How To Write a Literature Paper

How to Write a Literature Paper

From the owl@purdue

A Key First Step Before Any Writing

Although diving into the writing project might look appealing, writing a paper about literature just can't happen until you read and re-read. You will almost certainly jot notes and questions in the margins or in your notebook while you read, but drafting a paper after reading a piece of literature only once will give you poor results.

Part One: Nine Steps towards Outlining Your Paper

Step One: Begin by re-reading all your marginal notes or other writing about the piece of literature (including class notes or journal entries). Look for repeated impressions or related reactions. Then turn to those parts of the text you liked or which you find intriguing. What key words come to mind as you re-read these notes and these chunks of text?

Step Two: Now focus on words in the text. Jot down definitions for any terms that are unfamiliar to you or those whose usage seems odd, unusual, or unique. Observe the etymologies (i.e., roots) of significant words whose usage seems to be archaic or uniquely determined by the text. Jot down key words from the text that you think you will need to define.

Step Three: Turning back to the text, look for echoes of your last list of key words in synonyms or derivations from them in the text. What words might contrast with the key words you have selected?

Finally, draw some connections between key words in the text, marking where you have questions or where something seems particularly important to you, no matter how cryptic it may seem at the moment.

Step Four: Go through your marginal notes again and collect some ideas. Jot down in the box to the right what seems most important in your notes. What images are key to the piece? What formal features draw your attention? What elements of the text speak to different critical stances?

Step Five: Now look over your lists. Do any of the ideas fit together? Do any appear contrary or paradoxical? Can you see a central issue beginning to coalesce? Can certain ideas be subordinated to, or understood as subsets of, more general concepts?

List One:

List Two:

Step Six: You will discover a problem to discuss by formulating as exactly as you can why the terms or significations are cryptic, parallel, contrary, or interdependent. Imagine phrasing this problem in the form of a question. Jot down at least one question you could pursue at this point. (If you can't limit yourself to one question, jot down several to continue thinking about.)

Step Seven: Go back to the text and your marginal notes and search for passages of text that best embody the concerns addressed by your question. How will you begin to phrase a response to your question? The very act of interpretation assumes that the meaning of a text is incomplete without the critic's response. All readers bring to a text their own unique intermeshing of reading and life-experiences that qualify them to give a response. (This response is what eventually will become your thesis statement-namely that statement which succinctly addresses the question you see emerging from the language of the text.)

Step Eight: Look closely again at the crafted language you are working on, and see if you can engage it by filling in gaps, identifying implications, thinking about what unstated assumptions (i.e., subtext) it is using. Address this open quality of the text, and begin to list some point of evidence for your answer.

Step Nine: Free-write some informal paragraphs-as loosely connected as you please-with an aim to circle round and precisely define your question or problem together with possible answers to it.

Part 2: When you are ready to begin writing...

Your Thesis Statement: If you've already re-read the text you'll be writing about and your notes, and if you're sure you know what you want to concentrate on, write out a tentative thesis statement-the sentence that best focuses on your main point in the paper.

Step One: Using any other notes you have (including responses to Preparing to Write a Literature Paper - I), jot down lists of the evidence you can use to support your thesis. Your lists could look more like a formal outline, or they can just be lists that will point you to appropriate notes or marginal notations. If you can organize your evidence at this point, cluster the evidence into sub-topics that might turn into paragraphs in your draft. Use the box at the right to list your evidence.

Step Two: Quick-drafting means getting sentences and paragraphs onto paper as quickly as possible but with more attention to sentences and paragraphs than when free-writing. Don't stop to sort through a problem sentence or to find exactly the right word, but try to capture as much of your thinking as possible. In particular, start chunking ideas into possible paragraphs. Quick-draft as much of the paper as you can without referring directly to notes, and insert some reminder to yourself in the places where you'll need to incorporate textual evidence later.

Step Three: After quick-drafting your paper, ask yourself if the paper topic is worth pursuing. You don't have too much time invested in this paper yet, so if the topic isn't intriguing or responsive to the assignment, you can begin over again.

If the quick-draft is worth working on, take stock of your tentative thesis and revise it now. You undoubtedly discovered new insights as you quick-drafted, and those insights can help you improve the stated focus of the paper.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MY GENERAL THOUGHTS ON ANALYSIS PAPERS

•    As stated in the syllabus, these analysis papers should focus on some aspect of the text that you find interesting, significant, or you feel merits discussion.

•    Your thesis should not be something entirely obvious, but it doesn't have to be completely "out there” either. Be sure to say something that is debatable, something that you will have to prove. It has to be debatable, meaning you have to be presenting an argumentative claim that tells readers how to read, interpret, or view the book or understand the characters' motivations/actions in a particular way.  Ask yourself would the entire class likely agree with my thesis statement-- if the answer is yes it is very likely not debatable enough.

•    Don't think that you have nothing interesting to say because it's all been said before. Most everything has been said before--what matters is that you are critically thinking about literature.

•    Practice critical reading: as you mark up your text with notes, questions, and ideas, make use of literary terms. Once you sit down to write, you'll find you've already done a good deal of the work.

•    Take advantage of the prewriting techniques--brainstorming, clustering, listing, freewriting. As you do these exercises, don't worry about grammar, or sounding academic or brilliant. Just get your ideas down.

•    Write about what interests you!

•    As you begin to shape your essay, think narrow, not broad. Rather than talking briefly about lots of things, talk in depth about one or two things.

