what kind of essay is a literary analysis

Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis Essay Writing

Last updated on: May 21, 2023

Literary Analysis Essay - Ultimate Guide By Professionals

By: Cordon J.

Reviewed By: Rylee W.

Published on: Dec 3, 2019

A literary analysis essay specifically examines and evaluates a piece of literature or a literary work. It also understands and explains the links between the small parts to their whole information.

It is important for students to understand the meaning and the true essence of literature to write a literary essay.

One of the most difficult assignments for students is writing a literary analysis essay. It can be hard to come up with an original idea or find enough material to write about. You might think you need years of experience in order to create a good paper, but that's not true.

This blog post will show you how easy it can be when you follow the steps given here.Writing such an essay involves the breakdown of a book into small parts and understanding each part separately. It seems easy, right?

Trust us, it is not as hard as good book reports but it may also not be extremely easy. You will have to take into account different approaches and explain them in relation with the chosen literary work.

It is a common high school and college assignment and you can learn everything in this blog.

Continue reading for some useful tips with an example to write a literary analysis essay that will be on point. You can also explore our detailed article on writing an analytical essay .

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What is a Literary Analysis Essay?

A literary analysis essay is an important kind of essay that focuses on the detailed analysis of the work of literature.

The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to explain why the author has used a specific theme for his work. Or examine the characters, themes, literary devices , figurative language, and settings in the story.

This type of essay encourages students to think about how the book or the short story has been written. And why the author has created this work.

The method used in the literary analysis essay differs from other types of essays. It primarily focuses on the type of work and literature that is being analyzed.

Mostly, you will be going to break down the work into various parts. In order to develop a better understanding of the idea being discussed, each part will be discussed separately.

The essay should explain the choices of the author and point of view along with your answers and personal analysis.

How To Write A Literary Analysis Essay

So how to start a literary analysis essay? The answer to this question is quite simple.

The following sections are required to write an effective literary analysis essay. By following the guidelines given in the following sections, you will be able to craft a winning literary analysis essay.

Introduction

The aim of the introduction is to establish a context for readers. You have to give a brief on the background of the selected topic.

It should contain the name of the author of the literary work along with its title. The introduction should be effective enough to grab the reader’s attention.

In the body section, you have to retell the story that the writer has narrated. It is a good idea to create a summary as it is one of the important tips of literary analysis.

Other than that, you are required to develop ideas and disclose the observed information related to the issue. The ideal length of the body section is around 1000 words.

To write the body section, your observation should be based on evidence and your own style of writing.

It would be great if the body of your essay is divided into three paragraphs. Make a strong argument with facts related to the thesis statement in all of the paragraphs in the body section.

Start writing each paragraph with a topic sentence and use transition words when moving to the next paragraph.

Summarize the important points of your literary analysis essay in this section. It is important to compose a short and strong conclusion to help you make a final impression of your essay.

Pay attention that this section does not contain any new information. It should provide a sense of completion by restating the main idea with a short description of your arguments. End the conclusion with your supporting details.

You have to explain why the book is important. Also, elaborate on the means that the authors used to convey her/his opinion regarding the issue.

For further understanding, here is a downloadable literary analysis essay outline. This outline will help you structure and format your essay properly and earn an A easily.

DOWNLOADABLE LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY OUTLINE (PDF)

Types of Literary Analysis Essay

• Close reading - This method involves attentive reading and detailed analysis. No need for a lot of knowledge and inspiration to write an essay that shows your creative skills.
• Theoretical - In this type, you will rely on theories related to the selected topic.
• Historical - This type of essay concerns the discipline of history. Sometimes historical analysis is required to explain events in detail.
• Applied - This type involves analysis of a specific issue from a practical perspective.
• Comparative - This type of writing is based on when two or more alternatives are compared

Examples of Literary Analysis Essay

Examples are great to understand any concept, especially if it is related to writing. Below are some great literary analysis essay examples that showcase how this type of essay is written.

A ROSE FOR EMILY LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

THE GREAT GATSBY LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

If you do not have experience in writing essays, this will be a very chaotic process for you. In that case, it is very important for you to conduct good research on the topic before writing.

There are two important points that you should keep in mind when writing a literary analysis essay.

First, remember that it is very important to select a topic in which you are interested. Choose something that really inspires you. This will help you to catch the attention of a reader.

The selected topic should reflect the main idea of writing. In addition to that, it should also express your point of view as well.

Another important thing is to draft a good outline for your literary analysis essay. It will help you to define a central point and division of this into parts for further discussion.

Literary Analysis Essay Topics

Literary analysis essays are mostly based on artistic works like books, movies, paintings, and other forms of art. However, generally, students choose novels and books to write their literary essays.

Some cool, fresh, and good topics and ideas are listed below:

• Role of the Three Witches in flaming Macbeth’s ambition.
• Analyze the themes of the Play Antigone,
• Discuss Ajax as a tragic hero.
• The Judgement of Paris: Analyze the Reasons and their Consequences.
• Oedipus Rex: A Doomed Son or a Conqueror?
• Describe the Oedipus complex and Electra complex in relation to their respective myths.
• Betrayal is a common theme of Shakespearean tragedies. Discuss
• Identify and analyze the traits of history in T.S Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’.
• Analyze the theme of identity crisis in The Great Gatsby.
• Analyze the writing style of Emily Dickinson.

If you are still in doubt then there is nothing bad in getting professional writers’ help.

We at 5StarEssays.com can help you get a custom paper as per your specified requirements with our do essay for me service.

Our essay writers will help you write outstanding literary essays or any other type of essay. Such as compare and contrast essays, descriptive essays, rhetorical essays. We cover all of these.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What should a literary analysis essay include.

A good literary analysis essay must include a proper and in-depth explanation of your ideas. They must be backed with examples and evidence from the text. Textual evidence includes summaries, paraphrased text, original work details, and direct quotes.

What are the 4 components of literary analysis?

Here are the 4 essential parts of a literary analysis essay;

No literary work is explained properly without discussing and explaining these 4 things.

How do you start a literary analysis essay?

Start your literary analysis essay with the name of the work and the title. Hook your readers by introducing the main ideas that you will discuss in your essay and engage them from the start.

How do you do a literary analysis?

In a literary analysis essay, you study the text closely, understand and interpret its meanings. And try to find out the reasons behind why the author has used certain symbols, themes, and objects in the work.

Why is literary analysis important?

It encourages the students to think beyond their existing knowledge, experiences, and belief and build empathy. This helps in improving the writing skills also.

What is the fundamental characteristic of a literary analysis essay?

