Note: this is not an assignment; it's just some tips on how to write about literature. I realize that this will be review for most of you, but it's always nice to have a refresher.

The first, and many feel most difficult, task is to find something to write about.

You may be used to reading a story and writing a summary or a bit about the author or a review (thumbs up /thumbs down), but that will not do for this class; this is a class in literary analysis. That means you need to look at some significant idea or issue or theme or technique (I'd not recommend looking at technical elements of style unless you've got some solid background in analyzing fiction) of the work. Yes, I understand that this is a lot harder than just writing a plot summary, but analysis requires you to show your thinking (not your likes/dislikes) about a subject, your ability to find substance and thought in what you read. Analyzing a children's novel is the same task as analyzing Shakespeare's The Tempest or Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. You will need to develop a thesis, which means you will need some point to argue and support.

A thesis USUALLY is developed as an answer to a series of questions you ask about the work (in this case, the poems). After reading "Et nox facta est", by Victor Hugo, you might wonder:

  1. How is Satan made to seem sympathetic rather than evil in Hugo's poem?

  2. Why is there so much imagery about light and illumination here; does that symbolize something?

Both of these questions are excellent because they look at ideas that almost demand answers which are open to interpretation; they are not simple fact questions (such as what Biblical figures are named in the first stanza?) and the answers will require looking at various parts of the poem for support. They require explanation, are open to debate, must be expanded on--all what you will need to develop a four-full-page (minimum) essay.

Here's the next step: look for answers to your questions; look for patterns in the book; eventually you should find some single area you can explore in a paper. Your thesis might be, for example,

On one level Victor Hugo's long poem "Et nox facta est" explores the idea that a role of the poet is to try to illuminate the murky, arcane, unknown areas of life, that poetry is an attempt understand and share the mysteries often reserved for religions.

Yes, this is a long sentence. You WANT a long and very-specific (focused) sentence that clearly states an idea that (and here I'll repeat myself) requires explanation and expansion, that requires examples from the book, play, poem for support. The thesis does something else; it determines what will or will not be in your paper. For example, a long discussion of the Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, later made into a hit Broadway musical, does not belong in your paper. Looking at Satan being cast from a world of order ("Let there be light") into a world of obscurity ("Et nox facta est," roughly translated, "And there is also night"), however, does fit this thesis because it's an example of an individual trying to deal with "the murky, arcane, unknown."

So at this point you can consider what bits of the poem relate to your argument (notice that a thesis is an argument; it's a claim that something very specific it being suggested by the book). You can/should go back through the book and note passages that you will want to quote as you develop your paper on this one key idea. I hope you take good notes when you read the works :)

At this point you might want to do the religious research as well (since it's part of the thesis. Questions about why Lucifer was cast out of order into chaos (his name suggests light; his flaw is that he wants omniscience-all knowledge; etc.). Find lines in the poem that seem to relate to the art of the poet, the acts of understanding, transforming, communicating. If you discover the subject is too limiting, you might want to compare it with the same idea (poet as visionary) in the works of one or more additional Romantic Era poets.

After you build up a healthy list of examples which support your thesis, you'll craft your essay using the observation-quotation-explanation method; in essence, you will make some statements (your observations), back them up with examples (documented quotations from the text), and discuss how they develop your thesis (explain them in relation to the point of the paragraph or to the point of your essay as a whole). Here's an example:

Traditionally poets have seen their role as recognizing the world beyond the mundane and communicating a sense of that world through their poetry. This idea of a poet as visionary is suggested at the end of Hugo's "Et nox facta est," for example, when he writes, "And thus the wise may dream in the deep of the night / His face illumined by glints of the abyss" (1808). Here the "wise man" is the poet whose insight unlocks dark, secret images of a world most only dream of.

Mainly, you want to stay away from simple biography and plot summary. You are trying to look for ideas and issues in the works you read. The days of book reports are long past.

Following are links (one a Word document, the other a Rich-Text format document, in case you cannot open the Word document) to an excerpt from a student paper in the B+/A- range. It is not technically perfect, but it is a clear. focused analysis of a single idea in a novel, and it is supported with lots of documented quotations from the novella Metamorphosis" (this was for Writing Assignment 3). Take a look so that you have another idea of what analysis is all about:

click here for the paper excerpt in Word format

click here if you are unable to open the Word document

And if you would like to read some additional information on how to write a Literary Analysis, then click the link below: