The Personal Literary Narrative

Example of a personal literary narrative

My previous post, "Fully Empowered by Poetry," models a hybrid genre I wish for my students to imitate: the personal literary narrative.

This type of writing is a combination of three kinds of writing:

1. The personal essay
   It is framed as a personal narrative, and not as a detached academic analysis. It emphasizes individual perspective and attempts to convey the emotion of authentic, lived experience.
2. Literary criticism
   At the same time, integrated within this reflective piece, is literary analysis which fulfills the traditional function of literary criticism: it identifies and interprets both literary methods and themes -- form and content.
3. The blog post
   It has the casualness, brevity, and immediacy of online writing. It also is visually composed, with an accompanying image and text that is set off and spaced for easy consumption. This writing is also embedded in social media (links to the post were disseminated via Google+ and via Facebook, and these elicited immediate responses -- see below). 

Screenshot from my Google+ stream, showing quick response to post

Screenshot from my Facebook stream, showing responses
(see "likes" below)