Interpretation is the fundamental and important feature of a literary analysis essay. The essay is based on how well the writer explains and interprets the work.

Law, Finance Essay

Cordon. is a published author and writing specialist. He has worked in the publishing industry for many years, providing writing services and digital content. His own writing career began with a focus on literature and linguistics, which he continues to pursue. Cordon is an engaging and professional individual, always looking to help others achieve their goals.

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Literary Analysis Essay Example: Discover How to Analyze Literature and Improve Your Writing Skills

Creating a literary analysis essay is one of the most interesting assignments during college and high school studies. It needs both good text interpreting and analytical skills. The number of proper forms is great, including short stories and novels, poems and ballads, comedies and dramas. Any literary work may be analyzed.

In brief, when writing this paper a student should give a summary of the text and a detailed review of the language, structure, and other stuff the author used to express his ideas and thoughts. He should tell what the author wanted to say and what means he or she operated with. That is the sense of the literary analysis paper.

What is Literary Analysis?

Let's consider this issue in all aspects to anticipate any problems a student may face when preparing the work. A literary analysis implicates an extensive text examination. All functional elements of the literary unit should be found and described. A student should answer the following questions:

• what the author said;
• why he or she did it;
• how (by what means) he or she expressed the idea.

Before writing a literary analysis a person is to read a book very attentively, single out its structure, language features, expressive means used, and try to understand how the author entwined all the components together (both letters and senses). It may sound frightening but in reality it turns out to be quite exciting.

It is possible to draw a parallel between a literary analysis essay and an argumentative one. A student should provide a detailed examination of all the text components and expressive means chosen, explaining the author's purposes, using historical context, style of life, and other peculiarities of the epoch when the literary unit was created. Just follow the guide below to make the process of writing easier.

Writing a Literary Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide

So, once again to solidify knowledge. What is a literary analysis essay? It is a kind of academic paper, requesting the interpretation of a famous literary unit in the terms of its social implication.

If you are creating such an essay for the first time it is recommended to look through high-grade reliable examples to picture its structure and filling. Works of different authors are sure to show you a variety of ways of analyzing the matter. Besides, literary critics' articles may give you interesting ideas and insights.

Now let's discuss this very step-by-step guide, certain to help in making a good literary essay. It includes 7 magical components.

• Read the book (novel, poem, etc.) very attentively. The text being small, examine it repeatedly. If you have a large form for analysis, after reading look through the text thoroughly one more time. Moreover, it's quite important to write down topical remarks, considering interesting expressive means, ideas, and quotations.
• Generate an attractive topic. Find the most interesting message the author wanted to present, or some psychological portrait he gave, etc.
• Put together all the elements necessary for developing your theme. It concerns the text structure, expressive means, stylistic patterns, and whatnot. Any controversial points are also desired to create an argumentative solid paper.
• State a thesis. It will be a core idea, that your analysis will be set around. Choose some debatable matter to provoke exciting discussion. Generally accepted facts investigation will not be highly rated.
• Make a good literary analysis essay outline, built on all the data you have gathered and all the arguments you have stated. A detailed consistent structure is a guarantee of an easy and enjoyable working process.
• Write a draft. At first, let it be simple and a bit raw. It is not crucial. In fact, during this step you will be able to put your thoughts onto the paper and notice if anything should be added, elaborated, or remade.
• Create a regular colorful project based on the draft. Use rich language, trying to avoid mistakes in spelling, punctuation, word meaning, and whatnot.

Following these steps is sure to help you in understanding how to write a literary analysis essay. Just remember that good skills come with practice. The more texts you construct, the better they become.

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Outline

The outline is a well-known helping hand in creating projects in various spheres. Writing academic papers is not an exception. When preparing a core of the work a student aligns his or her knowledge and organizes all the information into an entire system.

Being a sort of path, it leads you smoothly from the beginning to the end of the narration. And to provide a successful moving it should include such obligatory points as:

• introduction,
• conclusion.

Introduction

How to start a literary analysis essay? Of course, with an introduction. It is the initial part of the paper. Here a person should name the author and the title of the chosen literary issue. Another matter to be mentioned is some general data about the book which will be important in succeeding narration. At last the defined thesis (concept, idea) is described and its significance is underlined.

It is the core of your investigation. Always remember that literary analysis format always implicates both arguments and textual evidence (quotations among the others) to support all the matter.

The thesis is used like a skeleton and every point – like flash, finally getting a sound organism. Each paragraph here should touch on one aspect. As a rule, it begins with a chosen argument. Then a textual illustration follows, and an explanation of its usage as well. Sometimes it is advisable to present quotes, in other cases – your own summary of the author's expressive means.

Being a final literary analysis paragraph, a conclusion summarizes all the key moments of the essay, emphasizes the significance of the topic one more time, and accentuates the importance of the investigation.

Some Words about Types of Literary Analysis Essays

There are a lot of types of this essay. We mention only some examples to inspire you. The type of work may depend on both theoretical and critical edges. A student may analyze such issues as:

• characters,
• themes/concepts,
• a world of literary devices,
• historical or cultural context,
• structural elements,
• intertextual references,
• language in general, etc.

According to a literary analysis essay definition, the main person's activity here is to explore the textual issue and interpret the author's message.

Final Words

To cap it all, if you want to create a professional work:

• read a book very thoroughly,
• find a bright original debatable idea to discuss,
• collect necessary textual evidence,
• organize everything in an edifice.

We hope that this article will be quite useful for students interested in developing literary skills. And if anybody asks them a question, "What is the purpose of a literary analysis essay?" They may answer it without any problem. If speaking briefly, its purpose is to investigate the text in both spheres – words and senses.

If you have any difficulty in writing this kind of essay or you need some examples for a brainstorming session, try our AI writer . It is free, offering different options: the language, tone of narration, and whatnot.

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How to Write a Literary Analysis

When you are assigning a literary analysis, you need to make sure that your students know several things. Writing a literary analysis will be difficult for the students if they don’t know these.

First of all, students need to know what a literary analysis is. Definition

A literary analysis essay is an attempt to evaluate and understand the work of an author, either a single work or an entire body of work. Literary criticism is a description, analysis, evaluation, or interpretation of a particular literary work or an author’s writings as a whole.

Second, they need to know what types of literary analysis there are.

Types of literary analysis

Character Analysis defines characters’ qualities to explore how they react to various conditions or attempt to shape their environment. In other words, the reader/writer seeks to explain why characters behave/think/act in the manners they do. Sometimes, comparing/contrasting two characters is helpful, although a concentration on one character often offers the more complete analysis for short essays (and is what I recommend).

I have a more developed discussion of how to write a character analysis.

