literary criticism vs research paper

• Games & Quizzes
• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction
• Medieval period
• The Renaissance
• Neoclassicism and its decline
• Romanticism
• The late 19th century
• The influence of science
• Criticism and knowledge

literary criticism

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Internet Archive - "Literary Criticism"
• Academia - Literary Criticism and Literary Theory: A Study
• Humanities LibreTexts - About Literary Criticism
• literature - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• literature - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

literary criticism , the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature , whether or not specific works are analyzed. Plato ’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his Republic are thus often taken as the earliest important example of literary criticism .

More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical criticism,” the interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality. Criticism in this narrow sense can be distinguished not only from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic value) but also from other matters that may concern the student of literature: biographical questions, bibliography , historical knowledge, sources and influences, and problems of method. Thus, especially in academic studies, “criticism” is often considered to be separate from “scholarship.” In practice, however, this distinction often proves artificial, and even the most single-minded concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge, while many notable works of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments about the nature of literature and the principles of assessing it.

Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding, though the emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their authors’ places in literary history. For another particular aspect of literary criticism, see textual criticism .

The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of books as they are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though reviews may sometimes determine whether a given book will be widely sold, many works succeed commercially despite negative reviews, and many classic works, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), have acquired appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at first neglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in sensibility that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for such a new appraisal is, of course, that the original text survive. The literary critic is sometimes cast in the role of scholarly detective, unearthing, authenticating, and editing unknown manuscripts. Thus, even rarefied scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary use, the bringing of literary works to a public’s attention.

The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in which it appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of analysis and may sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s claims for a book’s interest. Weekly and biweekly magazines serve to introduce new books but are often more discriminating in their judgments, and some of these magazines, such as The (London) Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books , are far from indulgent toward popular works. Sustained criticism can also be found in monthlies and quarterlies with a broad circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized audiences, and in scholarly journals and books.

Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve respect and presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is a perennial target of resentment. Misguided or malicious critics can discourage an author who has been feeling his way toward a new mode that offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious engagement with literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the French philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that French thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in order to make those thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time more dead. Criticism can antagonize authors even when it performs its function well. Authors who regard literature as needing no advocates or investigators are less than grateful when told that their works possess unintended meaning or are imitative or incomplete.

What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published, belong to them only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the public, which will appropriate them for its own concerns regardless of the critic. The critic’s responsibility is not to the author’s self-esteem but to the public and to his own standards of judgment, which are usually more exacting than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on the premise that literary works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to the extent that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it could have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it further, helping to create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without sensing the presence of such a public, an author may either prostitute his talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance. In this sense, the critic is not a parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part for the existence of good writing in his own time and afterward.

Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation from other matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved with social and political debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is always rooted to some degree in local circumstances, and has a way of calling forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not surprising that the finest critics have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries between criticism and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary criticism has occupied a central place in debate about cultural and political issues. Sartre’s own What Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt to prescribe the literary intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his society and to literature as a manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some prominent American critics, including Alfred Kazin , Lionel Trilling , Kenneth Burke , Philip Rahv , and Irving Howe , began as political radicals in the 1930s and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas and disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influential The Liberal Imagination (1950) is simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an attempt to reconcile the claims of politics and art.

Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic believes, as Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a deeper faithfulness to reality than is contained in any political formula. In Marxist states, however, literature has usually been considered a means to social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in forthrightly partisan terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the critic into a mere guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a cause in itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party. Where this utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be continuous with that of the state itself, namely, furtherance of the social revolution. The critic’s main obligation is not to his texts but rather to the masses of people whose consciousness must be advanced in the designated direction. In periods of severe orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism has not always been distinguishable from that of censorship.

ENG 102 / ENG 108: Research Papers, Literary Criticism & Annotated Bibliographies

• Topic Selection
• Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

Search Tips

• Finding Books & eBooks
• Web Resources
• Streaming Videos
• Literary Criticism
• Annotated Bibliography Tutorial
• In Class Evaluation Activity
• Writing and Citing
• ENG102 - Professor Carl This link opens in a new window
• ENG102 - Professor Chaffin This link opens in a new window
• ENG102 - Professor Hays This link opens in a new window
• ENG102 - Professor Herald
• ENG102 - Professor Vassett This link opens in a new window
• Your MCC Libraries

When searching for literary analysis on a particular work or author, here are some tips that will help you get better results:

Using Quotes

If you are searching for criticism or analysis on a particular literary work, put the title in quotes.

For example:

"The Time Machine"

"The Road Not Taken"

Include the author's name in your search

To help narrow your results, try including the author's name in your search.

"Crime and Punishment" and Dostoevsky

Emma and Austen

Identifying criticism and analysis

When searching for criticism or analysis, specify what you are looking for in your search.

"Tell-tale Heart" and (criticism or analysis)

"The Yellow Wallpaper" and (criticism or review)

What is Literary Criticism?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), literary criticism is defined as "the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of a literary work". Literary criticism is written in a variety of formats including reviews, essays, research papers, and even dissertations. Literary criticism goes beyond just reading a text; you interpret and analyze what is written.

Databases for Literary Criticism

The following databases are great resources for researching literature including criticism, analysis and reviews. See the 'Search Tips' box on this page for further help in searching these databases:

• Literature Resource Center Search this database for literary analysis and criticism on literary works including short stories, poetry, general literature and more!
• JStor An extensive database of scholarly journals. Literary content available back to the late 1800s.
• Academic Search Premier
• Academic OneFile
• MasterFILE Premier

Print Literary Criticism Sources

In addition to a variety of library databases (eResources), the MCC Library collections contain a variety of print resources that provide literary criticism and analysis. Be sure to ask for help at the Reference Desk if you need help locating or using these resources.  Search the  library catalog  for additional resources.

• << Previous: Streaming Videos
• Next: Annotated Bibliographies >>
• Last Updated: Feb 22, 2024 12:05 PM
• URL: https://mesacc.libguides.com/eng102

University of Houston Libraries

Literary studies research guide.

• Literary studies home
• Background information
• Literary criticism
• Primary sources
• MLA Style This link opens in a new window
• Need More Help?

What is literary criticism?

Dickinson College Waidner-Spahr Library  

Literary criticism can be found most often in critical books and scholarly articles. Critical books provide in-depth, scholarly, expert analysis of your topic. Scholarly articles also provide expert analysis, and are usually peer-reviewed, a process by which articles are reviewed by other scholars in the same field of study before being published. Peer review is an important step in the scholarly publishing process. To learn more about peer review, watch the video below. 

What is peer review?

Video transcript

Find Literary Criticism

Find literary criticism in both books and journals using the resources below. A complete list of literary criticism databases can be found on the UH Libraries website . 

• WorldCat This link opens in a new window Search for books, videos, and more from libraries worldwide.
• << Previous: Background information
• Next: Primary sources >>
• Last Updated: Nov 29, 2023 2:54 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uh.edu/LiteraryStudies

• Directories
• General Literary Theory & Criticism Resources
• African Diaspora Studies
• Critical Disability Studies
• Critical Race Theory
• Deconstruction and Poststructuralism
• Ecocriticism
• Feminist Theory
• Indigenous Literary Studies
• Marxist Literary Criticism
• Narratology
• New Historicism
• Postcolonial Theory
• Psychoanalytic Criticism
• Queer and Trans Theory
• Structuralism and Semiotics
• How Do I Use Literary Criticism and Theory?
• Start Your Research
• Research Guides
• University of Washington Libraries
• Library Guides
• UW Libraries
• Literary Research

Literary Research: General Literary Theory & Criticism Resources

Theory vs. criticism.

From: Stevens, Anne H.  Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction . Second edition., Broadview Press, 2021.

"In general, literary theory refers to writings that deal with the underlying principles associated with the study of literature, language, interpretation, culture, and all sorts of related issues. Many of the thinkers who have shaped major theoretical approaches to literature come from areas outside the boundaries of traditional literary studies, especially in fields such as philosophy and the social sciences. Literary criticism usually refers to analysis of a particular work or works: studies of individual authors, genres, literary movements, and the like.

The two terms are closely related, however, since both literary theorists and literary critics study literary texts using a theoretical framework. One way of conceiving of the difference between the two relates to the underlying aims of the writing. A work of literary theory might use literary texts as examples or illustrations that serve to develop a larger theoretical point, while a literary critic might use a theoretical perspective as a means of better understanding a literary text. The distinction is quite subtle and subjective, though, because these two sides -- theory and criticism -- constantly reinforce each other."

Bibliographies

• Oxford Bibliographies: Literary and Critical Theory Scholarly, annotated summaries and listings of the significant sources in Literary and Critical Theory.

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

To find additional dictionaries and encyclopedias, searched by subject headings:

• Criticism -- Terminology
• Criticism -- Encyclopedias
• Criticism -- Bio-bibliography
• Literature -- Terminology

Anthologies

History of Literary Criticism

Introductions, Companions, Guides, Handbooks

• << Previous: Home
• Next: Specific Theories & Approaches >>
• Last Updated: Jun 12, 2024 2:03 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/literaryresearch

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved July 1, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write a thesis statement | 4 steps & examples, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, how to write a narrative essay | example & tips, get unlimited documents corrected.

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

In order to help minimize spread of the coronavirus and protect our campus community, Cowles Library is adjusting our services, hours, and building access. Read more...

• Research, Study, Learning
• Archives & Special Collections

• Cowles Library

English & Literature: Literary Criticism & Reviews

• Databases & Journals
• Primary Sources
• Literary Criticism & Reviews

Using this page

This section of the guide will help with your critical analyses of literary works. Whether by helping you define literary terms and concepts, or by helping you find and explore critical approaches to literature, we hope the resources and tools in this section enhance your critical thinking and research skills.

