novel using the parameters and question listed below for each type of criticism.
Criticism: The study, analysis, interpretation, and history of literature. It is a dialogue.
“Criticism asks what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth.” Encyclopedia Britannica.
Literary criticism analyzes, interprets, and evaluates works of literature. Though you most often find criticism in the form of an essay, in-depth book reviews may also be considered criticism. Criticism may analyze an individual work of literature. It may also examine an author’s body of work.
Why use literary criticism?
· Literary criticism is the act of interpreting literature.
· Authors present us with work that can have multiple meanings, expecting us to consider thoughtfully---to interpret. Writers and critics build on each others’ understanding of a work of literature in a kind of dialog. Noted authors often have a body of criticism attached to their work. Critics evaluate and debate the ideas of fellow critics. Good criticism can help us develop a better understanding of a work. It can help us develop a point of view about a work, whether or not we agree with the opinions of the critic.
· As you work with literary criticism in your writing it is important that you incorporate your own reactions and points of view.
When looking for criticism, check for:
· Credentials of the writer
· Quality of the sources---journals, books, Websites
· Opinions supported by evidence, relating to:
1. Characterization
2. Voice
3. Style
4. Theme
5. Setting
6. Technical qualities of the writing (artistry, style, use of language)
7. Interpretation
8. Complex ideas and problems
9. Relationship of work to the time, or social, historical, or political trends.
When looking for criticism, AVOID:
· Plot summaries, SparkNotes, Pink Monkey, Cliff Notes, Wikipedia, etc.
· Casual posts on discussion groups
· The works of other students
· Author biography
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Literary Analysis Project
ENG 12
Rhetorical Analysis
After reading the novel---read the following explanation of rhetorical analysis from the University of British Columbia and answer the numbered questions below the quoted explanation for credit:
“When you are asked to do a “rhetorical analysis” of a text, you are being asked to apply your critical reading skills to break down the “whole” of the text into the sum of its “parts.” You try to determine what the writer is trying to achieve, and what writing strategies he/she is using to try to achieve it. Reading critically means more than just being moved, affected, informed, influenced, and persuaded by a piece of writing. Reading critically also means analyzing and understanding how the work has achieved its effect. Below is a list of questions to ask yourself when you begin to analyze a piece of prose. These questions can be used even if you’re being asked only to read the text rather than write a formal analysis (a sample of detailed formal analysis follows later in this section). Keep in mind that you don’t need to apply all of these questions to every text. This rather exhaustive list is simply one method for getting you started on reading (and then writing) more critically.”
Critical Reading Questions:
1. What is the general subject? Does the subject mean anything to you? Does it bring up any personal associations? Is the subject a controversial one?
2. What is the thesis (the overall main point)? How does the thesis interpret/comment on the subject?
3. What is the tone of the text? Do you react at an emotional level to the text? Does this reaction change at all throughout the text?
4. What is the writers’ purpose? To explain? To inform? To anger? To persuade? To amuse? To motivate? To sadden? To ridicule? Is there more than one purpose? Does the purpose shift at all throughout the text?
5. How does the writer develop his/her ideas? Is it through narration, description, definition, comparison, analogy, cause and effect and/or example? Why does the writer use these methods of development?
6. How does the writer arrange his/her ideas? What are the patterns of arrangement? Are they particular to general? Are they broad to specific? Does the writer arrange his/her ideas spatially, chronologically, logically or by order of importance? Or perhaps alternating or block?
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Literary Analysis Project
ENG 12
7. Is the text unified and coherent? Are there adequate transitions? How do the transitions work?
8. What is the sentence structure like in the text? Does the writer use fragments or run-ons? Are the sentences declarative, imperative, interrogative, or exclamatory? Are they simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, short, long, loose, periodic, balanced or parallel? Are there any patterns in the sentence structure? Can you make any connections between the patterns and the writers’ purpose?
9. Does the writer use dialogue and/or quotations? To what effect?
10. How does the writer use diction? Is it formal, informal, technical, jargon or slang? Is the language emotionally evocative? Does the language change throughout the piece? How does the language contribute to the writers’ aim?
11. Is there anything unusual in the writers’ use of punctuation? What punctuation or other techniques of emphasis (italics, capitals, underlining, ellipses, parentheses) does the writer use? Is punctuation over- or under-used? Which marks does the writer use when, and for what effects? Dashes to create a hasty breathlessness? Semi-colons for balance or contrast?
12. Are important terms repeated throughout the text? Why?
13. Are there any particularly vivid images that stand out? What effect do these images have on the writers’ purpose?
14. Are devices of comparison used to convey or enhance meaning? Which types---similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, etc. does the writer use? When does he/she use them? Why?
15. Does the writer use devices of humor? Puns? Irony? Sarcasm? Understatement? Parody? Is the effect comic relief? Pleasure? Hysteria? Ridicule?
Literary Analysis Project
English 12
Literary Theory
Cultural Analysis
What is Cultural Criticism? By Johanna M. Smith
What do you think of when you think of culture? The opera or ballet? A performance of a Mozart symphony at Lincoln Center, or a Rembrandt show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Does the phrase “cultural event” conjure up images of young people in jeans and t-shirts or of people in their sixties dressed formally? Most people hear “culture” and think “high culture.” Consequently, most people, when they first hear of cultural criticism, assume it would be more formal than, well, say, formalism. They suspect it would be “highbrow,” in both subject and style.
Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the goals of cultural criticism is to oppose Culture with a capital C. In other words, to move away from the belief that culture is only and always equated with what we sometime call “high culture.” Cultural critics want to have the term culture refer to popular culture as well as to that culture we associate with the so-called classics. Cultural critics are as likely to write about “Star Trek” as they are to analyze James Joyce’s Ulysses. They want to break down the boundary between high and low, and to dismantle the hierarchy that the distinction implies. They also want to discover the (often political) reasons why a certain kind of aesthetic product is more valued than others.
A cultural critic writing on a revered classic might concentrate on a movie or even comic strip version. Or she might see it in light of some more common form of reading material (a novel by Jane Austen might be viewed in light of Gothic romances or ladies’ conduct manuals), as the reflection of some common cultural myths or concerns (Huckleberry Finn might be shown to reflect and shape American myths about race, concern about juvenile delinquency), or as an example of how texts move back and forth across the alleged boundary between “low” and “high” culture. A history play by Shakespeare, as one group of cultural critics has pointed out, may have started off a popular work enjoyed by working people, later become a “highbrow” play enjoyed only by the privileged and educated, and, still later, due to a film version produced during World War II, become popular again---this time because it has been produced and viewed as a patriotic statement about England’s greatness during wartime (Humm 6-7). Even as this introduction was being written, cultural critics were analyzing the “cultural work” being done cooperatively by Mel Gibson and Shakespeare in Franco Zeffirelli’s movie, Hamlet.
In combating old definitions of what constitutes culture, of course, cultural critics sometimes end up combating old definitions of what constitutes the literary canon, that is, the once-agreed-upon honor roll of Great Books. They tend to do so, however,
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Literary Analysis Project
ENG 12
Cultural Analysis
neither by adding books (and movies and television sitcoms) to the old list of texts that every “culturally literate” person should supposedly know, nor by substituting for it some kind of Counterculture Canon. Rather, they tend to combat the canon by critiquing the very idea of canon. Cultural critics want to get us away from thinking about certain works as the “best” ones produced by a given culture (and therefore as the novels that best represent American culture). They seek to be more descriptive and less evaluative, more interested in relating than rating cultural products and events.
It is not surprising, then, that in an article on “The Need for Cultural Studies,” foru groundbreaking cultural critics have written that “Cultural Studies should . . . abandon the goal of giving students access to that which represents a culture.” Instead, these critics go on to argue, it should show works in reference to other works, economic contests, or broad social discourses (about childbirth, women’s education, rural decay, etc.) within whose contexts the work makes sense\. Perhaps most important, critics doing cultural studies should counter the prevalent notion that culture is some wholeness that has already been formed. Culture, rather, is really a set of interactive cultures, alive and growing and changing, and cultural critics \should be present---and even future-oriented. Cultural critics should be “resisting intellectuals,” and cultural studies should be “an emancipatory project” (Giroux 478-80).
The paragraphs above are peppered with words like oppose, counter, deny, resist, combat, abandon, and emancipatory. What such words suggest---and quite accurately---is that a number of cultural critics view themselves in political, even oppositional, terms. Not only are cultural critics likely to take on the literary canon while offering political readings of popular films, but they are also likely to take on the institution of the university, for that is where the old definitions of culture as High Culture (and as something formed and finished and canonized) have been most vigorously preserved, defended, and reinforced. http://www.usask.ca/english/frank/cultint.htm
Answer the following questions based on the Cultural Theory perspective. Your responses should be thorough, lengthy and supported by information from the story as well as your own background of knowledge.
1. Why do you either identify or resist the cultural values of the piece?
2. Are you an insider or an outsider to the culture in this book? Why?
3. How does the work reflect a particular culture or cultural values?
4. How does the culture reflected in the writing affect your understanding of it? How does your own culture affect your understanding of it?
5. Is the writing an example of high culture or popular culture? Why do you think this?
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Literary Analysis Project
ENG 12
Historical Analysis
What is Historical Criticism?
Historicism
Traditional Historicism is the placement of literature in its relative time and place.
Historical Background – Dates from the 19th century. Historical context used to explain and understand the literary text. The abuse of this approach in part led to New Criticism.
Assumptions – To know a text, one needs to understand its insertion in a particular moment in time, as an expression of a writer influenced by his/her times.
History consists in part of consistent world views that are reflected in art.
Methods – Research an author’s biographical data, as well as historical works from the time in order to show how the text reflects its time: ideology, social, political, economic beliefs and trends, etc.
Criticisms of this approach: Sometimes brings with them a simplistic view of history. History is more complicated, involving a swirl of conflicting attitudes. No history is objective. We always understand history from a set of beliefs, values, etc., rooted in our time. In the worst cases it can lead us away from close reading of the text, subordinating the text to a preconception of history. New Critics believed we should first and foremost read the text closely, on its own terms.
What we can gain from applying this approach? – When done by experienced historicists, a deeper understanding of the historical determinants of meaning in a text is revealed. Knowing the implied context that permeates a text helps us understand it more fully.
______
New Historicism
Historical Background
· Developed in the late 1970’s in response to perceived excesses of New Criticism, which tended to ignore the importance of the historical context of a work of art.
Assumptions
· As with traditional historicism, new historicists argue that we cannot know texts separate from their historical context.
· Unlike traditional historicists, new historicists insist that all interpretation is subjectively filtered through one’s own set of historically conditioned viewpoints. There is no “objective” history.
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Literary Analysis Project
ENG 12
Historical Analysis
· From Foucault, history is an intersection of discourses that establish an episteme, a dominant ideology.
· Texts sometimes reveal a resistance to the episteme, rather than reflect it.
· The real center of inquiry is not the text, but history.
· Each text is only one example of many types of discourses that reveal history.
· To best understand a text, one should look at all sorts of other texts of the time, including social practice (as a kind of text).