Point of View (POV) Analysis explores why the author chose a particular pov, and how this viewpoint affects the reader-writer’s perception of the work.

Analysis of Setting explores how and why a work’s time and place affects the events and/or the characters of the work. Often the reader-writer will want to consider setting as part of another form of literary analysis (extending the analysis of a character, for example).

Analysis of Theme involves working the concept, thought, opinion or belief that the author expresses. It is very common (and helpful) to consider theme when analyzing another aspect of literature rather than on its own. The theme of a work is the main message, insight, or observation the writer offers.

The importance of theme in literature can be overestimated; the work of fiction is more than just the theme. However, the theme allows the author to control or give order to his perceptions about life.

See a discussion of how to write a theme analysis, including how to find the theme, recognizing major and minor themes, and an example of a theme analysis.

Analysis of Structure demonstrates how a work’s organization influences (or is influenced by) the plot and theme of the work.

Analysis of Symbolism (and Imagery) involves demonstrating why an author chooses to use one or more dominant, recurring symbols or images.

Analysis of Style is an attempt to show how and why the author employs word choice, sound or rhythm to convey ideas. In prose, the reader-writer may look at a key passage and consider diction, grammar, sentence length, and rhythm and sound.

An advanced analysis of a literary work could discuss: · How the various components of an individual work relate to each other · How two separate literary works deal with similar concepts or forms · How concepts and forms in literary works relate to larger aesthetic, political, social, economic, or religious concepts. · What is the literary tradition of the story and how well does the work fit within it? Examples: romantic, realistic, naturalist, existential, transcendentalist, neo-classical, etc. · Is there a sub-tradition and how well does the work fit this sub-tradition? Example: In romanticism, there are sub-traditions of gothic, exoticism, nationalism, etc. · Are there multiple competing genres which fit the work? Which one best describes it?

Third, they need to know that literary criticism is a more focused kind of literary analysis.

Approaches to literary criticism:

Professionals write literary analyses which are known as literary criticism. The approaches these people take depend on their theoretical orientation. If a student reads the criticism without an understanding of the theoretical orientations possible, the student will be very confused. They will ask questions like, “How can Frankenstein be about motherhood?”

For an excellent short overview and history of these see this page at Southern Oregon University . For a more in-depth examination, go to this University of South Dakota page. Basically, though, some of the major forms (with brief notes) include: • Formalist (looks at work as a whole- chapters, books, volumes, editions) • Biographical (looks at author’s life through the work) • Historical (both Old [focuses on work as an artifact; how was it written or printed? How many copies were made? How it was received…] and New [contextualizes it by looking at the culture, the times, the social context the work was written in]) • Gender (primarily looks at the work through a feminist lens: how are women treated? What is feminine in the work?) • Psychological (Freudian, hidden desires–What is the main character really wanting?) • Sociological (conscious political ax, for example, Marxist. Is the good guy rich and the bad guy poor? Do the rich win? How is this work portraying different classes?) • Mythic/Archetypal (Jung, archetypes appeal to collective unconscious–What are the main symbols in the work and what do they stand for? This could also include characters.) • Reader-Response (ideal reader) • Impressionistic (gut level- This tends to be what students go for. Discuss it as a critical analysis to be avoided unless they are able to explain why they do or don’t like a work.) • Deconstructionist (decentering dominant stances by examining opposites–What two things are compared/contrasted and which has the dominance in the work?)

4 thoughts on “How to Write a Literary Analysis”

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my students are able to identify features in the work but they do not know how to have an indepth discussion of their purpose and effect. Do you have any tips on ways to teach that?

I think this information is really useful! I am using it to teach my college students. Thanks for a great blog!

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Literary Analysis Essay. Writing Features

No matter whether you are a schooler, a college student, or you go to university – sooner or later, you will be assigned to a literary analysis essay. It is done to check your ability to understand the text you read and deeply analyze it. Of course, being able to orally discuss the books you have read is also important and is going to be an integral part of your literature course. However, writing assignment will show your professors how skilled you are in doing that on paper.

Students may often fail when writing their literary analysis because even despite this kind of writing seems easy, it requires you to be pretty skilled in writing to complete a well-written and well-structured piece of writing. And also (let’s be honest) teachers usually don’t explain how to write this kind of essay writing . Moreover, a literary analysis essay has quite a specific format and requires using a proper academic style when writing.

That is why we have prepared a short but very informative writing guide for those who want their literary essay to be an example for others.

What is a Literary Analysis? Definition and Step-by-Step Writing Instruction

What kind of writing is a literary analysis essay? Well, a literary analysis essay is written in order to show your reading and analyzing skills to your teachers. That’s in general. To be precise, its main goal is to prove that you have carefully and thoroughly read the work of literature and you are able to evaluate it from different aspects. It’s not just about paying attention to the emotional side of the book. No! You have to consider such issues as its subject and format, define its style and find the main theme. Also, you will be asked to find the relations between the book’s form and content, plot and subplot, as well as point out the weak and strong sides of the characters and the storyline.

All this may lead you to a question of how to write that literary analysis essay at all. In general, the whole scheme comes down to several steps. They are:

• Understanding the purpose of the analysis
• Understanding the format of the essay and what it must include
• Planning your paper

Sounds easy, but for many students, it appears to be a stumbling stone. All because the structure of a literary essay may differ depending on what type of literature you are going to analyze. However, there are several common tips that will help you to put your writing in order.

• Focus on your topic

What you have to do here is to read the book, novel or poem as carefully as possible. While reading, you need to understand the main theme and the idea of the text. Try to study the main characters, understand their impulses, and the reasons for their deeds. If you to read the whole piece twice or more times, do that without hesitation!

Also, it will be helpful if while reading or after you finish, you will try to realize which parts of the text were the most remarkable, whether you saw the development of the characters and what literary devices the author used in his or her text. It will contribute to your future analysis greatly.

To be able to make reasonable conclusions in your essay, you have to collect all sorts of evidence while reading. It means that different facts, expressions and other sorts of evidence matter, even the information about the author. For that purpose, it would be nice to make notes while reading a book.

• Write an outline first

You don’t want to get lost in your own writing, do you? To avoid that, make an outline of your future essay. Think about what you are going to start with, how you will proceed and what conclusion your essay will have.

• Thesis statement’s time!

Create your thesis statement (or several of them) to explain why your arguments are of great importance, as well as how they are connected to the author’s thoughts and ideas.

• Write your essay

A literary analysis essay has the same structure as any other essay. It consists of an introduction, body part, and conclusion. When writing, remember that each statement requires its own separate paragraph! After you finish it, put it aside for a while and then read it all once again. Like that you will easily find any misconnections and parts that need to be improved.