Literary Criticism vs. Reviews vs. Literature Reviews

• Literary Criticism
• Literature Reviews

Description

Rather than rating the quality of an author's work as a whole, literary criticism, or critical analysis, typically focuses on how an author treats a topic or topics. Through interpretation, summarizing, or comparing the work to others, the critic's purpose (in most cases) is to increase the reader's understanding of the literary work.

There are quite a few types or schools of literary criticism/analysis. Here are 11 traditional approaches:

• HIstorical-biographical criticism - examines a work through the perspective of an author's historical context.
• Moral-philosophical criticism - evaluates a work based on the moral statements and judgements expressed by characters and the author within the text.
• Sociological criticism - examines the author’s status in their society as well as the effect that the literary work had on its audience within the society (Marxist criticism falls into this category).
• Psychoanalytic criticism - examines literature based on the psychological desires and neuroses of the characters within a particular piece of literature. Psychoanalytic critics believe that an author’s unconscious thoughts are expressed through their work.
• Practical criticism - encourages readers to examine the text without regard to any outside context.
• Formalism - encourages readers to judge the artistic merit of literature by examining its formal elements, like language and technical skill.
• Reader-response criticism - believes that a reader's reaction to or interpretation of a text is as valuable a source of critical study as the text itself.
• New criticism - focuses on examining the formal and structural elements of literature, as opposed to the emotional or moral elements.
• Post-structuralism - questions any assumed universal truths as reliant on the social structure that influenced them.
• Deconstruction - picks apart a text’s ideas or arguments, looking for contradictions that render any singular reading of a text impossible.
• Feminist criticism - as it's name suggests, examines literature through a feminist lens.

(Descriptions taken from MasterClass, https://www.masterclass.com/articles/literary-criticism).

Why is literary criticism useful?

As mentioned above, literary criticism can enhance your understanding of a work. In order to write your own critical essay, it can be very useful to find examples of other criticism that will help inform your position or perspective.

The many approaches to critical analysis provide a wide variety of ways to examine literary works, expanding your appreciation and understanding of literature in general.

How can I find literary criticism?

Critical essays are usually found in scholarly journals, and many such journals can be explored from the Databases & Journals page in this guide. Here are some additional approaches to finding literary criticism:

Literature Resource Center provides biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism, and reviews on more than 160,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods, and from around the world. Literature Resource Center content supports interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities, information literacy, and the development of critical thinking skills. In addition, Literary Resource Center is cross-searchable with other Gale literary products like LitFinder and eBooks from Gale.

• SuperSearch Using the Advanced Search mode in SuperSearch, you can enter your author, work, or topic in the first field, and combine it with "Subject contains 'criticism'" to narrow the results.

For example, here is a search for "edgar allen poe" that also looks for "criticism" in the Subjects. Another approach is to expand the Subjects filter when viewing a list of results, then look for the subject terms "literary criticism," "criticism and interpretation," or "history and criticism" (see screenshot below). Select those checkboxes and click Apply Filters to further narrow your results.

Among the forms discussed on this page, reviews are likely the format you're most familiar with. Reviews are usually relatively short pieces that provide a qualitative assessment of a work (think "5-star review"). Often, reviewers also offer a recommendation (e.g., worth reading; if you like X, you'll like this, etc.) and express personal opinions (e.g., "I felt the author could have..." or 'I was surprised to find...'). Unlike critical analyses, which focus on a specific theme or topic within the work, reviews typically examine the work as a whole.

You are probably most familiar with book reviews, but there can also evaluative reviews written on scholarly articles.

Why are reviews useful?

Because they are usually written by experts in the same field as the work being evaluated, reviews can be incredibly useful during the research process. In addition to providing a summary of the work, reviews can identify factual inaccuracies, structural issues, whether the work adds to the field of research or simply repeats territory that has already been covered, and identify potential author bias.

You may be able to identify some of these things yourself, but getting the reviewer's perspective can be quite helpful in determining whether you want to use the book or article as a source for your own research.

How do I find reviews?

Reviews can sometimes be tricky to identify, but SuperSearch does provide a method you can use. After searching for your work, author, or topic, look for "Reviews" in the Material Type filter on the left side of the screen:

A literature review, also called a review article or review of literature, surveys the existing research on a topic. The term "literature" in this context refers to published research or scholarship in a particular discipline, rather than "fiction" (like American Literature) or an individual work of literature. In general, literature reviews are more common in the sciences and social sciences, but they are written occasionally in the humanities.

Literature reviews may be written as standalone works, or as part of a scholarly article or research paper. In either case, the purpose of the review is to summarize and synthesize the key scholarly work that has already been done on the topic at hand. The literature review may also include some analysis and interpretation. A literature review is not a summary of every piece of scholarly research on a topic.

Why are literature reviews useful?

Literature reviews can be very helpful for newer researchers or those unfamiliar with a field by synthesizing the existing research on a given topic, providing the reader with connections and relationships among previous scholarship. Reviews can also be useful to veteran researchers by identifying potentials gaps in the research or steering future research questions toward unexplored areas. If a literature review is part of a scholarly article, it should include an explanation of how the current article adds to the conversation.

How do I find literature reviews?

Reviews of literature are published in scholarly journals. In SuperSearch and most databases, select the Advanced Search mode and include "literature review" or "review of the literature" in addition to your other search terms. In the search results, some articles may include the phrase "systematic review," "review of literature," or "literature review" in the title or subtitle.

The library also subscribes to Annual Reviews, a database of publications dedicated to literature reviews in a variety of disciplines.

• << Previous: New Books
• Last Updated: Jun 10, 2024 11:46 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.drake.edu/englit

• 2507 University Avenue
• Des Moines, IA 50311
• (515) 271-2111

Trouble finding something? Try searching , or check out the Get Help page.

• Request Info

Waidner-Spahr Library

• Do Research
• About the Library
• Dickinson Scholar

Ask a Librarian

• My Library Account

Criticism: Literature, Film & Drama: Literature Criticism

Literature criticism.

• Film Criticism
• Drama Criticism

Introduction

This guide will help you locate criticism for Literature, Film, and Drama.

See the English Libguide for more assistance with Literary Criticism.

See the English Databases List for more resources.

Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme, style, setting or historical or political context. It usually includes discussion of the work’s content and integrates your ideas with other insights gained from research. Literary criticism may have a positive or a negative bias and may be a study of an individual piece of literature or an author’s body of work.

Although criticism may include some of the following elements in order to support an idea, literary criticism is NOT a plot summary, a biography of the author, or simply finding fault with the literature.

Researching, reading, and writing works of literary criticism will help you to make better sense of the work, form judgments about literature, study ideas from different points of view, and determine on an individual level whether a literary work is worth reading.

Examples of some types of literary criticism are:

• Biographical
• Comparative
• Psychological
• Theoretical

Literary Criticism Databases

Literary criticism in essays shortened from their original published versions can be found in the first two databases. Full text databases follow.

• Literary Index (Gale Literary Sets) This link opens in a new window Search a master index to the major literature books published by Gale, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Poetry Criticism. Coverage: historical to present. Citations only.

Explore an authoritative source of literary criticism, summarizing authors' lives and works and including excerpts from scholarly articles. IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this source is an encyclopedic work, it should NEVER be directly cited. Always look up the original source of the excerpted and reprinted articles. Coverage: varies. Mostly full text.

• Essay and General Literature Index This link opens in a new window Search chapters and essays contained in books of collected works, focusing on humanities and social sciences, including works published in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. This index covers archaeology, folklore, architecture, history, art, linguistics, literature, music, classical studies, poetry, drama, political science, economics, religion women's studies, and film. Coverage: 1985 to present. Citations only.
• Humanities Source This link opens in a new window Access journals, books and other published sources from around the world in all aspects of the humanities, including archaeology, area studies, art, classical studies, dance, film, gender studies, history, journalism, linguistics, literature, music, performing arts, philosophy, and religion. For citation searching: click "Cited References" at the top of the search screen. Coverage: late 1800s to present. Some full text.
• Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective This link opens in a new window Search for articles from English-language periodicals on subjects including anthropology, archaeology, art, classical studies, criminal justice, environmental studies, ethics, gender studies, international relations, law, literature, music, performing arts, philosophy, political science, psychiatry, psychology, religion and sociology. Use the library's "Get It!" button to obtain materials with no direct full text link. Coverage: 1907-1984. Citations only.
• MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) with Full Text This link opens in a new window Search for scholarly, international journals, books, and more, covering language, literature, composition, folklore, and film. Coverage: late 19th century to present. Some full text.
• Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive This link opens in a new window Access historical issues of Times Literary Supplement, a literary journal which scrutinized, dissected, applauded, and occasionally disparaged, the work of the twentieth century's leading writers and thinkers. This journal is cross-searchable with other collections via Gale Primary Sources . Coverage: 1902-2019. Mostly full text.
• Magill's Literary Annuals (On Campus Access Only) This link opens in a new window Access reviews of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, published in English, from writers in the United States and around the world. *This collection must be accessed from on campus.* Coverage: 1977-2021. Full text.

Have the citation?

If you already have a newspaper citation, and need to locate the article, use the following steps:

• Search the Journal Locator using the title of the newspaper.
• If your newspaper is not listed in the results, search the library catalog .
• If not available in the Library Catalog or the Journal Locator, use ILLiad to request the article from another library.
• Still having trouble? Ask a Librarian for help.

Librarians: [email protected] Text us: 717-366-6623 Librarians by Department

Circulation desk: 717-245-1397

• Next: Film Criticism >>
• Last Updated: Apr 26, 2024 2:08 PM
• URL: https://libguides.dickinson.edu/criticism

Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, literary criticism.

