Nine Ways of Developing a Literary Analysis

As my literature students are grappling with drafting their analyses of various literary works, I want to help them do so by suggesting some concrete ways by which they can develop an analysis. In a finished essay, the analysis portion should be tightly ordered in support of a central argument. However, during the drafting process, analysis really has to be less organized. The clearest expression of ideas often emerges from a critical mass of meaningful mess.

What follows are directions for making that mess (and making it meaningful). It may seem strange to emphasize messiness, but I want my students to feel comfortable in letting their provisional writing be much less ordered and clear than their finished literary arguments. I am not at all pulling back from the need to move from fuzzy ideas to clear claims. I strongly believe students should arrive quickly at a working thesis statement and circulate that claim for early feedback (as described in my previous post).

But a working thesis statement does not a finished paper make. And even though a good thesis statement provides a kind of outline for developing one's complete argument, that outline can at first feel pretty sparse.  A working thesis works if it does work -- and often that work is a meaningful return to the texts so that one can support and improve that claim.

A messy mass is needed during drafting because you need stuff through which your thesis can take its evolving shape. You need something that you can revise and order into a more detailed outline for a finished paper. You need some meaningful accumulation of relevant material. Here, then, are some starting places for the student who is already into his or her topic, but who still needs to do the heavy lifting of coming up with stuff to say in their evolving analysis.

1. Curate A Set of Quotations

While keeping your working thesis in mind, return to your primary text or texts and type out the quotations that seem more relevant to your developing claim. You can see how Leah did this when developing her idea about appropriate Shakespeare plays for high school students. Or, see how Paul did this when combing The Tempest for any quote that might pertain to his idea of seeing a Shakespeare play as a video game.

How would a set of quotations help one develop a literary argument? Obviously, one must support one's literary arguments with direct reference to the text. Some quotations may be relevant to cull out for close study but they may be too long or complex to quote entirely. That's why it's also good to practice the next suggested approach.

2. Summarize the Text(s)

Often our best ideas come in simply relating in our own words the basic plot or the progress of ideas within a literary text. In fact, you soon start to see that summary and interpretation are almost seamless. Our minds are so geared to finding patterns and to making judgments that we often leap from summary to interpretation. Consider concluding your summary with some personal observations or some questions to yourself.

How will a summary of your text(s) help you develop your essay? It is often the case that a text must be introduced by way of a brief summary, or a particular argument will not make sense unless the reader is informed or reminded of events.

3. Discuss the Genre

Because literary genres structure our expectations and experience of literary texts, it is fairly certain that one can find significant observations to make by talking through how the text(s) in question reflect or make exceptions to their genre. Some texts are multi-generic, or they cross genres. Any of that is opening up the text for interesting analysis.

How can discussing the text's genre help in developing your literary argument? Mentioning genre immediately puts a text into a context -- the other literary works that make up that genre, as well as the historical period and place where that genre started or thrived. This opens many opportunities for further discussion, as my next suggestions identify.

4. Compare the Text

Even if one's working thesis statement is not an overt comparison, talking about one text in terms of another is a simple and fruitful way of generating things to say. As I said in the previous suggestion, one can look at texts of the same genre, or texts of different genres but of the same theme. Another way to compare is to look at texts of the same period or setting, even if they differ in genre or theme. Sometimes one can compare the text to its translation, or a translation to its original. This always yields something of note.

How can comparing the text help in developing one's literary argument? Comparisons are doorways to doing close readings of specific literary features and functions. Some of those are likely to relate to your developing thesis and can turn into supporting proof for a finalized claim.

5. Do an Incoherent Close Reading

Wait a minute! This coherence idea seems to be very important! And it is. But sometimes you need to relax from trying to prove (argue) your thesis so that you can prove (test, try out) your text. By "incoherent," I only mean that you are letting go of your working thesis, momentarily, to return to your primary text and do a close reading for form: plot, character, setting, length, imagery, figures of speech, rhyme, rhythm, etc. Here's a student example.

How can doing an incoherent close reading help towards making a coherent literary argument? As I modeled in my earlier post about annotating a poem for analysis, what one initially analyzes isn't always going to be marshaled behind one's final argument, but you sometimes need to return to casting the net a bit more widely. After you have done that less organized close reading for form, you can then go back and look for how items may work together toward common themes or rhetorical effects. This relates closely to the next suggestion;

6. Find Patterns in the Text

This follows readily upon the prior suggestion of doing a less coherent close reading, but it is also a great next step after any of the stated approaches. Much of literary analysis boils down to making generalizations about specifics. Well, once you have found lots of specifics, it's time to abstract those back into generalizations. This selection process -- as you identify and bring together varied aspects of the text and refer to them together -- is really the interpretive process at work. All categorization is a kind of interpretation. Try to state the patterns as clearly as you can, and then see if those patterns relate to your working thesis.

How can finding patterns in the text help one develop one's literary argument? When you find some kind of order to what you are analyzing by identifying similarities of form or a combination of things that produce a given effect -- you let go of many details and ideas that you might have focused on earlier. Think of finding patterns as a way of excluding things that are less relevant to your claim.

7. Identify Omissions

Much comes to mind as soon as one realizes what might have been present in a literary text but for some reason is not. As you try to speculate as to the reason for the omission, you are making an interpretive claim. This can relate to expectations that come from specific genres, or just from literary form in general. Why is there no concrete imagery in this poem? How come this plot lacks a clear crisis moment? Why does this production of this play omit certain scenes or lines? Make the absence present and you'll have something to talk about. What did the author exclude that he/she might have included?

How can finding omissions help one to develop one's literary argument? It can bring focus upon what an author consciously did include or emphasize whenever one identifies what the author left in the wings. Hopefully, the observations one makes in this regard will relate to one's developing central claim.

8. Say Why You Care

After taking several stabs at analysis, perhaps following several of the above suggestions, pull back from your objective analytical mode and get personal again. Write a blog post, or have a conversation with another human being, in which you try to articulate why any of this continues to interest you.

How can writing personally about why you care be relevant to developing a formal (and less personal) literary analysis? This suggestion does not seem analytical at all. And after all, formal literary analysis is generally depersonalized on purpose. Why take the time to talk about one's personal connection to any of this? 

By taking time away from objective analysis to write more personally, you can reconnect with why you love that literature, or what intrigued you into taking the stance that you have been developing. It's surprisingly easy to lose touch with the stuff that truly mattered to you while you are trying so hard to meet expectations of writing a legitimate analysis. Remember that the strongest way to legitimate literary analysis is to tie it into something you really care about. 

9. Take Your Half-Baked Ideas to Others

Unlike traditional writing processes, with online writing we take hold of the naturally social nature of online content. We also respect the power of provisional knowledge and interim content. And so, just as I suggested previously regarding sharing one's working thesis statements, take some of the writing you have drafted by following any of the previous suggestions and actively seek feedback from others.

Why would sharing one's unfinished, half-baked drafts do any good in developing the final paper? Four reasons. First, in the act of presenting one's draft to someone else you have to introduce what you are doing and why you are doing it. This gets you focused on your thesis and your overall purpose. Every time you attempt to articulate your main claim you challenge and hopefully strengthen that claim. The second reason is that you are likely to get feedback. People are surprisingly willing to help you think things through and make your claims. This can be done online and offline, of course. A third reason to share is that it is a way of strengthening friendships. Friendships often grow in the act of discussing interesting literature. That is one of the joys of literature -- sharing one's experience of it. A fourth reason, you are building an audience for your more completed, final analysis.