That’s the basics of writing a literary essay, but even they can improve your assignment a lot.

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Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis Essay - An Ultimate Writing Guide

Published on: Nov 19, 2019

Last updated on: Jan 20, 2023

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Are you having difficulty writing a literary essay? Hold onto your seats; you are at the right place.

The endless pursuit of knowledge is what every student desires. The world has so many amazing stories to tell, and it's up to you to explore them. But where do you start?

It can be quite daunting when faced with the prospect of writing a literary analysis essay for school. Don't worry, though!

This blog post will teach you everything you need to know about how these essays work. It includes the benefits of analyzing literature!

Stop being worried and learn to write a flawless essay from this guide.

What is a Literary Analysis Essay?

A literary essay carefully examines and analyzes a piece of literature to make it easy to understand. It breaks the subject into parts and analyzes each part separately.

According to a literary analysis essay definition:

“It is a type of essay that carefully evaluates a work of literature to understand it better.”

This essay closely studies a piece of text, interprets its meaning, and explores why the writer has made certain choices. The analysis could be of a movie, book, short story, novel, poem, play, or any other form of literature.

Fundamental Characteristics of a Literary Analysis Essay

There are four fundamental characteristics of a literary analysis essay.

1. The Elements

There are four main elements of a literary essay:

Plot:  It is the pattern of events that make up a story.

Character:  They are the people that play a role in the story.

Conflict:  It is a dispute between two parties.

Setting:  It is where the actions take place.

A literary analysis essay should include these elements because they make up the whole essay. Therefore, no element should be missing from the essay.

2. The Focus

The focus of this essay is on the literary devices, symbols, and metaphors of the literary work. It closely analyzes the symbols and metaphors of a literary work to interpret their meaning.

3. Literary Analysis Essay Structure

The basic structure of a literary essay is similar to other kinds of essays. It consists of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

4. Literary Analysis Essay Format

The essay format tells how the parts of the work are assembled. Usually, the MLA format is followed to write a good literary essay.

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Literary Analysis Essay Rubric

Literary Analysis Essay Outline

The outline helps in organizing the information in a proper structure. The outline structure for a literary analysis essay is as follow:

• Hook statement:  Grab the reader’s attention with a strong hook statement.
• Background:  Educate the reader about the topic.
• Thesis statement:  Set the tone of the essay and tell your reader what they should expect.
• Topic sentence:  Introduce a line of argument.
• Supporting evidence:  Support the argument with facts and evidence.
• Transition statement:  Move to the next argument.
• Revision:  Restate the thesis statement.
• Summary:  Summarize the whole analysis.
• Comment:  Make a relevant comment about the literary work

How to Start a Literary Analysis Essay?

The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to analyze a literary work. Therefore, when you start writing a literary analysis essay, follow these prewriting steps to do a good analysis.

Choosing the Text to Analyze

The first and foremost thing is to choose the text that you want to analyze. It could be a book, novel, short story, movie, or any other literary text.

Reading the Text

Carefully read the text and try to understand what the reader wants to convey through the text. Pay attention to every little detail and make initial notes. Look for the surprising and confusing things in the writing; these are the things that you can dig into your analysis.

Identifying Literary Devices

The objective of a literary essay is not just simply explain but to examine the text on a deeper level. Therefore, identify the literary devices that the writer has used to convey his message and create effects.

• Coming Up With a Good Title To get started with the analysis, you need to select a suitable topic for your essay. This essay prompt could be simple, or you can be creative with it. For example, “How effective is the role of Shams in the forty rules of love?”

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay?

When you write a literary essay, you need to remember that you are not writing a report or a summary. Instead, you are doing an argumentative analysis where you have to examine every perspective of the text.

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Here is the writing process of a literary analysis essay:

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction

The introduction tells the reader what your essay is all about. It provides a quick overview of the main argument. Here, you are supposed to introduce the text that you are going to analyze.

Start the introduction with a strong hook statement that grabs the reader’s attention immediately. Give a general idea about the author and the text and lead to the thesis statement.

Write a good thesis statement that indicates to the reader what’s coming up in the body section. A literary analysis essay thesis is a precisely worded declarative statement that tells the purpose of the essay.

Literary Analysis Essay Body

The body section is used for the development of the central idea of the essay. Usually, it consists of three paragraphs that support the thesis statement. It contains the explanation of the ideas and evidence from the text that support those ideas.

While writing the body, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that presents a specific idea about the text. Support the topic sentence with facts, evidence, and logic that helps the reader understand the text. Each body paragraph’s substance includes summaries, explanations, quotations, and specific details that you need to support the topic sentence.

Literary Analysis Essay Conclusion

The conclusion paragraph should give a sense of completeness and let the reader know that he has come to an end. Don’t introduce any new ideas here; just wrap up the whole discussion.

Restate the thesis statement and summarize the main points of the essay. Finally, make a relevant comment about the work that you have analyzed.

Literary Analysis Essay Examples

Now you have a complete guide for writing a literary essay, check out the following example to get a clearer idea. These sample essays give you a deeper understanding of the essay structure.

Literary Analysis Essay Sample

Sample Literary Analysis Essay for Middle School

Sample Literary Analysis Essay for High School

Literary Analysis Essay Example for College

A Rose for Emily Literary Analysis Essay

The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis Essay

To Kill a Mockingbird Literary Analysis Essay

The Story of an Hour Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis Essay Topics

Here are some amazing  literary analysis essay prompts  for your help:

• Analyze ‘10 minutes and 38 seconds in this strange world’ main character
• Analyze the historical context of ‘War and Peace.’
• Analyze ‘A tale of two cities’ main ideas
• Fate and love in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
• Women and misogyny in ‘Hamlet.’
• Analyze ‘Into the Wild’ themes
• What message does Elie Wiesel convey in ‘Night.’
• Analyze the evidence provided in ‘The History of the Decline: And Fall of the Roman Empire.’
• Analyze the narrative presented by J. M. Coetzee in ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’
• Evaluate the mood of ‘Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

A good way to approach this essay is to summarize the text’s main argument and stress the conclusion. If you find any difficulty in doing the analysis, hire an expert  essay writer .

We at  FreeEssayWriter.net  work 24/7 to help you with all types of academic writing assignments. Check out the free essays given on our website and get some inspiration to take help from us. Our writers are highly professional and experts at their work.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What should a literary analysis essay include.

A good literary analysis essay should include an explanation of your idea and evidence from the text that supports it. Textual evidence is when you talk about what happened in the story, summarize it, or give specific details. You can also quote the author.