• © 2023 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College
• Some of the people in the group say they do not like the film because it portrays Bella as a weak female who becomes obsessed with Edward Cullen whom she cannot marry without leaving her loving father and losing her precious mortality.
• Other people like those aspects of the film, however, arguing that the film makes them disagree with its representation of some women as meek characters.

What is Literary Criticism?

Literary Criticism is

• a research method , a type of textual research , that literary critics employ to interpret texts and debate interpretations
• a genre of argument about a specific text or a set of texts .

Key Terms: Archive, Canon ; Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Semiotics ; Text & Intertextuality ; Tone ; rhetoric , intersubjectivity, modernism, postmodernism.

*Alternative Article Title(s): Critical Theory

General Strategies for Engaging in Literary Criticism

Engage in rhetorical analysis.

The methods for engaging in rhetorical criticism and presenting interpretations are bounded by the values and customs of particular disciplinary communities–i.e., the conventions of particular critical schools (e.g., Critical Disability Studies or Feminist Criticism ).

Distinguish between summarizing the literary work and presenting your argument. Many students fall into the trap of spending too much time summarizing the literature being analyzed as opposed to critiquing it. As a result, it would be wise to check with your teacher regarding how much plot summary is expected. As you approach this project, remember to keep your eye on the ball: What, exactly (in one sentence) is the gist of your interpretation?

Development

One of the most strategic things you can do if you’ve assigned to write some criticism is to read other critics who are well regarded by the disciplinary community you choose to address.

How do other critics evaluate an author’s work? What literary theories do literary critics use to interpret texts or particular moments in history? Reading sample analysis papers can help you find and adopt an appropriate voice and persona. By reading samples, you can learn how others have prioritized particular criteria.

Cite Other Critics’ Interpretations of the Work

Criticism written by advanced English majors, graduate students, and literary critics may be more about what other critics have said than about the actual text. Indeed, many critics spend more time reading criticism and arguing about critical approaches than actually reading original works. However, unless you are enrolled in a literary theory course, your instructor probably wants you to focus more on interpreting the work than discussing other critical interpretations. This does not mean, however, that you should write about a literary work “blindly.” Instead, you are wise to find out what other students and critics have said about the work.

Below is a sample passage that illustrates how other critics’ works can inspire an author and guide him or her in constructing a counter argument, support an author’s interpretation, and provide helpful biographical information.

In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of the New Yorker it received a response that “no New Yorker story had ever received”: hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by “bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse.”1 It is not hard to account for this response: Jackson’s story portrays an “average” New England village with “average” citizens engaged in a deadly rite, the annual selection of a sacrificial victim by means of a public lottery, and does so quite deviously: not until well along in the story do we suspect that the “winner” will be stoned to death by the rest of the villagers.

[ Scholarship as a Conversation ]

Organization

The format for literary critiques is fairly standard:

• State your claim(s).
• Forecast your organization.
• Marshal evidence for your claim.
• Reiterate argument and elaborate on its significance.

In English classes, you may be able to assume that your readers are familiar with the work you are critiquing. Perhaps, for example, the entire class is responding to one particular work after some class discussions about it. However, if your instructor asks you to address a broader audience, you may need to provide bibliographical information for the work. In other words, you may need to cite the title, publisher, date, and pages of the work (see Citing Sources ).

Literary critiques are arguments. As such, your instructors expect you to state a claim in your introduction and then provide quotes and paraphrased statements from the text to serve as evidence for your claim. Ideally, your critique will be insightful and interesting. You’ll want to come up with an interpretation that isn’t immediately obvious. Below are some examples of “thesis statements” or “claims” from literary critiques:

• In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is oppressed and represents the effect of the oppression of women in society. This effect is created by the use of complex symbols such as the house, the window, and the wall-paper which facilitate her oppression as well as her self expression. [“‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’: A Twist on Conventional Symbols” by Liselle Sant]
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman is a sad story of the repression that women face in the days of the late 1800’s as well as being representative of the turmoil that women face today. [Critique of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Brandi Mahon]
• “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story of a woman, her psychological difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment of her aliments during the late 1800s. . . Gilman does well throughout the story to show with descriptive phrases just how easily and effectively the man “seemingly” wields his “maleness” to control the woman. But, with further interpretation and insight I believe Gilman succeeds in nothing more than showing the weakness of women, of the day, as active persons in their own as well as society’s decision making processes instead of the strength of men as women dominating machines. “The View from the Inside” by Timothy J. Decker
• In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates a strong opposition between the freedom of Huck and Jim’s life on the raft drifting down the Mississippi River, which represents “nature,” and the confining and restrictive life on the shore, which represents “society.” [ “‘All I wanted was a change’: Positive Images of Nature and Society in Chapter 19 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from Professor Matthew Hurt’s “Sample Essays for English 103: Introduction to Fiction”]
• In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” an unexpected visitor comes down from the sky, and seems to test the faith of a community. The villagers have a difficult time figuring out just how the very old man with enormous wings fits into their lives. Because this character does not agree with their conception of what an angel should look like, they try to determine if the aged man could actually be an angel. In trying to prove the origin of their visitor, the villagers lose faith in the possibility of him being an angel because he does not adhere to their ordered world. Marquez keeps the identity of the very old man with enormous wings ambiguous to critique the villagers and, more generally, organized religion for having a lack of faith to believe in miracles that do not comply with their master narrative. [“Prove It: A Critique of the Villagers’ Faith in ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'” from Sample Essays for English 103: Introduction to Fiction, Professor Matthew Hurt]

Literary criticism is a fairly specialized genre . Instead of writing to a general lay audience, you are writing to members of a literary community who have read a work and who developed opinions about the work–as well as a vocabulary of interpretation.

Across Schools of Criticism, critics share a common vocabulary of critique. Below are some common words used by literary critics.

• Protagonist: The protagonist is the major character of the story; typically the character must overcome significant challenges.
• Antagonist: The protagonist’s chief nemesis; in other words, the character whom the protagonist must overcome.
• Symbols: Metaphoric language; see A Catalogue of Symbols in The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Viewpoint: Stories are told either in the first person or third person point of view. The first person is limited to a single character, although dialog can let you guess at other characters’ intentions. The third person allows readers inside the character’s mind so you know what the character feels and thinks.Viewpoint can be “limited,” where the character knows less than the reader, or “omniscient,” where the reader can hear the thoughts and feelings of all characters. Occasionally writers will use multiple character viewpoint, which takes you from one character’s perspective to another.
• Plot: Plots are a series of scenes, typically moving from a conflict situation to a resolution. To surprise readers, authors will foreshadow “false plants,” which lead readers to anticipate other resolutions. The term “denouement” refers to the unraveling of the plot in the conclusion.

Cite from the Work

Literary criticism involves close reading of a literary work, regardless of whether you are arguing about a particular interpretation, comparing stories or poems, or using a theory to interpret literature. The purpose of the document is not to inform the readers, but to argue a particular interpretation. You only need to cite parts of the work that support or relate to your argument and follow the citation format required by your instructor

What are Schools of Literary Criticism?

Literary theory and criticism have existed from classical through contemporary times. Over time, schools of criticism have evolved as critics (aka communities of practitioners) have introduced new ideas about texts and intertextuality , rhetoric , intersubjectivity, modernism, postmodernism.

Schools of Literary Criticism include

Critical Disability Studies

Feminist criticism, lgbtq + criticism, marxist criticism, new historicist criticism, post-colonial criticism, post-structuralist, deconstructive criticism, psychological criticism, reader-response criticism, russian formalism and new criticism, structuralist criticism.

Most schools of literary criticism draw extensively on the work of other theorists and critics, while others concentrate on the reader’s thoughts and feelings. Additionally, some theorists analyze a work from an historical perspective, while others focus solely on a close reading of a text.

The first step in formulating a critical argument is to assume a rhetorical stance that engages a type, school, or approach of literary criticism. The critical approach you employ to engage in textual analysis will shape the content of your interpretation.

[ Rhetorical Stance | Rhetorical Reasoning ]

Related Articles:

Recommended

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Structured Revision – How to Revise Your Work

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Research, Speech & Writing

Citation Guide – Learn How to Cite Sources in Academic and Professional Writing

Page Design – How to Design Messages for Maximum Impact

Suggested edits.

• Please select the purpose of your message. * - Corrections, Typos, or Edits Technical Support/Problems using the site Advertising with Writing Commons Copyright Issues I am contacting you about something else
• Your full name
• Your email address *
• Page URL needing edits *
• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
• Angela Eward-Mangione

Marxist Criticism refers to a method you’ll encounter in literary and cultural analysis. It breaks down texts and societal structures using foundational concepts like class, alienation, base, and superstructure. By...

Featured Articles

Literary Criticism: Articles

• Evaluating Information
• Citing Sources

What is Literary Criticism?

Literary criticism is the evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literary works. It is usually in the form of a critical essay, but in-depth book reviews can sometimes be considered literary criticism.

Criticism may examine:

• a particular literary work
• an author's writings as a whole

Definition from IPL Lit Criticism Pathfinder

I Can't Find Enough Criticism...

You might need to broaden your search to include:

• Author’s Work in General
• Themes or Motifs – such as utopia, scapegoat
• Types of Criticism – Marxist, feminist
• Genre – such as science fiction
• Literary Elements – such as metaphor, imagery
• Time & Culture – such as 20th century, women

Find Literary Criticism with OneSearch

Find literary criticism published in peer-reviewed journals in multiple databases.

