How to Write a Literary Analysis Paper (By an eHow Contributor)

The literary analysis paper is a rite of passage for any scholar. No English class is complete without the dreaded literary analysis assignment. With some practice and patience, you don’t need to dread this paper’s yearly occurrence. Literary analysis papers aim to focus your thinking about a text and give a venue through which to express either the journey to an opinion or the validity of the opinion itself.

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Know the two styles of literary analysis papers. The most common is the thesis-driven paper, which is structured around a central thesis or argument about a text you introduce at the beginning of the paper. In a process paper, you explore how you’re processing a piece of text and arrive at a thesis or argument by the paper’s conclusion. This second approach is really about exploring and interacting with a text. Ask your instructor which approach she prefers or which best suits where you’d like to go with the paper.

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Brainstorm your ideas and narrow your focus to one element or angle of the text. Begin your research. Some literary analysis papers require secondary sources. Online journals, literary criticism, and other resources can help you acquire additional information. Take notes and always keep track of your sources in MLA or APA format. If you only need to use the text itself, go through the piece again, making notes of where you plan to draw from for textual evidence in your paper.

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Begin writing your paper. If your paper is thesis driven, be sure you present it clearly early on in the paper.

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Keep your writing in a style and voice that feels natural to you. A literary analysis paper doesn’t have to be dry, and you don’t have to sound like you smoke a pipe and wear blazers with elbow patches. However, you shouldn’t use vulgarity of any kind or be overly familiar. Have fun and be playful in your writing. Include a variety of sentence styles and structures.

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Assume the reader of your paper has read the text you’re talking about and don’t summarize the plot. Literary analysis isn’t a book report. If you use summary, do it only as a support for your central thesis, and keep it brief. Use literary terminology to help you write effectively about what an author is doing, and keep your paper focused on analysis.

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Keep your quotes accurate and use parenthetical documentation rather than footnotes unless told otherwise. Keep all quotations in line with MLA or APA style. Remember, for poetry, always show the line breaks.

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Reread your paper several times. At least once, read your paper out loud so that you can hear your mistakes. When you have at least one or two complete drafts of your paper, give it a title. Always give your essay a title that clearly conveys what the paper is about; if it’s catchy too, that’s a bonus.

Tips & Warnings

• Do your best to approach the text in an original way, but realize that you probably won’t be the first person to see something in a text. It doesn’t matter if the idea isn’t new, as long as it’s new to you.
• Include your works cited and works consulted in MLA or APA format at the end of your paper. Start a works cited on a fresh page if it doesn’t all fit on the last page. Remember to put these in alphabetical order.
• Don’t use weak writing. Weak statements such as “I feel,” “I think,” “seems” and “maybe” sound like you’re apologizing or don’t trust yourself; they lack confidence. Strengthen your paper by cutting these words and leaving just the backbone of the sentence. Confidence in writing, like in life, goes a long way.
• Avoid common errors. Don’t talk about your paper in your paper, for example, saying “In this essay I will show..” or “I couldn’t think about what to write so…” or anything along those lines. Statements like these make teachers cringe. Also, never use second person in your paper. Second person has an air of immaturity that shouldn’t be associated with a literary analysis paper.

How to Develop a Thesis for a Literary Analysis Paper By Thea Theresa English

When developing a thesis for a literary analysis paper, it’s important to gather all the research you need first because it will be difficult to come up with a workable thesis if you rely mainly on knowledge you already have about the author and the text you plan to analyze. Also, write an outline of the themes you plan to cover in the analysis so that you can come up with a clear thesis that will be the groundwork for the rest of the paper.

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Examine different scholars’ opinions of the text you’re analyzing. For example, if you’re analyzing Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and you want to argue that this text has elements of genealogy, feminism and African themes, read the works of scholars who hold to this opinion as well as those who disagree.

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Avoid generic thesis statements. Your thesis statement should be specific and arise out of the research you’ve done. Instead of writing “William Faulkner’s work was an example of traditional Southern writing”, you can write “William Faulkner’s writings reflect the political and social tensions of the South during the early 20th century.”

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Write a list of thesis statements before writing the paper. This helps you get an idea of what you want to do with the paper after looking over the research you gathered. Before doing the research, you may have had a certain thesis statement in mind. You may want to change it, however, after getting more information.

4.Talk to your professor. He can help you come up with a clear thesis that will guide the rest of the paper. If you’re analyzing F. Scott Fitzegerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” ask your professor about possible ways to approach the book. Your professor may advise you to examine the modernist themes in the book.