What should be the tone of the literary analysis essay?

The tone of an essay is the attitude of the writer. In a literary analysis essay, a writer can be direct by stating his opinion, or indirect, by using words that have a certain feeling.

How many types of literary analysis are there?

There are six types of literary analysis, which are:

• Cultural Analysis
• Feminist Analysis
• Historical Analysis
• New Criticism Analysis
• Psychological Analysis
• Reader Response Analysis

What are the seven literary standards?

Literary standards are very important to determine whether the work done is literary or not. Following are the seven essential standards:

• Suggestiveness
• intellectual value
• spiritual value
• Universality

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• Science & Math
• Sociology & Philosophy
• Law & Politics
• Various Types of Literary Analysis

Literary analysis is a critical response to a literary text in the form of a critical essay or an oral commentary. It includes a thorough interpretation of the work.

Such analysis may be based on a variety of critical approaches or movements, e.g. archetypal criticism, cultural criticism, feminist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist Criticism, New Criticism (formalism/structuralism), New Historicism, post-structuralism, and reader-response criticism. Students in this course will write a critical essay based upon four literary texts for their ISU.

Archetypal Criticism

Archetypal criticism is a critical approach to literature that seeks to find and understand the purpose of archetypes within the literature. These archetypes may be themes, such as love, characterizations, such as the hero; or patterns, such as death and rebirth.

Archetypal criticism draws on the works of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, literary critic Northrop Frye, and others. Unlike psychoanalytic critics, archetypal critics such as Frye do not attempt to explain why the archetypes exist.

Archetype: something that represents the essential elements of its category or class of things; the word is Greek for “original pattern” from which all copies are made, a prototype.

Certain themes of human life (e.g. love, loss) character types (e.g. the rebel, the wise elder), animals (e.g. snake), and patterns (e.g. the quest, the descent into the underworld) are considered to be archetypal, forming a part of the collective unconscious (the sum of society’s inherited mental images). For example, a character in a TV series who continuously changes careers might be said to be the archetypal “seeker”.

Cultural Criticism

Cultural criticism is a recent movement in criticism that is interdisciplinary by extending the range of examined texts beyond just the literary works themselves to objects or practices that can be interpreted as representative of a culture’s beliefs, values, laws, for example. Practitioners of cultural criticism view a text in relation to the dominant or competing ideologies (belief systems) of the time and place in which the text was written.

Works are therefore considered in light of their historical and cultural contexts. For example, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be read in terms of practices of European imperialists, race relations in Africa, or the economic history of ivory and other raw products in the continent.

Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism is literary criticism based on feminist theories. It considers texts with the knowledge that societies treat men and women inequitably. Feminist criticism will analyze texts in light of patriarchal (male-dominated) cultural institutions, phallocentric (male-centered) language, masculine and feminine stereotypes, and the unequal treatment of male and female writers.

Feminist criticism developed primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, although it is evident in earlier works as well, for example in the works of Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft. More recent feminist and gender studies investigate social constructions related to gender as they appear in the literature.

Marxist Criticism

Based on the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) this school of thought contends that history and culture is largely a struggle between economic classes, and literature is often a reflection of the attitudes and interests of the dominant class.

An often-repeated statement from Marx expresses a basic idea specific to this form of criticism. “It’s not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”.

New Criticism

New Criticism is a movement in literary criticism that proposes close reading and textual analysis of the text itself. It is referred to as “New” because it operates contrary to the previously favored focus on the author’s biography, the historical context, and the perceived parallels between these and the text.

Practitioners focus on both the “external form” (e.g. ballad, ode) and the “internal forms” (e.g. structure, repetition, patterns of figurative language, plot/content, syntax/diction, tone, mood, context/setting, style, literary devices, theme). These practitioners reject consideration of the author’s intention and the effect on the reader as illegitimate. The movement is also referred to as formalism or structuralism .

New Historicism

New Historicism is a range of critical practices that examine works in their cultural and historical contexts. Practitioners of the critical movement developed it by examining a wide range of texts such as newspapers, advertisements, popular music, historical accounts, poetry, novels, and diaries.

Practitioners believe that works cannot be viewed in isolation from history and culture. A reading of a work must take into account its intention, genre, and historical situation.

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism refers to a critical approach to language, literature, and culture that questions or criticizes structuralism. Like structuralists, post-structuralists rely on close readings of texts; however, post-structuralists believe that language is inherently unstable in meaning and the meaning of the texts is ultimately indecipherable.

The best known post-structuralist approach is deconstructionism.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic criticism is literary criticism grounded in the psychoanalytic theory of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Practitioners attempt to psychoanalyze the author’s unconscious desires, the reader’s responses, and the characters in the work. The last approach involves examining the text for symbols and psychological complexes.

In addition to Freud, key figures are psychiatrist Carl Jung and, most recently, Jacques Lacan.

Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-response criticism is a critical approach that shifts the emphasis to the reader from the text or the work’s author and context. This approach focuses on the individual reader’s evolving response to the text. The readers, through their own values and experiences, “create” the meaning of the text and therefore there is no one correct meaning.

When analyzing a text, from which a student will write a major paper, it is advised that the student should first focus on the elements of a story: plot, setting, atmosphere, mood, character, theme and title. 

The next logical approach is to look at the language (devices and patterns) and form of the text (structure). Then the student might consider any of the following approaches such as New Historicism, New Criticism, Archetypal Criticism, or Cultural Criticism.

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thank you, schoolworkhelper! Very cool!

is archetypal criticism part of formalism ?

Hi i have to do literary criticism on various cultural text. I think i understand the theories but i don’t know how to construct essays could you send sample essays? I would really appreciate your help. M.H

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Writing A Literary Analysis Essay

• Library Resources
• Books & EBooks
• What is an Literary Analysis?
• Literary Devices & Terms
• Creating a Thesis Statement This link opens in a new window
• Using quotes or evidence in your essay
• APA Format This link opens in a new window
• MLA Format This link opens in a new window
• OER Resources
• Copyright, Plagiarism, and Fair Use

When conducting Research, you might want to read reviews of the work, articles about the work, and articles about the writer as well as use evidence from the literature to be discussed. Use the following resources listed below to start your research:

• Library Books
• Dictionaries

ProQuest One Literature

Salem Literature

Literary Reference Center Plus

Arts & Humanities Database (ProQuest)

Poetry Foundation    

Poets.org, by the Academy of American Poets    

The Poetry Archive  – Recordings of famous poets reading and discussing their poems

Literary Criticism at Drexel University : Contains full text criticism and historical context for a number of American authors and offers author, title, and time period searches

Literary Criticism on the Internet : Online literary criticism for British and American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries, with links to overviews, biographical information, and criticism of individual works.