Search Tips for OneSearch

• Put the title of the work in quotes and the author's last name, for example, "Doll's House" Ibsen
• If you can't find criticism about a specific work, put the author's name in quotes along with the word criticism, e.g. " Luisa Valenzuela" criticism

Recommended Literature Research Databases

• Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window

• Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
• JSTOR Arts and Sciences III Collection This link opens in a new window
• Google Scholar This link opens in a new window

Writing About Literature

• Annotated Bibliographies Purdue OWL provides resources for writing an annotated bibliography along with examples.
• Writing in Literature Resources from Purdue OWL on literary terms, literary theory, and schools of criticism.
• Next: Books >>
• Last Updated: Jun 26, 2024 10:53 AM
• URL: https://libguides.lcc.edu/litcrit

ENGLISH: Research Guide | Book Reviews vs. Literary Criticism

• Get Started
• Book Reviews vs. Literary Criticism
• Find Books & Media
• Creative Writing

Your Librarian

In This Section

In this section, you'll find:.

• Information on book reviews and where to find them
• Information on literary criticism  and where to find it

Book Reviews

Book reviews describe and analyze the contents of a book, and often make a recommendation about whether or not to read or purchase the book. Reviews vary in length from single paragraphs to full-length essays (remember writing book reports in middle school?).

Reviews of nonfiction books analyze the topics and/or arguments of the book. Reviewers judge the effectiveness of the authors' support for their arguments and assertions. An author should have some form of authority - they should have a credible reason for writing on the subject. Thus, a book review should cover the authors' credentials. Typically, book reviews compare the book to similar books on the subject. Pay attention to what reviewers consider to be important omissions and any potential biases.

Book Reviews - Fiction & Popular Works

Full-text book reviews from 1965-present, mostly for general fiction and non-fiction, the humanities, and the social sciences. Search for the book title (not the review title).

• The New York Review of Books Literary magazine with essays and reviews (of theater and more, not just books).

Book Reviews - Nonfiction & Scholarly Works

• H-Net Reviews The largest online professional reviewing archive, with approximately 46,000 free reviews of scholarly books.

Literary Criticism

Literary criticism is the term given to studies that define, classify, analyze, interpret, and evaluate works of literature. There are many types of literary criticism:

• Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)
• Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
• Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
• Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
• Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
• Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
• New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
• Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
• Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
• Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
• Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)

Literary criticism may examine a particular literary work or it may look at an author's writings as a whole. 

Literary Criticism in Academic Journals

• << Previous: Find Articles
• Next: Find Books & Media >>
• Last Updated: Jun 5, 2024 11:42 AM
• URL: https://libguides.uj.edu/english

Learning to Write Literary Analysis

Literary criticism.

By reading and discussing literature, we expand our imagination, our sense of what is possible, and our ability to empathize with others. Improve your ability to read critically and interpret texts while gaining appreciation for different literary genres and theories of interpretation. Read samples of literary interpretation. Write a critique of a literary work.

Texts that interpret literary works are usually persuasive texts. Literary critics may conduct a close reading of a literary work, critique a literary work from the stance of a particular literary theory, or debate the soundness of other critics’ interpretations. The work of literary critics is similar to the work of authors writing evaluative texts. For example, the skills required to critique films, interpret laws, or evaluate artistic trends are similar to those skills required by literary critics.

Why Write Literary Criticism?

“Literary texts” include works of fiction and poetry. In school, English instructors ask students to critique literary texts, or works. Literary criticism refers to a genre of writing whereby an author critiques a literary text, either a work of fiction, a play, or poetry. Alternatively, some works of literary criticism address how a particular theory of interpretation informs a reading of a work or refutes some other critics’ reading of a work.

Diverse Rhetorical Situations

The genre of literary interpretation is more specialized than most of the other genres addressed in this section, as suggested by the table below. People may discuss their reactions to literary works informally (at coffee houses, book clubs, or the gym) but the lion’s share of literary criticism takes place more formally: in college classrooms, professional journals, academic magazines, and Web sites.

Students interpret literary works for English instructors or for students enrolled in English classes. In their interpretations, students may argue for a particular interpretation or they may dispute other critics’ interpretations. Alternatively, students may read a text with a particular literary theory in mind, using the theory to explicate a particular point of view. For example, writers could critique The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin from a feminist theoretical perspective. Thanks to the Internet, some English classes are now publishing students’ interpretations on Web sites. In turn, some students and English faculty publish their work in academic literary criticism journals.

Over the years, literary critics have argued about the best ways to interpret literature. Accordingly, many “schools” or “theories of criticism” have emerged. As you can imagine–given that they were developed by sophisticated specialists–some of these theoretical approaches are quite sophisticated and abstract.

Below is a summary of some of the more popular literary theories. Because it is a summary, the following tends to oversimplify the theories. In any case, unless you are enrolled in a literary criticism course, you won’t need to learn the particulars of all of these approaches. Instead, your teacher may ask you to take an eclectic approach, pulling interpretative questions from multiple literary theories.

Note : If you are interested in learning more about these theories, review either Skylar Hamilton Burris’ Literary Criticism: An Overview of Approaches or Dino F. Felluga’s Undergraduate Guide to Critical Theory

• Schools of Literary Criticism
• New Criticism : Focuses on “objectively” evaluating the text, identifying its underlying form. May study, for example, a text’s use of imagery, metaphor, or symbolism. Isn’t concerned with matters outside the text, such as biographical or contextual information. Online Examples: A Formalist Reading of Sandra Cisneros’s “Woman Hollering Creek” , Sound in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Skylar Hamilton Burris
• Reader-Respons : Criticism Focuses on each reader’s personal reactions to a text, assuming meaning is created by a reader’s or interpretive community’s personal interaction with a text. Assumes no single, correct, universal meaning exists because meaning resides in the minds of readers. Online Examples: Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”: A Reader’s Response (PDF)
• Feminism: Criticism Focuses on understanding ways gender roles are reflected or contradicted by texts, how dominance and submission play out in texts, and how gender roles evolve in texts. Online Example: “The Yellow Wall-Paper”: A Twist on Conventional Symbols , Subverting the French Androcentric Influence by Jane Le Marquand
• New Historicism Focuses on understanding texts by viewing texts in the context of other texts. Seeks to understand economic, social, and political influences on texts. Tend to broadly define the term “text,” so, for example, the Catholic Church could be defined as a “text.” May adopt the perspectives of other interpretive communities–particularly reader-response criticism, feminist criticism, and Marxist approaches–to interpret texts. Online Example  Monstrous Acts by Jonathan Lethem
• Media Criticism Focuses on writers’ use of multimedia and hypertexts. Online Examples The Electronic Labyrinth by Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, and Robin Parmar
• Psychoanalytical Criticism Focuses on psychological dimensions of the work. Online Examples: A Freudian Approach to Erin McGraw’s “A Thief” by Skylar Hamilton Burris
• Marxist Criticism Focuses on ways texts reflect, reinforce, or challenge the effects of class, power relations, and social roles. Online Example: A Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” by Peter Kosenko
• Archetypal Criticism Focuses on identifying the underlying myths in stories and archetypes, which reflect what the psychologist Carl Jung called the “collective unconsciousness.” Online Example: A Catalogue of Symbols in The Awakening by Kate Chopin by Skylar Hamilton Burris
• Postcolonial Criticism Focuses on how Western culture’s (mis)representation of third-world countries and peoples in stories, myths, and stereotypical images encourages repression and domination. Online Example: Other Voices
• Structuralism/Semiotics Focuses on literature as a system of signs where meaning is constructed in a context, where words are inscribed with meaning by being compared to other words and structures. Online Example: Applied Semiotics [Online journal with many samples]
• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction Focuses, along with Structuralism, on viewing literature as a system of signs, yet rejects the Structuralist view that a critic can identify the inherent meaning of a text, suggesting, instead that literature has no center, no single interpretation, that literary language is inherently ambiguous

Powerful works of literature invoke multiple readings. In other words, we can all read the same story or poem (or watch the same movie or listen to the same song) and come up with different, even conflicting, interpretations about what the work means. Who we are reflects how we read texts. Our experiences inspire us to relate to and sympathize with characters and difficult situations. Have we read similar stories? Have we actually faced some of the same challenges the characters in the story face?

In addition, literary theories have unique ways to develop and substantiate arguments. Some theories draw extensively on the work of other critics, while others concentrate on the reader’s thoughts and feelings. Some theories analyze a work from an historical perspective, while others focus solely on a close reading of a text.

Accordingly, as with other genres, the following key features need to be read as points of departure as opposed to a comprehensive blueprint:

Examine a subject from a rhetorical perspective. Identify the intended audience, purpose, context, media, voice, tone, and persona.Distinguish between summarizing the literary work and presenting your argument. Many students fall into the trap of spending too much time summarizing the literature being analyzed as opposed to critiquing it. As a result, it would be wise to check with your teacher regarding how much plot summary is expected. As you approach this project, remember to keep your eye on the ball: What, exactly (in one sentence) is the gist of your interpretation?

Development

You can develop your ideas by researching the work of other literary critics. How do other critics evaluate an author’s work? What literary theories do literary critics use to interpret texts or particular moments in history? Reading sample proposals can help you find and adopt an appropriate voice and persona. By reading samples, you can learn how others have prioritized particular criteria.

Below are some of the questions invoked by popular literary theories. Consider these questions as you read a work, perhaps taking notes on your thoughts as you reread. You may focus on using one theory to “read and interpret” text or, more commonly, you may compare the critical concerns of different theories.

New Criticism/Formalism

• Character: How does the character evolve during the story? What is unique or interesting about a character? Is the character a stereotypical action hero, a patriarchal father figure, or Madonna? How does a character interact with other characters?
• Setting: How does the setting enhance tension within the work? Do any elements in the setting foreshadow the conclusion of the piece?
• Plot:What is the conflict? How do scenes lead to a suspenseful resolution? What scenes make the plot unusual, unexpected, suspenseful?
• Point of View: Who is telling the story? Is the narrator omniscient (all knowing) or does the narrator have limited understanding?

Reader-Response Criticism

How does the text make you feel? What memories or experiences come to mind when you read? If you were the central protagonist, would you have behaved differently? Why? What values or ethics do you believe are suggested by the story? As your reading of a text progresses, what surprises you, inspires you?

Feminist Criticism

How does the story re-inscribe or contradict traditional gender roles? For example, are the male characters in “power positions” while the women are “dominated”? Are the men prone to action, decisiveness, and leadership while the female characters are passive, subordinate? Do gender roles create tension within the story? Do characters’ gender roles evolve over the course of the narrative?

New Historicism Cristicism

How does the story reflect the aspirations and conditions of the lower classes or upper classes? Is tension created by juxtaposing privileged, powerful positions to subordinated, dominated positions? What information about the historical context of the story helps explain the character’s motivations? Who benefits from the outcome of the story or from a given character’s motivation?

Media Criticism

How does the medium alter readers’ interactions with the text? Has the reader employed multimedia or hypertext? What traditions from print and page design have shaped the structure of the text? In what ways has the author deviated from traditional, deductively organized linear texts?

Cite from the Work

Literary criticism involves close reading of a literary work, regardless of whether you are arguing about a particular interpretation, comparing stories or poems, or using a theory to interpret literature.Do not summarize the story. The purpose of the document is not to inform the readers, but to argue a particular interpretation. You only need to cite parts of the work that support or relate to your argument and follow the citation format required by your instructor (see Using and Citing Sources).

Below is an example from Sample Essays for English 103: Introduction to Fiction, Professor Matthew Hurt. Note how the writer uses block quotes to highlight key elements and paraphrase and summarizes the original works, using quotation marks where necessary.

…Twain offers a long descriptive passage of Huck and Jim’s life on the raft that seems, at first glance, to celebrate the idyllic freedom symbolized by the river and nature. . . A close reading of this passage, however, shows that the river is not a privileged natural space outside of and uncontaminated by society, but is inextricably linked to the social world on the shore, which itself has positive value for Huck. Instead of seeking to escape society, Huck wants to escape the dull routines of life.

The passage abounds with lyrical descriptions of the river’s natural beauty. For example, Huck’s long description of the sunrise over the river captures the peaceful stillness and the visual beauty of the scene:

The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line — that was the woods on t’other side — you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; . . . sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in the swift current which breaks on it and makes the streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other side of the river, . . . then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; . . . and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going at it! (129-130)

Here Huck celebrates the beauty of the natural world coming to life at the beginning of a new day. The “paleness” gradually spreading across the sky makes new objects visible which he describes in loving detail for the reader. The “nice breeze” is “cool and fresh” and “sweet to smell,” and the world seems to be “smiling in the sun” as the song-birds welcome the new day.

However, Huck includes a number of details within this passage that would seem to work against the language of natural beauty. After describing the gradually brightening sky, Huck notes that “you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away — trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks — rafts.” The sun rise reveals not only natural objects (the brightening sky, the “snag,” the “mist”), but also brings into view man-made objects (“trading scows” and “rafts”) that signify human society’s presence in this natural environment. Similarly, Huck speculates that the picturesque “log cabin” on the distant shore is a “woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres.” Here the marker of human society takes on a sinister tone of corruption as Huck describes how unscrupulous wood sellers stack wood loosely to cheat their customers. Finally, although the breeze is “sweet to smell,” Huck assures the reader that this isn’t always the case: “but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank.”

These signs of society’s presence on the river are largely negative. The woodyard is “piled by cheats” and the stacked fish pollute the “sweet” smell of the breeze. At this point, the opposition between “good nature” and “bad society” remains intact. The signs of human presence suggest a corruption of nature’s beauty. In the paragraphs that follow, however, this opposition is subtly reversed. After Huck’s account of the sunrise over the river, he describes how he and Jim watch the steamboats “coughing along up stream.” But when there are no steamboats or rafts to watch, he describes the scene as “solid lonesomeness” (130). No songbirds, no sweet breezes. Without human activities to watch, the scene suddenly becomes empty and “lonesome,” and nothing captures Huck’s attention until more rafts and boats pass by and he can watch them chopping wood or listen to them beating pans in the fog.

Cite Other Critics’ Interpretations of the Work

Criticism written by advanced English majors, graduate students, and literary critics may be more about what other critics have said than about the actual text. Indeed, many critics spend more time reading criticism and arguing about critical approaches than actually reading original works. However, unless you are enrolled in a literary theory course, your instructor probably wants you to focus more on interpreting the work than discussing other critical interpretations. This does not mean, however, that you should write about a literary work “blindly.” Instead, you are wise to find out what other students and critics have said about the work.

Below is a sample passage that illustrates how other critics’ works can inspire an author and guide him or her in constructing a counter argument, support an author’s interpretation, and provide helpful biographical information.

In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of the New Yorker it received a response that “no New Yorker story had ever received”: hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by “bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse.”1 It is not hard to account for this response: Jackson’s story portrays an “average” New England village with “average” citizens engaged in a deadly rite, the annual selection of a sacrificial victim by means of a public lottery, and does so quite deviously: not until well along in the story do we suspect that the “winner” will be stoned to death by the rest of the villagers.

Organization

The format for literary critiques is fairly standard:

• State your claim(s).
• Forecast your organization.
• Marshal evidence for your claim.
• Reiterate argument and elaborate on its significance.

In English classes, you may be able to assume that your readers are familiar with the work you are critiquing. Perhaps, for example, the entire class is responding to one particular work after some class discussions about it. However, if your instructor asks you to address a broader audience, you may need to provide bibliographical information for the work. In other words, you may need to cite the title, publisher, date, and pages of the work (see Citing Sources ).

Literary critiques are arguments. As such, your instructors expect you to state a claim in your introduction and then provide quotes and paraphrased statements from the text to serve as evidence for your claim. Ideally, your critique will be insightful and interesting. You’ll want to come up with an interpretation that isn’t immediately obvious. Below are some examples of “thesis statements” or “claims” from literary critiques:

• In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is oppressed and represents the effect of the oppression of women in society. This effect is created by the use of complex symbols such as the house, the window, and the wall-paper which facilitate her oppression as well as her self expression. [“‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’: A Twist on Conventional Symbols” by Liselle Sant]
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman is a sad story of the repression that women face in the days of the late 1800’s as well as being representative of the turmoil that women face today. [Critique of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Brandi Mahon]
• “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story of a woman, her psychological difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment of her aliments during the late 1800s. . . Gilman does well throughout the story to show with descriptive phrases just how easily and effectively the man “seemingly” wields his “maleness” to control the woman. But, with further interpretation and insight I believe Gilman succeeds in nothing more than showing the weakness of women, of the day, as active persons in their own as well as society’s decision making processes instead of the strength of men as women dominating machines. “The View from the Inside” by Timothy J. Decker
• In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates a strong opposition between the freedom of Huck and Jim’s life on the raft drifting down the Mississippi River, which represents “nature,” and the confining and restrictive life on the shore, which represents “society.” [ “‘All I wanted was a change’: Positive Images of Nature and Society in Chapter 19 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from Professor Matthew Hurt’s “Sample Essays for English 103: Introduction to Fiction”]
• In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” an unexpected visitor comes down from the sky, and seems to test the faith of a community. The villagers have a difficult time figuring out just how the very old man with enormous wings fits into their lives. Because this character does not agree with their conception of what an angel should look like, they try to determine if the aged man could actually be an angel. In trying to prove the origin of their visitor, the villagers lose faith in the possibility of him being an angel because he does not adhere to their ordered world. Marquez keeps the identity of the very old man with enormous wings ambiguous to critique the villagers and, more generally, organized religion for having a lack of faith to believe in miracles that do not comply with their master narrative. [“Prove It: A Critique of the Villagers’ Faith in ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'” from Sample Essays for English 103: Introduction to Fiction, Professor Matthew Hurt]

Literary criticism is a fairly specialized kind of writing. Instead of writing to a general lay audience, you are writing to members of a literary community who have read a work and who developed opinions about the work–as well as a vocabulary of interpretation.

Following are some common words used by literary critics. More specialized terms can be learned by reading criticism or by referring to a good encyclopedia for criticism or writing, including the Writer’s Encyclopedia:

• Protagonist: The protagonist is the major character of the story; typically the character must overcome significant challenges.
• Antagonist: The protagonist’s chief nemesis; in other words, the character whom the protagonist must overcome.
• Symbols: Metaphoric language; see A Catalogue of Symbols in The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Viewpoint: Stories are told either in the first person or third person point of view. The first person is limited to a single character, although dialog can let you guess at other characters’ intentions. The third person allows readers inside the character’s mind so you know what the character feels and thinks.Viewpoint can be “limited,” where the character knows less than the reader, or “omniscient,” where the reader can hear the thoughts and feelings of all characters. Occasionally writers will use multiple character viewpoint, which takes you from one character’s perspective to another.
• Plot: Plots are a series of scenes, typically moving from a conflict situation to a resolution. To surprise readers, authors will foreshadow “false plants,” which lead readers to anticipate other resolutions. The term “denouement” refers to the unraveling of the plot in the conclusion.
• Literary Criticism. Authored by : Joseph Moxley. Provided by : Writing Commons. Located at : http://writingcommons.org/open-text/genres/academic-writing/literary-criticism/28-literary-criticism . License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• 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

Holman Library

• GRC Holman Library
• Green River LibGuides
• Library Instruction

ENGL 126 Research Writing: Humanities

• Find Scholarly Literary Criticism in Journals & Books
• English 126
• Keywords & Search
• What Is Literary Criticism?
• Schools of Literary Critcism
• Find Background Information
• Find Reviews & the Popular Conversation
• Find Literature (short stories, poetry, drama, novels, & more)
• Track down Citations
• MLA Citation Style (8th Ed.)
• Find Help @ GRC

Tutorial on Gale Literature

Source: "Gale Literature Resource Center - Literary Analysis" by Gale, A Cengage Company , is licensed under a Standard YouTube License.

