Literary Criticism Analysis

If you study literature, you are likely to get an assignment to make literary criticism analysis. From the first glance it may seem to be rather easy task. What should you do? To read a literary work, analyze it and put all your ideas in the proper form. But is it so simple?

Literary Criticism Analysis: Not an Easy Task

Let’s try to explain you what stages your literary criticism analysis should consist of!

• To read a literary work.

If you believe that to read the work you have to analyze for 1 time in order to get the general idea about its contents will be enough for making of your literary criticism analysis, you are wrong. One should stress that to make good analysis you should not read but study this literary work thoroughly. What does it mean? First of all, you should read it for 2 times at least.

It is quite obvious that you will not be able to remember all details important for making of literary criticism analysis. Thus, you may make notes that will be useful in your analyzing. Put down the names of the main characters, some descriptions, some important quotations, etc. it should be stressed the following: if your reading takes too much time and you can read the work only for 1 time (if it is a novel, for example), making of notes is compulsory.

Read critical articles on the work under analysis. That will help you understand the work better. Studying of the author’s biography, especially the period when the work was created, will be useful as well.

• To analyze a literary work. One should notice that literature analysis is a complex task. When doing it you should answer the following questions:

1. Why did the author decide to write this literary work?
2. Why did he/she choose such a topic?
3. What is the main idea of the author?
4. In what way does the author express it?
5. Did he/she manage to realize all the intentions?

As you cannot cover the whole work in your analysis and there is no need in doing this you should focus on a certain issue that you consider being the most interesting and questionable. You should put it in the form of a thesis statement that should be short enough and clear.

• To put your ideas in the written form. As a rule, you should put your analysis in the form of a literature analysis essay. What should you take into account?

Such a literature analysis essay should consist of 3 main parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. It should be logically built. You should fulfill certain format requirements when writing.

Pay attention: this article is called not to scare you but point some important information you should take into account when making your literary criticism analysis.