American Literature

Links to resources on American authors, a timeline, literary movements and other American literature sites created by Professor Donna Campbell of Washington State University.

The Flannery O'Connor Society

The Postcolonial Web

Teacher Resources - American Literature

Teacher  resources  for teaching  literature , reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.

The Online Books Page

Listing over 3 million free books on the Web - Updated Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Literary Hub

Short Stories and Classic Literature

The Literature Network 

Classic short stories: World-English.org

Types of Sources

When conducting research you may come across many different types of sources and each source falls under a specific category. There are three main categories of sources which include Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.

Primary source is a firsthand account of information by an individual with close connections to a topic. Ex: autobiographies, personal correspondences like diaries, government documents, documentaries, archives, works of art and literature, statistical data, and newspaper articles written by reporters close to the source. 

Secondary Source  is a source that is not involved or close to the event, usually written after the event has happened. Secondary sources describe, analyze, interpret, comment, and summarize a primary source. Ex: biographies, interpretation of statistics and data,  book reviews, scholarly articles that talk about someone else's research, and anything written after an historical event that reevaluates what happened.

Tertiary sources  contain information that is used to locate or find primary or secondary sources. Ex: almanacs, timelines, dictionaries and encyclopedias, directories, guidebooks, indexes, abstracts, manuals, and textbooks.

Types of Sources 

Various types of resources available for your research assignment or paper.

How to Evaluate sites

Evaluating sources involves recognizing that not all information you read is valid or credible especially when using online resources. The following links will give you a general breakdown of sources and the process of conducting research

• Evaluating Internet Information- USG Online Learning Library   A brief introduction about websites  
• Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web   Lessons plans discussing how to search the web by the University of South Carolina  
• Strategies for conducting Research   Information on conducting research by Pressbooks   When looking online for credible websites look for sites ending in .Gov or .Edu, some .Org websites can be credible as well just check on their sources for credibility.

evaluate sources

When looking for accurate, reliable, credible sources use the  Acronym CRAAP to help you decide if the information you are given is right for your research: 

Check out the following handouts and links for further assistance:

CRAAP Test Worksheet  

CRAAP handout- Evaluating Resources 

Checklist For evaluating sources 

A teaching resource created by the MLA Style Center. Checklist for determining if sites are reliable.

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A place for questions and discussion related to literature, its production, its history. NOT a place for getting people to do your homework.

What exactly is a literary analysis?

I know this is a very general question but I'm asking because I am going to be writing a writing sample for an application and want to write a new one because I know longer have any papers from college. Getting started is difficult and I'd just like a simple explanation of what the point of a literary analysis is and how should I go about writing one. Any info is appreciated.

• 7 Qualities of a Good LA
• Obstacles to Writing Good Literary Analyses
• Questioning
• Reading and Asking Questions
• Researching
• Making Connections
• Planning a Thesis
• The Big Idea
• Writing Terms Glossary
• Tips for Crafting Sentences
• Poem-Hughes-Harlem
• Story-Chopin-Story of an Hour
• Novel-Lee-To Kill a Mockingbird
• Drama-Glaspell-Trifles
• Story-Crane-The Open Boat
• Historical-Analysis-The-Cry-of-the-Children
• Feminist-Analysis-Jury-of-her-Peers
• Hall of Fame

Analysis Types

Types of literary analyses.

Feminist Analysis Feminist literary analysis focuses on feminist theories based on society’s unequal treatment of men and women. Feminist critics study texts in the context of patriarchal societies, gender stereotypes, and the treatment and reception of male and female writers.

Historical Analysis Historical Analysis looks at a text through a historical lens. By forming an understanding of the time period in which the text takes place and is written, historical critics translate new meaning from the text based on its roots, the social events, and the historical elements of the time period that impacted the author’s writing.

New Criticism New criticism analyzes text based solely on the text itself. Ignoring historical, biographical, cultural, and additional outside contexts, new criticism focuses on internal contexts. A few of the devices studied by new critics are language patterns, plot, content, diction, setting, structure, style, theme, and literary devices.

Psychological Analysis Psychological analysis seek to understand a text by examining and postulating on the author’s intentions, the reader’s responses, and the psychological state of the characters in the piece.

Reader Response Analysis Reader response analysis shifts the focus away from the author and other outside elements of the text and analyzes the reception of the text through the various lenses of its readers. Each reader response analysis varies based on the experiences and background of the reader and how they perceive the text.

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Introduction

You’ve been assigned a literary analysis paper—what does that even mean? Is it like a book report that you used to write in high school? Well, not really.

A literary analysis essay asks you to make an original argument about a poem, play, or work of fiction and support that argument with research and evidence from your careful reading of the text.

It can take many forms, such as a close reading of a text, critiquing the text through a particular literary theory, comparing one text to another, or criticizing another critic’s interpretation of the text. While there are many ways to structure a literary essay, writing this kind of essay follows generally follows a similar process for everyone

Crafting a good literary analysis essay begins with good close reading of the text, in which you have kept notes and observations as you read. This will help you with the first step, which is selecting a topic to write about—what jumped out as you read, what are you genuinely interested in? The next step is to focus your topic, developing it into an argument—why is this subject or observation important? Why should your reader care about it as much as you do? The third step is to gather evidence to support your argument, for literary analysis, support comes in the form of evidence from the text and from your research on what other literary critics have said about your topic. Only after you have performed these steps, are you ready to begin actually writing your essay.

Writing a Literary Analysis Essay

How to create a topic and conduct research:.

Writing an Analysis of a Poem, Story, or Play

If you are taking a literature course, it is important that you know how to write an analysis—sometimes called an interpretation or a literary analysis or a critical reading or a critical analysis—of a story, a poem, and a play. Your instructor will probably assign such an analysis as part of the course assessment. On your mid-term or final exam, you might have to write an analysis of one or more of the poems and/or stories on your reading list. Or the dreaded “sight poem or story” might appear on an exam, a work that is not on the reading list, that you have not read before, but one your instructor includes on the exam to examine your ability to apply the active reading skills you have learned in class to produce, independently, an effective literary analysis.You might be asked to write instead or, or in addition to an analysis of a literary work, a more sophisticated essay in which you compare and contrast the protagonists of two stories, or the use of form and metaphor in two poems, or the tragic heroes in two plays.