Extend your Research

• Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Request books and articles from other libraries using ILL

Find Scholarly Literary Criticism

• The Scholarly Conversation
• Scholarly Articles
• The Explicator

Scholarly Books

Step into the scholarly conversation on literature.

For sustained and deeper literary criticism, find relevant scholarly articles and books in library databases.

• Think of scholarship as a conversation - a conversation between critic, text, and other critics.
• Build your own conversation, integrating sources and voices that participate in your original analysis.
• Use the Works Cited in articles and books you like to track down the sources engaged by that critic.

What is Literary Criticism?

Literary criticism is analysis, interpretation and evaluation of authors and their works of literature, which can include novels, short stories, essays, plays and poetry.

Literary "criticism" is not necessarily negative; "criticism" means a thoughtful critique of an author's work or an author's style in order to better understand the meaning, symbolism or influences of a particular piece or a body of literature.

Literary criticism is written for an academic audience.

Introductory articles, such as the Topic Overviews found in the database, Gale Literature, are written for students.

Scholarly literary criticism is generally found in scholarly literary journals, such as Critique or The Journal of Ethnic Fiction, as well as in academic books. A scholarly journal is peer-reviewed if articles that are published in it go through a rigorous review process by other experts in the field.

Book reviews are written for the general public, and they may be a good source of introductory analysis, as well. Local newspapers, such as the Seattle Times, and magazines, such as Entertainment Weekly or O, contain book reviews.

Characteristics of Scholarly Criticism

Scholarly literary criticism offers an original interpretation of a literary text, and engages with that written work in a thoughtful, sophisticated and sustained manner. While literary criticism from a reference book provides you with introductory terminology, context, interpretation and more, scholarly criticism goes deeper.

Scholarly literary criticism analyzes and builds on specific passages, characters, themes, language, etc. from a written work.

Scholarly literary criticism brings the critic's particular theoretical framework, biases, questions, etc to bear upon the text.

Articles are written by scholars in a subject area for an academic or professional audience. Check for author affiliations or credentials in the database record or at the beginning or end of an article.

Scholarly literary criticism may be extensively cited, if the author references the work of other thinkers. Some scholarly literary criticism engages primarily and closely with the text itself, rather than with other the ideas of other scholars. (Scholarly articles in the sciences and social sciences are, as a rule, extensively and thoroughly cited.)

There is no one correct scholarly reading of a text. That said, be sure to build your own analysis with examples and support from the written work you're analyzing as well as the scholarly article with which you are "conversing."

Finding Scholarly Articles

The databases below all contain scholarly literary criticism. If an option, limit to scholarly peer-reviewed journals. 

See the image below for more details. 

Sample Search

• Remember to try different keywords, subject terms, and multiple databases.

Tips: How to Use the Holman Library One Search

You can limit your One Search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal articles. Just select Peer Reviewed Journals from the results page.  

• You can also refine your search to include sources that are not full text, by date, and more.  
• Google Scholar Google Scholar allows you to search the web for peer-reviewed article and book citations. You can use these citations to track down the items at Green River or request them by Interlibrary Loan.
• WorldCat A great resource for InterLibrary Loan that searches collections from libraries worldwide.

Featured Journal

The Explicator provides brief, pee-reviewed, close Readings of texts

• The Explicator Find models of explication and critics with whom to engage in the literary criticism journal, The Explicator . Full Text from 1985-Current

Books can be scholarly too! How can you tell? 

A scholarly book will: 

• Be written by an expert or experts in the field (PH.D., M.D., etc)
• Offer an original interpretation or discussion that brings new insight and knowledge to the field
• Offer sustained, sophisticated, and in-depth analysis and discussion
• Often be printed by a University Press
• Be written for an academic audience
• Include references to the other scholarly works the book is "in conversation" with

NOTE: While you can limit a search for articles to scholarly (peer reviewed) journals, you cannot do the same with books. Use the list above to assess if a book is scholarly. That's particularly easy to do with ebooks

Searching for books and ebooks

Holman Library has books on authors, literary movements, themes in literature, and more. Search for essay collections, as well as for works on a specific author, work of literature, or idea.

To find scholarly criticism, try adding the keyword: criticism or the subject term: literary criticism.

As always, try a range of search terms to find the best results for your purpose.

Searching Tips

Here is a scholarly electronic book found in the Holman Library catalog with the search terms:

"Langston Hughes" AND criticism

• View the Book Record

Clues this is a scholarly work: This is an edited work by an academic press. The Subject is: Criticism and Interpretation. It includes a bibliography.

(click on image to enlarge)

Clues this is a scholarly work: The author(s) has academic credentials.

• Clues this is a scholarly work: The author engages substantively with the text and with the ideas of other scholars. 

Article databases

Video tutorial - literary criticism 2: step into the scholarly conversation.

Source: "Literary Criticism 2: Step into the Scholarly Conversation" by Holman Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Thinking Outside the Box

Uh oh not finding enough, what to do when you cannot find much written about your story or author.

When you do research on current authors and works, sometimes there has not yet been a lot written about them. That's okay!

Scholarship represents  your  original thinking about a text or theme in literature. As part of your analysis you can integrate relevant sources, even if they are not about your specific text. Think about:

• larger themes or issues, such as refugees, terrorism, identity, nation, or colonialism
• other works by your author
• analysis of the work of another author that you can apply to your interpretation of your short story or novel
• a literary movement, genre or body of literature, such as Pakistani literature, Southeast Asian authors, literature of the diaspora, post-colonial literature
• a literary theory, such as queer theory, gender theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, psychoanalytic theory, etc.
• Below is an example of ideas and analysis about Minaret by Leila Aboulela. This would be a source to use if I were writing about the same ideas in a different work by a different author. 

Example: The highlighted sections of this article abstract (I would then read the whole article) might support an analysis of another novel or short story that explores how women navigate different spaces of religion, nation, and identity by claiming the veil as a symbol that simultaneously excludes them and allows them to define a new space.

Words to Consider

Sample subject terms.

• (Look for other terms relevant to your text)
• (Also please note that subject terms may use old fashioned and out of date terminology!)
• Literary Criticism
• Criticism and Interpretation
• Criticism -- Political Aspects -- United States
• Criticism -- United States -- History - Twentieth Century
• Psychoanalysis and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• Psychological Fiction, American -- History and Criticism
• Television Criticism
• Literary Criticism/ Poetry
• Literature -- Black Authors -- History and Criticism
• Literary Criticism / American / African American 
• Feminist Literary Criticism
• Feminist Criticism
• Queer Literary Criticism
• Homosexuality in Literature 
• Art Criticism
• Film Criticism

Sample Keyword Search:

"literary analysis" OR "literary criticism" OR "criticism AND interpretation"

• AND queer* 
• << Previous: Find Reviews & the Popular Conversation
• Next: Find Literature (short stories, poetry, drama, novels, & more) >>
• Last Updated: Jun 23, 2024 1:24 PM
• URL: https://libguides.greenriver.edu/engl126

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Literary Research in Harvard Libraries

• Distant Reading, Close Reading
• Get Organized
• Find Background
• Where to Search
• Search Vocabulary
• Obscure/Recent Topics
• Literary Journalism Search (under construction!)
• Find Primary or Archival Material
• Literary Theory
• Foreign Language Literatures

Distant Reading

About distant reading.

"Distant reading" has a specific meaning (coined by Franco Moretti), but can also generally refer to the use of computational methods to analyze literary texts. To learn more, start with Debates in the Digital Humanities , or explore this HOLLIS search for scholarly guides to the Digital Humanities and this MLA search for "distant reading" and related terms .

Ngram Viewers: Chart word usage over time

Beware: ngram counts are only as relevant or interesting as the corpus of texts they're measuring. Is the spike or drop you're observing attributable to a change in how language is used, or just material circumstances that make something likely to be included or excluded from your corpus? Think about the long-term durability of various kinds of paper, library collection policies, wartime effects on publishing, etc.

• Google Ngram: choose a sample of the Google Books corpus, including the "Google million." Search up to 5 consecutive words. Visit About Google Ngram for details and advanced features.
• HathiTrust Bookworm : samples the HathiTrust Digital Library. Unigrams (single words) only. More precise options for specifying type of publication. Select a plot point to see a snapshot of texts with "hits."
• Mediacloud : lots of options for visualizing topics in the news. Requires creating a free account.

Databases and Datasets

• HarvardKey-restricted : the library licenses access to many kinds of databases that provide data , searchable full-text corpora , and other kinds of tools.
• Free to access : the web abounds in open-access portals that encourage you to explore texts on a macro scale. Some big ones include the Digital Public Library of America , HathiTrust and its HathiTrust Research Center , Europeana , and the Internet Archive . There are many, many more.
• Specialized datasets , such as the ECCO corpus, may be available by request
• For details and specific recommendations , ask me!
• For additional leads and ideas , see library research guides that mention data

Build Your Own Project: Campus Resources

• Digital Scholarship Group
• Lamont Media Lab
• Harvard Map Collection
• Institute for Quantitative Social Science

Close Reading

About close reading.

Close reading is an activity that keeps you focused on and within a text—appraising individual words, shapes of thought, rhetorical devices, patterns of description and characterization, and so forth, in order to understand the text's artistic achievement. For more on the history and practice, see the JHU Guide's article on Practical Criticism or this HOLLIS search for "close reading" and literary criticism .

