Literary Analysis

Your literary analysis will be 750-1200 words. It may be about any piece of real literature from any genre. You must cite the primary source (the literary work itself) and two secondary sources (academic journal articles–usually found through the library databases). We will discuss the assignment in class, but here are three links to things you should read:

Primary Source

The primary source is the literary work you are analyzing, no matter what the genre.

For example, if you are writing about The Death of Ivan Illyich, that novella is your primary source.

Here is an example of a MLA works cited entry for The Death of Ivan Illyich:

Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich. The Death of Ivan Illyich. 1886. Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude. U. of Minnesota. http://www.tc.umn.edu/~awalzer/3302/readings/tolstoy_death.pdf.

Secondary Sources

A secondary source is one that is about the literary work.

For example, if you find an article about The Death of Ivan Illyich, that article is a secondary source.

Here is an example of a MLA works cited entry for an article about The Death of Ivan Illyich:

Felps, Maryann. “How to Live? What We Can Learn from Ivan Ilych’s Death.” The English Journal, vol. 102 no. 1, 2012, pp 52-56. JSTOR.

NEVER CITE AN ABSTRACT: Abstracts are good for getting an overview of the article so that you can decide whether the article may useful for your paper.

Intrinsic Approaches to Analyzing Literature

Structure

Language

Theme

Character

Setting

Symbol

Point of view

Tone

Extrinsic Approaches to Analyzing Literature

Historical

–The period in which the work is set

–When the work was composed

Sociological

–The structures of society

Political

–Marxist

Moral and Religious

–What is right

–How religions are portrayed

–How religion informs the work

Biographical

–The author’s life’s influence on the work

Feminist

–How women think and write differently

–Recovering lost or neglected works by women

–Patriarchy v. sisterhood