You might learn some literary theory in your course and be asked to apply theory—feminist, Marxist, reader-response, psychoanalytic, new historicist, for example—to one or more of the works on your reading list. But the seminal assignment in a literature course is the analysis of the single poem, story, novel, or play, and, even if you do not have to complete this assignment specifically, it will form the basis of most of the other writing assignments you will be required to undertake in your literature class. There are several ways of structuring a literary analysis, and your instructor might issue specific instructions on how he or she wants this assignment done. The method presented here might not be identical to the one your instructor wants you to follow, but it will be easy enough to modify, if your instructor expects something a bit different, and it is a good default method, if your instructor does not issue more specific guidelines.You want to begin your analysis with a paragraph that provides the context of the work you are analyzing and a brief account of what you believe to be the poem or story or play’s main theme. At a minimum, your account of the work’s context will include the name of the author, the title of the work, its genre, and the date and place of publication. If there is an important biographical or historical context to the work, you should include that, as well.Try to express the work’s theme in one or two sentences. Theme, you will recall, is that insight into human experience the author offers to readers, usually revealed as the content, the drama, the plot of the poem, story, or play unfolds and the characters interact. Assessing theme can be a complex task. Authors usually show the theme; they don’t tell it. They rarely say, at the end of the story, words to this effect: “and the moral of my story is…” They tell their story, develop their characters, provide some kind of conflict—and from all of this theme emerges. Because identifying theme can be challenging and subjective, it is often a good idea to work through the rest of the analysis, then return to the beginning and assess theme in light of your analysis of the work’s other literary elements.Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben’s analysis of William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children.”

“Among School Children” was published in Yeats’ 1928 collection of poems The Tower. It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State. In the course of the tour, Yeats reflects upon his own youth and the experiences that shaped the “sixty-year old, smiling public man” (line 8) he has become. Through his reflection, the theme of the poem emerges: a life has meaning when connections among apparently disparate experiences are forged into a unified whole.

In the body of your literature analysis, you want to guide your readers through a tour of the poem, story, or play, pausing along the way to comment on, analyze, interpret, and explain key incidents, descriptions, dialogue, symbols, the writer’s use of figurative language—any of the elements of literature that are relevant to a sound analysis of this particular work. Your main goal is to explain how the elements of literature work to elucidate, augment, and develop the theme. The elements of literature are common across genres: a story, a narrative poem, and a play all have a plot and characters. But certain genres privilege certain literary elements. In a poem, for example, form, imagery and metaphor might be especially important; in a story, setting and point-of-view might be more important than they are in a poem; in a play, dialogue, stage directions, lighting serve functions rarely relevant in the analysis of a story or poem.

The length of the body of an analysis of a literary work will usually depend upon the length of work being analyzed—the longer the work, the longer the analysis—though your instructor will likely establish a word limit for this assignment. Make certain that you do not simply paraphrase the plot of the story or play or the content of the poem. This is a common weakness in student literary analyses, especially when the analysis is of a poem or a play.

Here is a good example of two body paragraphs from Amelia’s analysis of “Araby” by James Joyce.

Within the story’s first few paragraphs occur several religious references which will accumulate as the story progresses. The narrator is a student at the Christian Brothers’ School; the former tenant of his house was a priest; he left behind books called The Abbot and The Devout Communicant. Near the end of the story’s second paragraph the narrator describes a “central apple tree” in the garden, under which is “the late tenant’s rusty bicycle pump.” We may begin to suspect the tree symbolizes the apple tree in the Garden of Eden and the bicycle pump, the snake which corrupted Eve, a stretch, perhaps, until Joyce’s fall-of-innocence theme becomes more apparent.

The narrator must continue to help his aunt with her errands, but, even when he is so occupied, his mind is on Mangan’s sister, as he tries to sort out his feelings for her. Here Joyce provides vivid insight into the mind of an adolescent boy at once elated and bewildered by his first crush. He wants to tell her of his “confused adoration,” but he does not know if he will ever have the chance. Joyce’s description of the pleasant tension consuming the narrator is conveyed in a striking simile, which continues to develop the narrator’s character, while echoing the religious imagery, so important to the story’s theme: “But my body was like a harp, and her words and gestures were like fingers, running along the wires.”

The concluding paragraph of your analysis should realize two goals. First, it should present your own opinion on the quality of the poem or story or play about which you have been writing. And, second, it should comment on the current relevance of the work. You should certainly comment on the enduring social relevance of the work you are explicating. You may comment, though you should never be obliged to do so, on the personal relevance of the work. Here is the concluding paragraph from Dao-Ming’s analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

First performed in 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest has been made into a film, as recently as 2002 and is regularly revived by professional and amateur theatre companies. It endures not only because of the comic brilliance of its characters and their dialogue, but also because its satire still resonates with contemporary audiences. I am still amazed that I see in my own Asian mother a shadow of Lady Bracknell, with her obsession with finding for her daughter a husband who will maintain, if not, ideally, increase the family’s social status. We might like to think we are more liberated and socially sophisticated than our Victorian ancestors, but the starlets and eligible bachelors who star in current reality television programs illustrate the extent to which superficial concerns still influence decisions about love and even marriage. Even now, we can turn to Oscar Wilde to help us understand and laugh at those who are earnest in name only.

Dao-Ming’s conclusion is brief, but she does manage to praise the play, reaffirm its main theme, and explain its enduring appeal. And note how her last sentence cleverly establishes that sense of closure that is also a feature of an effective analysis.

You may, of course, modify the template that is presented here. Your instructor might favour a somewhat different approach to literary analysis. Its essence, though, will be your understanding and interpretation of the theme of the poem, story, or play and the skill with which the author shapes the elements of literature—plot, character, form, diction, setting, point of view—to support the theme.

Academic Writing Tips : How to Write a Literary Analysis Paper. Authored by: eHow. Located at: https://youtu.be/8adKfLwIrVk. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube license

BC Open Textbooks: English Literature Victorians and Moderns: https://opentextbc.ca/englishliterature/back-matter/appendix-5-writing-an-analysis-of-a-poem-story-and-play/

Literary Analysis

The challenges of writing about english literature.

Writing begins with the act of reading . While this statement is true for most college papers, strong English papers tend to be the product of highly attentive reading (and rereading). When your instructors ask you to do a “close reading,” they are asking you to read not only for content, but also for structures and patterns. When you perform a close reading, then, you observe how form and content interact. In some cases, form reinforces content: for example, in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, where the speaker invites God’s “force” “to break, blow, burn and make [him] new.” Here, the stressed monosyllables of the verbs “break,” “blow” and “burn” evoke aurally the force that the speaker invites from God. In other cases, form raises questions about content: for example, a repeated denial of guilt will likely raise questions about the speaker’s professed innocence. When you close read, take an inductive approach. Start by observing particular details in the text, such as a repeated image or word, an unexpected development, or even a contradiction. Often, a detail–such as a repeated image–can help you to identify a question about the text that warrants further examination. So annotate details that strike you as you read. Some of those details will eventually help you to work towards a thesis. And don’t worry if a detail seems trivial. If you can make a case about how an apparently trivial detail reveals something significant about the text, then your paper will have a thought-provoking thesis to argue.