Trace Word Meanings over Time

• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) : widely accepted as the most complete record of the English language ever assembled. Each entry includes a pronunciation key and etymology (in Old or Middle English, for example), identifies a word's earliest known use, and lists the word's changing meanings (including those now obsolete). Quotations from literary texts and other historical records illustrate different usages over time. The OED has a  fascinating history of its own .

Trace Occurrences of a Word across Texts

• Concordances : These are published, alphabetized lists of individual words used in a single text (e.g.Thoreau's  Walden  ) or larger oeuvre (e.g.  Ezra Pound's  Cantos  or  Milton's English prose ). In HOLLIS, add "concordances" to the author's name, e.g. concordances AND "Keats, John" . Many concordances are now published online instead: examples include the  Victorian  Literary Studies Archive Hyper-Concordance , the  Open Source Shakespeare Concordance ,  and the  Online Concordance to  Wallace Stevens' Poetry .
• Searchable full-text   collections : When a concordance isn't available, there may be digital editions of the literary text(s) you're studying. For English and American authors, try  LION (Literature Online) : it contains a library of 350,000 texts from the 8th century through the 20th. For more, see our guide to Finding Full Text Books Online .
• Variorum editions : Some texts exist in multiple versions. The differences between these versions, from the removal or addition of whole passages to subtle changes in punctuation, can make enormous differences in interpretation. A variorum edition collates textual variants and attempts to account for them, in some cases, by including the critical conversations they have engendered. A HOLLIS search for an author's name plus "variorum" or "variants" ( "Shakespeare, William" AND (variorum OR variants) will bring up variorum editions as well as literary criticism that focuses specifically on textual variants. 

Understand Literary and Rhetorical Terms

These special terms provide literary scholars with a shorthand for describing the formal properties of language, but they can also give you new lenses with which to view texts. The word "chiasmus" is shorter than "repetition of ideas in reverse order"; the concept of chiasmus might make you more alert to the order in which ideas are repeated within a sentence or a paragraph.

• The Reference Works collection in Literature Online is an excellent selection of searchable guides specific to literary studies. Pro tip : you can use the general search box and then filter your results to "Reference."
• Silva Rhetoricae : An award-winning website, maintained at Brigham Young University, that provides overviews of rhetorical practice, definitions of rhetorical figures, and very helpful examples of each.
• Individual guides and dictionaries: a HOLLIS search for dictionaries of poetics and literary terminology is a good way to see what's out there. For a helpful selection, start at call number RR 3005.31 in the Loker Reading Room.
• << Previous: Foreign Language Literatures

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 40514

• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

• Advanced Search

An Extensive Classification of 5G Network Jamming Attacks

New citation alert added.

This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:

You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.

To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.

New Citation Alert!

Please log in to your account

Information & Contributors

Bibliometrics & citations, view options, recommendations, jamming attacks and countermeasures in wireless area networks, packet-hiding methods for preventing selective jamming attacks.

The open nature of the wireless medium leaves it vulnerable to intentional interference attacks, typically referred to as jamming. This intentional interference with wireless transmissions can be used as a launchpad for mounting Denial-of-Service ...

Jamming Aided Generalized Data Attacks: Exposing Vulnerabilities in Secure Estimation

Jamming refers to the deletion, corruption or damage of meter measurements that prevents their further usage. This is distinct from adversarial data injection that changes meter readings while preserving their utility in state estimation. This paper ...

Information

Published in.

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

United States

Publication History

• Review-article

Contributors

Other metrics, bibliometrics, article metrics.

• 0 Total Citations
• 0 Total Downloads
• Downloads (Last 12 months) 0
• Downloads (Last 6 weeks) 0

View options

Login options.

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Share this publication link.

Copying failed.

Share on social media

Affiliations, export citations.

• Please download or close your previous search result export first before starting a new bulk export. Preview is not available. By clicking download, a status dialog will open to start the export process. The process may take a few minutes but once it finishes a file will be downloadable from your browser. You may continue to browse the DL while the export process is in progress. Download
• Download citation
• Copy citation

We are preparing your search results for download ...

We will inform you here when the file is ready.

Your file of search results citations is now ready.

Your search export query has expired. Please try again.

The Epistemological Consequences of Artificial Intelligence, Precision Medicine, and Implantable Brain-Computer Interfaces

Article sidebar.

Main Article Content

I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments. 

INTRODUCTION

In contrast to the classic model of randomized-control trials, often with a large number of subjects enrolled, precision medicine attempts to optimize therapeutic outcomes by focusing on the individual. [i] A recent publication highlights the strengths and weakness of both traditional evidence-based medicine and precision medicine. [ii] Plus, it outlines a tension in the shift from evidence-based medicine’s inductive reasoning style (the collection of data to postulate general theories) to precision medicine’s abductive reasoning style (the generation of an idea from the limited data available). [iii] The paper’s main example is the application of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer. [iv] I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too.

As the name suggests, brain-computer interfaces are a significant advancement in neurotechnology that directly connects someone’s brain to external or implanted devices. [v] Among the various kinds of brain-computer interfaces, adaptive deep brain stimulation devices require numerous personalized adjustments to their settings during the implantation and computation stages in order to provide adequate relief to patients with treatment-resistant disorders. What makes these devices unique is how adaptive deep brain stimulation integrates a sensory component to initiate the stimulation. While not commonly at the level of sophistication as self-supervising or generative large language models, [vi] they currently allow for a semi-autonomous form of neuromodulation. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments. [vii]

I.     The State of Precision Medicine in Oncology and the Epistemological Shift

While a thorough overview of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer is beyond the scope of this article, its practice can be roughly summarized as identifying clinically significant characteristics a patient possesses (e.g., genetic traits) to land on a specialized treatment option that, theoretically, should benefit the patient the most. [viii] However, in such a practice of stratification patients fall into smaller and smaller populations and the quality of evidence that can be applied to anyone outside these decreases in turn. [ix] As inductive logic helps to articulate, the greater the number of patients that respond to a particular therapy the higher the probability of its efficacy. By straying from this logical framework, precision medicine opens the treatment of cancer to more uncertainty about the validity of these approaches to the resulting disease subcategories. [x] Thus, while contemporary medical practices explicitly describe some treatments as “personalized”, they ought not be viewed as inherently better founded than other therapies. [xi]

A relevant contemporary case of precision medicine out of Norway focuses on the care of a patient with cancer between the ventricles of the heart and esophagus, which had failed to respond to the standard regimen of therapies over four years. [xii] In a last-ditch effort, the patient elected to pay out-of-pocket for an experimental immunotherapy (nivolumab) at a private hospital. He experienced marked improvements and a reduction in the size of the tumor. Understandably, the patient tried to pursue further rounds of nivolumab at a public hospital. However, the hospital initially declined to pay for it given the “lack of evidence from randomised clinical trials for this drug relating to this [patient’s] condition.” [xiii] In rebuttal to this claim, the patient countered that he was actually similar to a subpopulation of patients who responded in “open‐label, single arm, phase 2 studies on another immune therapy drug” (pembrolizumab). [xiv] Given this interpretation of the prior studies and the patient’s response, further rounds of nivolumab were approved. Had the patient not had improvements in the tumor’s size following a round of nivolumab, then pembrolizumab’s prior empirical evidence in isolation would have been insufficient, inductively speaking, to justify his continued use of nivolumab. [xv]

The case demonstrates a shift in reasoning from the traditional induction to abduction . The phenomenon of ‘cancer improvement’ is considered causally linked to nivolumab and its underlying physiological mechanisms. [xvi] However, “the weakness of abductions is that there may always be some other better, unknown explanation for an effect. The patient may for example belong to a special subgroup that spontaneously improves, or the change may be a placebo effect. This does not mean, however, that abductive inferences cannot be strong or reasonable, in the sense that they can make a conclusion probable .” [xvii] To demonstrate the limitations of relying on the abductive standard in isolation, commentators have pointed out that side effects in precision medicine are hard to rule out as being related to the initial intervention itself unless trends from a group of patients are taken into consideration. [xviii]

As artificial intelligence (AI) assists the development of precision medicine for oncology, this uncertainty ought to be taken into consideration. The implementation of AI has been crucial to the development of precision medicine by providing a way to combine large patient datasets or a single patient with a large number of unique variables with machine learning to recommend matches based on statistics and probability of success upon which practitioners can base medical recommendations. [xix] The AI is usually not establishing a causal relationship [xx] – it is predicting. So, as AI bleeds into medical devices, like brain-computer interfaces, the same cautions about using abductive reasoning alone should be carried over.

II.     Responsive Neurostimulation, AI, and Personalized Medicine

Like precision medicine in cancer treatment, computer-brain interface technology similarly focuses on the individual patient through personalized settings. In order to properly expose the intersection of AI, precision medicine, abductive reasoning, and implantable neurotechnologies, the descriptions of adaptive deep brain stimulation systems need to deepen. [xxi] As a broad summary of adaptive deep brain stimulation, to provide a patient with the therapeutic stimulation, a neural signal, typically referred to as a local field potential, [xxii] must first be detected and then interpreted by the device. The main adaptive deep brain stimulation device with premarket approval, the NeuroPace Responsive Neurostimulation system, is used to treat epilepsy by detecting and storing “programmer-defined phenomena.” [xxiii] Providers can optimize the detection settings of the device to align with the patient’s unique electrographic seizures as well as personalize the reacting stimulation’s parameters. [xxiv] The provider adjusts the technology based on trial and error. One day machine learning algorithms will be able to regularly aid this process in myriad ways, such as by identifying the specific stimulation settings a patient may respond to ahead of time based on their electrophysiological signatures. [xxv] Either way, with AI or programmers, adaptive neurostimulation technologies are individualized and therefore operate in line with precision medicine rather than standard treatments based on large clinical trials.

