When writing an essay that analyzes literature, observe the following conventions:
Give your paper an academic title.
Academics typically title their essays with a title and subtitle, separated by a colon (:). The main title should be a creative attention-grabber; the subtitle then summarizes the paper’s topic or thesis. Some examples of good titles that students have submitted to me:
Write in the present tense.
When you discuss what happens in a novel, use the present tense, even if the author is long dead or the events of the novel happened long ago. The book lives in the present, and literary analysts treat it accordingly.
Introduce authors and texts correctly.
The first time you introduce an author, give his or her full name. After that, use last name only.
The first time you introduce a text, call out the author: for example, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Italicize titles of books, plays, and epics. Put the titles of poems, short stories, articles, essays, and chapters in quotation marks.
Examples: Song of Solomon, Death of a Salesman, The Odyssey, “To His Coy Mistress,” “The Kiss,” “Civil Disobedience.”
Be consistent and do this for titles throughout your essay.
Use proper technique for quoting from texts.
Literary analysis is an interpretive act. Presenting an interpretation is making a claim. And a claim needs the support of reasons and evidence. That is why you need to quote, and quote often, from the text. See the webpage Skillful Quoting Technique for advice on how to do this well. Literary analysis uses MLA Format for citing sources, which means you will need to do parenthetical citations and append a Works Cited list to the end of your paper.
Posted by Justin Wells : 05/27/2009