Common Types of English Papers Many assignments will ask you to analyze a single text. Others, however, will ask you to read two or more texts in relation to each other, or to consider a text in light of claims made by other scholars and critics. For most assignments, close reading will be central to your paper. While some assignment guidelines will suggest topics and spell out expectations in detail, others will offer little more than a page limit. Approaching the writing process in the absence of assigned topics can be daunting, but remember that you have resources: in section, you will probably have encountered some examples of close reading; in lecture, you will have encountered some of the course’s central questions and claims. The paper is a chance for you to extend a claim offered in lecture, or to analyze a passage neglected in lecture. In either case, your analysis should do more than recapitulate claims aired in lecture and section. Because different instructors have different goals for an assignment, you should always ask your professor or TF if you have questions. These general guidelines should apply in most cases:

• A close reading of a single text: Depending on the length of the text, you will need to be more or less selective about what you choose to consider. In the case of a sonnet, you will probably have enough room to analyze the text more thoroughly than you would in the case of a novel, for example, though even here you will probably not analyze every single detail. By contrast, in the case of a novel, you might analyze a repeated scene, image, or object (for example, scenes of train travel, images of decay, or objects such as or typewriters). Alternately, you might analyze a perplexing scene (such as a novel’s ending, albeit probably in relation to an earlier moment in the novel). But even when analyzing shorter works, you will need to be selective. Although you might notice numerous interesting details as you read, not all of those details will help you to organize a focused argument about the text. For example, if you are focusing on depictions of sensory experience in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” you probably do not need to analyze the image of a homeless Ruth in stanza 7, unless this image helps you to develop your case about sensory experience in the poem.
• A theoretically-informed close reading. In some courses, you will be asked to analyze a poem, a play, or a novel by using a critical theory (psychoanalytic, postcolonial, gender, etc). For example, you might use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze mother-daughter relations in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Critical theories provide focus for your analysis; if “abjection” is the guiding concept for your paper, you should focus on the scenes in the novel that are most relevant to the concept.
• A historically-informed close reading. In courses with a historicist orientation, you might use less self-consciously literary documents, such as newspapers or devotional manuals, to develop your analysis of a literary work. For example, to analyze how Robinson Crusoe makes sense of his island experiences, you might use Puritan tracts that narrate events in terms of how God organizes them. The tracts could help you to show not only how Robinson Crusoe draws on Puritan narrative conventions, but also—more significantly—how the novel revises those conventions.
• A comparison of two texts When analyzing two texts, you might look for unexpected contrasts between apparently similar texts, or unexpected similarities between apparently dissimilar texts, or for how one text revises or transforms the other. Keep in mind that not all of the similarities, differences, and transformations you identify will be relevant to an argument about the relationship between the two texts. As you work towards a thesis, you will need to decide which of those similarities, differences, or transformations to focus on. Moreover, unless instructed otherwise, you do not need to allot equal space to each text (unless this 50/50 allocation serves your thesis well, of course). Often you will find that one text helps to develop your analysis of another text. For example, you might analyze the transformation of Ariel’s song from The Tempest in T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land. Insofar as this analysis is interested in the afterlife of Ariel’s song in a later poem, you would likely allot more space to analyzing allusions to Ariel’s song in The Waste Land (after initially establishing the song’s significance in Shakespeare’s play, of course).
• A response paper A response paper is a great opportunity to practice your close reading skills without having to develop an entire argument. In most cases, a solid approach is to select a rich passage that rewards analysis (for example, one that depicts an important scene or a recurring image) and close read it. While response papers are a flexible genre, they are not invitations for impressionistic accounts of whether you liked the work or a particular character. Instead, you might use your close reading to raise a question about the text—to open up further investigation, rather than to supply a solution.
• A research paper. In most cases, you will receive guidance from the professor on the scope of the research paper. It is likely that you will be expected to consult sources other than the assigned readings. Hollis is your best bet for book titles, and the MLA bibliography (available through e-resources) for articles. When reading articles, make sure that they have been peer reviewed; you might also ask your TF to recommend reputable journals in the field.

Harvard College Writing Program: https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/bg_writing_english.pdf

In the same way that we talk with our friends about the latest episode of Game of Thrones or newest Marvel movie, scholars communicate their ideas and interpretations of literature through written literary analysis essays. Literary analysis essays make us better readers of literature.

Only through careful reading and well-argued analysis can we reach new understandings and interpretations of texts that are sometimes hundreds of years old. Literary analysis brings new meaning and can shed new light on texts. Building from careful reading and selecting a topic that you are genuinely interested in, your argument supports how you read and understand a text. Using examples from the text you are discussing in the form of textual evidence further supports your reading. Well-researched literary analysis also includes information about what other scholars have written about a specific text or topic.

Literary analysis helps us to refine our ideas, question what we think we know, and often generates new knowledge about literature. Literary analysis essays allow you to discuss your own interpretation of a given text through careful examination of the choices the original author made in the text.

ENG134 – Literary Genres Copyright © by The American Women's College and Jessica Egan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved June 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

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For what reason would you write a literary analysis essay?

A:to discuss why you like a certain author

B:to discuss a particular literary device or devices used by an author in a specific text

C:to discuss the overall value of a book

D:none of the above

Answer--B(apex approved)

Kesha Sparks ∙

To discuss a particular literary device or devices used by an author in a specific text

It can help you explain why you think an author is making a certain point.

Add your answer:

If you were reading an essay that explained how Melville used different aspects of his novel Moby-Dick to express his theme what kind of essay would you be reading?

A literary analysis essay.

What would work good as the title of an argumentative essay?

The real reason Rome fell would be a good title for an argumentative essay.

You can best back up the logos in your essay with?

evidence, facts, and statistics that support your analysis.

What would be a good reason to take a single point and stretch it out throughout several paragraphs in the body of a personal essay?

A good reason to take a single point and stretch it out throughout several paragraphs in the body of a personal essay would be if the point you are trying to make is complicated and needs additional explanation.

Literary analysis skillbuilder - inferences - the world is not a pleasant place to bepdf?

what does the poet mean when she says: an ocean would never laugh if clouds were not there to kiss her tears

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