•    When you start writing your rough draft, begin with the part you feel most comfortable about. This will give you confidence, and will help you figure out the rest of what you want to say.

•    Back up your assertions with specific evidence, and be sure to follow up each quotation with an explanation of what it shows about the work.

•    Stay focused--does all your evidence relate to and advance your thesis? Resist the temptation to offer brilliant insights that have no relation to your thesis.

•    When writing, assume that your reader hasn't read the story or the poem. Be sure to explain your ideas fully.

•    Use transition words and phrases to help organize your thoughts and move your paper along smoothly.

•    Be open to new possibilities. Along the way, you may have to re-work your thesis, your evidence, or your entire focus.

•    When revising, be brutal. Don't just fix your grammar and spelling.

•    Get feedback! (Remember the Writing Center in Scholar's Hall!)  

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What makes for a good literature paper?

An argument

When you write an extended literary essay, often one requiring research, you are essentially making an argument. You are arguing that your perspective-an interpretation, an evaluative judgment, or a critical evaluation-is a valid one.

A debatable thesis statement

Like any argument paper you have ever written for a first-year composition course, you must have a specific, detailed thesis statement that reveals your perspective, and, like any good argument, your perspective must be one which is debatable.

Examples

You would not want to make an argument of this sort:

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a young man who seeks revenge.

That doesn't say anything-it's basically just a summary and is hardly debatable.

A better thesis would be this:

Hamlet experiences internal conflict because he is in love with his mother.

That is debatable, controversial even. The rest of a paper with this argument as its thesis will be an attempt to show, using specific examples from the text and evidence from scholars, (1) how Hamlet is in love with his mother, (2) why he's in love with her, and (3) what implications there are for reading the play in this manner.

You also want to avoid a thesis statement like this:

Spirituality means different things to different people. King Lear, The Book of Romans, andZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance each view the spirit differently.

Again, that says nothing that's not already self-evident. Why bother writing a paper about that? You're not writing an essay to list works that have nothing in common other than a general topic like "spirituality." You want to find certain works or authors that, while they may have several differences, do have some specific, unifying point. That point is your thesis.

A better thesis would be this:

Lear, Romans, and Zen each view the soul as the center of human personality. Then you prove it, using examples from the texts that show that the soul is the center of personality.

What kinds of topics are good ones?

The best topics are ones that originate out of your own reading of a work of literature, but here are some common approaches to consider:

·         A discussion of a work's characters: are they realistic, symbolic, historically-based?

·         A comparison/contrast of the choices different authors or characters make in a work

·         A reading of a work based on an outside philosophical perspective (Ex. how would a Freudian read Hamlet?)

·         A study of the sources or historical events that occasioned a particular work (Ex. comparing G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion with the original Greek myth of Pygmalion)

·         An analysis of a specific image occurring in several works (Ex. the use of moon imagery in certain plays, poems, novels)

·         A "deconstruction" of a particular work (Ex. unfolding an underlying racist worldview in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness)

·         A reading from a political perspective (Ex. how would a Marxist read William Blake's "London"?)

·         A study of the social, political, or economic context in which a work was written -- how does the context influence the work?

How do I start research?

·         The Internet

Once you have decided on an interesting topic and work (or works), the best place to start is probably the Internet. Here you can usually find basic biographical data on authors, brief summaries of works, possibly some rudimentary analyses, and even bibliographies of sources related to your topic.

·         The library

The Internet, however, rarely offers serious direct scholarship; you will have to use sources found in the library, sources like journal articles and scholarly books, to get information that you can use to build your own scholarship-your literary paper. Consult the library's on-line catalog and the MLA Periodical Index. Avoid citing dictionary or encyclopedic sources in your final paper.

How do I use the information I find?

The secondary sources you find are only to be used as an aid. Your thoughts should make up most of the essay. As you develop your thesis, you will bring in the ideas of the scholars to back up what you have already said.

For example, say you are arguing that Huck Finn is a Christ figure; that's your basic thesis. You give evidence from the novel that allows this reading, and then, at the right place, you might say the following, a paraphrase:

According to Susan Thomas, Huck sacrifices himself because he wants to set Jim free (129).

If the scholar states an important idea in a memorable way, use a direct quote.

"Huck's altruism and feelings of compassion for Jim force him to surrender to the danger" (Thomas 129).

Either way, you will then link that idea to your thesis.

What about the MLA format?

All research papers on literature use the MLA format, as it is the universal citation method for the field of literary studies. Whenever you use a primary or secondary source, whether you are quoting or paraphrasing, you will make parenthetical citations in the MLA format [Ex. (Smith 67).] Your Works Cited list will be the last page of your essay. Consult the MLA Link on the writing studio website for further instructions.

Note, however, the following minor things about the MLA format:

·         Titles of books, plays, or works published singularly (not anthologized) should be underlined. (Ex. Hamlet, Great Expectations)

·         Titles of poems, short stories, or works published in an anthology will have quotation marks around them. (Ex. "Ode on a Nightingale," "The Cask of Amontillado")

·         All pages in your essay should have your last name the page number in the top right hand corner. (Ex. Jones 12)

What else should I remember?

·         Don't leave a quote or paraphrase by itself-you must introduce it, explain it, and show how it relates to your thesis.

·         Block format all quotations of more than four lines.

·         When you quote brief passages of poetry, line and stanza divisions are shown as a slash (Ex. "Roses are red, / Violets are blue / You love me / And I like you").

·         For more help, see the Writing Studio, Web Links, and Materials.

Structuring Your Essay