Analyzing Literature: A Guide for Students, 2nd Edition

by Sharon James McGee

THINKING ABOUT THE GENRE Literary analysis is a genre that in many ways resembles an argument: you make a claim about the work and support your claim with evidence from the text as well as reasoning and analysis. The purpose of a response to literature is to persuade the readers that your analysis and interpretation of the work are valid, reasonable, and logical. When you write about literature, you participate actively in the construction of knowledge about the text. That is to say, the text itself creates only part of its message. The writer of the work has done his or her part to convey its meaning by using symbols, language, setting, plot, character, foreshadowing, and the like, to suggest the text's message. Unlike "hard sciences," however, literature cannot be empirically tested in the laboratory; its meaning comes from its readers. In fact, literature begs for readers to read, react to, think about, and interpret the text. Having engaged in those steps, the process continues with another step: communicating to others the meaning you, as a reader, have constructed from the text. Your interpretation and analysis, then, add to the body of meaning about the text.

53 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2001