Writing For Literature Classes

• Use updated MLA format

• Use examples and quotes from the text (and cite them!)

• Poems, short stories, and television episodes are in "quotation marks". Novels, plays, films, and television programs are in italics. See "Italics versus Quotation Marks".

• Interpret a work of art rather than simply judge it (analyze instead of summarize).

• Be sure to differentiate between the author and the speaker of a work when necessary. The speaker of a poem may be a character or persona, not the author.

• Become familiar with the concept of close reading.

  • • Annotate the text, look for patterns, and ask questions about those patterns. 

• Write in the literary present tense

  • • When describing historical events, use past tense. Dickens was published in 1843.

    • When commenting on the text, use present tense. Dickens shows us the folly of greed.

    • When describing or analyzing what happens in the text, use present tense. Ebenezer Scrooge changes his selfish ways at the end of the story.

How to write a thesis for a literature analysis

The following is taken and adapted from Lumen Learning's thesis-writing page:

A good thesis will be focused on your object of study (as opposed to making a big claim about the world) and will introduce the key words guiding your analysis. Try the templates below:

By examining __________________ [topic/approach], we can see _____________________[thesis—the claim that’s surprising], which is important because ___________________________.

• • Example: by examining Wonder Woman through the lens of toxic masculinity, we can see male characters encountering the divine feminine embodied by Wonder Woman, which is important because it gives men permission to incorporate and express their own femininity instead of seeing manhood as strictly masculine.

Although readers might assume _________________ [the commonplace idea you’re challenging], I argue that _________________________ [your surprising claim]. 

• • Although viewers might assume the romantic comedy Sixteen Candles is merely entertaining, I believe its message is political. The film uses the romance between Samantha, a middle class sophomore, and Jake, an affluent senior, to reinforce the fantasy that anyone can become wealthy and successful with enough cunning and persistence.