Contemporary neurostimulation devices are not usually sophisticated enough to be prominent in AI discussions where the topics of neural networks, deep learning, generative models, and self-attention dominate the conversation. However, implantable high-density electrocorticography arrays (a much more sensitive version than adaptive deep brain stimulation systems use) have been used in combination with neural networks to help patients with neurologic deficits from a prior stroke “speak” through a virtual avatar. [xxvi] In some experimental situations, algorithms are optimizing stimulation parameters with increasing levels of independence. [xxvii] An example of neurostimulation that is analogous to the use of nivolumab in Norway surrounds a patient in the United States who was experiencing both treatment-resistant OCD and temporal lobe epilepsy. [xxviii] Given the refractory nature of her epilepsy, implantation of an adaptive deep brain stimulation system was indicated. As a form of experimental therapy, her treatment-resistant OCD was also indicated for the off-label use of an adaptive deep brain stimulation set-up. Another deep brain stimulation lead, other than the one implanted for epilepsy, was placed in the patient’s right nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum region given the correlation these nuclei had with OCD symptoms in prior research. Following this, the patient underwent “1) ambulatory, patient-initiated magnet-swipe storage of data during moments of obsessive thoughts; (2) lab-based, naturalistic provocation of OCD-related distress (naturalistic provocation task); and (3) lab-based, VR [virtual reality] provocation of OCD-related distress (VR provocation task).” [xxix] Such signals were used to identify when to deliver the therapeutic stimulation in order to counter the OCD symptoms. Thankfully, following the procedure and calibration the patient exhibited marked improvements in their OCD symptoms and recently shared her results publicly. [xxx]

In both cases, there is a similar level of abductive justification for the efficacy of the delivered therapy. In the case study in which the patient was treated with adaptive deep brain stimulation, they at least had their neural activity tested in various settings to determine the optimum parameters for treatment to avoid them being based on guesswork. Additionally, the adaptive deep brain stimulation lead was already placed before the calibration trials were conducted, meaning that the patient had already taken on the bulk of the procedural risk before the efficacy could be determined. Such an efficacy test could have been replicated in the first patient’s cancer treatment, had it been biopsied and tested against the remaining immunotherapies in vitro . Yet, in the case of cancer with few options, one previous dose of a drug that appeared to work on the patient may justify further doses. However, as the Norwegian case presents, corroboration with known responses to a similar drug (from a clinical trial) could be helpful to validate the treatment strategy. (It should be noted that both patients were resigned to these last resort options regardless of the efficacy of treatment.)

There are some elements of inductive logic seen with adaptive deep brain stimulation research in general. For example, abductively the focus could be that patient X’s stimulation parameters are different from patient Y’s and patient Z’s. In contrast, when grouped as subjects who obtained personalized stimulation, patients X, Y, and Z demonstrate an inductive aspect to this approach’s safety and/or efficacy. The OCD case holds plenty of abductive characteristics in line with precision medicine’s approach to treating cancer and as more individuals try the method, there will be additional data. With the gradual integration of AI into brain-computer interfaces in the name of efficacy, this reliance on abduction will continue, if not grow, over time. Moving forward, if a responsive deep brain stimulation treatment is novel and individualized (like the dose of nivolumab) and there is some other suggestion of efficacy (like clinical similarities to other patients in the literature), then it may justify insurance coverage for the investigative intervention, absent other unrelated reasons to deny it.

III.     Ethical Implications and Next Steps

While AI’s use in oncology and neurology is not yet as prominent as its use in other fields (e.g., radiology), it appears to be on the horizon for both. [xxxi] AI can be found in both the functioning of the neurotechnologies as well as the implementation of precision medicine. The increasing use of AI may serve to further individualize both oncologic and neurological therapies. Given these implications and the handful of publications cited in this article, it is important to have a nuanced evaluation of how these treatments, which heavily rely on abductive justification, ought to be managed.

The just use an abductive approach may be difficult as AI infused precision medicine is further pursued. At baseline, such technology relies on a level of advanced technology literacy among the general public and could exclude populations who lack access to basic technological infrastructure or know-how from participation. [xxxii] Even among nations with adequate infrastructure, as more patients seek out implantable neurotechnologies, which require robust healthcare resources, the market will favor patient populations that can afford this complex care. [xxxiii]

If patients already have the means to pay for an initial dose/use of a precision medicine product out of pocket, should insurance providers be required to cover subsequent treatments? [xxxiv] That is, if a first dose of a cancer drug or a deep brain stimulator over its initial battery life is successful, patients may feel justified in having the costs of further treatments covered. The Norwegian patient’s experience implies there is a precedent for the idea that some public insurance companies ought to cover successful cancer therapies, however, insurance companies may not all see themselves as obligated to cover neurotechnologies that rely on personalized settings or that are based on precision/abductive research more than on clinical trials.

The fact that the cases outlined above rely on abductive style of reasoning implies that there may not be as strong a justification for coverage by insurance, as they are both experimental and individualized, when compared to the more traditional large clinical trials in which groups have the same or a standardized protocol (settings/doses). If a study is examining the efficacy of a treatment with a large cohort of patients or with different experimental groups/phases, insurance companies may conclude that the resulting symptom improvements are more likely to be coming from the devices themselves. A preference for inductive justification may take priority when ruling in favor of funding someone’s continued use of an implantable neurostimulator. There are further nuances to this discussion surrounding the classifications of these interventions as research versus clinical care that warrant future exploration, since such a distinction is more of a scale [xxxv] than binary and could have significant impacts on the “right-to-try” approach to experimental therapies in the United States. [xxxvi] Namely, given the inherent limitations of conducting large cohort trials for deep brain stimulation interventions on patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, surgically innovative frameworks that blend abductive and inductive methodologies, like with sham stimulation phases, have traditionally been used. [xxxvii] Similarly, for adaptive brain-computer interface systems, if there are no large clinical trials and instead only publications that demonstrate that something similar worked for someone else, then, in addition to the evidence that the first treatment/dose worked for the patient in question, the balance of reasoning would be valid and arguably justify insurance coverage. As precision approaches to neurotechnology become more common, frameworks for evaluating efficacy will be crucial both for insurance coverage and for clinical decision making.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This article was originally written as an assignment for Dr. Francis Shen’s “Bioethics & AI” course at Harvard’s Center for Bioethics. I would like to thank Dr. Shen for his comments as well as my colleagues in the Lázaro-Muñoz Lab for their feedback.

[i] Jonathan Kimmelman and Ian Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine,” Nature Reviews. Clinical Oncology 15, no. 6 (June 2018): 341–42, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-018-0016-0.

[ii] Henrik Vogt and Bjørn Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology: A Formative Case from Norway,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 28, no. 6 (December 2022): 1205–12, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13649.

[iii] David Barrett and Ahtisham Younas, “Induction, Deduction and Abduction,” Evidence-Based Nursing 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2024): 6–7, https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2023-103873.

[iv] Vogt and Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology,” 1208.

[v] Wireko Andrew Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines: The Recent Advances of Brain-Computer Interfaces in Neurological and Neurosurgical Applications,” World Neurosurgery , May 22, 2024, S1878-8750(24)00867-2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2024.05.104.

[vi] Mark Riedl, “A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype,” Medium (blog), May 25, 2023, https://mark-riedl.medium.com/a-very-gentle-introduction-to-large-language-models-without-the-hype-5f67941fa59e.

[vii] David E. Burdette and Barbara E. Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” in Neurostimulation for Epilepsy , ed. Vikram R. Rao (Academic Press, 2023), 97–132, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-91702-5.00002-5.

[viii] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018.

[ix] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018.

[x] Simon Lohse, “Mapping Uncertainty in Precision Medicine: A Systematic Scoping Review,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 29, no. 3 (April 2023): 554–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13789.

[xi] Kimmelman and Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine.”

[xii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206.

[xiii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206.

[xiv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206.

[xv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207.

[xvi] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207.

[xvii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207.

[xviii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1210.

[xix] Mehar Sahu et al., “Chapter Three - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Precision Medicine: A Paradigm Shift in Big Data Analysis,” in Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science , ed. David B. Teplow, vol. 190, 1 vols., Precision Medicine (Academic Press, 2022), 57–100, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pmbts.2022.03.002.

[xx] Stefan Feuerriegel et al., “Causal Machine Learning for Predicting Treatment Outcomes,” Nature Medicine 30, no. 4 (April 2024): 958–68, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02902-1.

[xxi] Sunderland Baker et al., “Ethical Considerations in Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation,” Deep Brain Stimulation 3 (October 1, 2023): 8–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdbs.2023.11.001.

[xxii] David Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces,” 2024, 7, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.dnb.2024.02.003.

[xxiii] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 103–4; “Premarket Approval (PMA),” https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfpma/pma.cfm?id=P100026.

[xxiv] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 104.

[xxv] Burdette and Swartz, 126.

[xxvi] Sean L. Metzger et al., “A High-Performance Neuroprosthesis for Speech Decoding and Avatar Control,” Nature 620, no. 7976 (August 2023): 1037–46, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06443-4.

[xxvii] Hao Fang and Yuxiao Yang, “Predictive Neuromodulation of Cingulo-Frontal Neural Dynamics in Major Depressive Disorder Using a Brain-Computer Interface System: A Simulation Study,” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 17 (March 6, 2023), https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2023.1119685; Mahsa Malekmohammadi et al., “Kinematic Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation for Resting Tremor in Parkinson’s Disease,” Movement Disorders 31, no. 3 (2016): 426–28, https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.26482.

[xxviii] Young-Hoon Nho et al., “Responsive Deep Brain Stimulation Guided by Ventral Striatal Electrophysiology of Obsession Durably Ameliorates Compulsion,” Neuron 0, no. 0 (October 20, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.034.

[xxix] Nho et al.

[xxx] Nho et al.; Erik Robinson, “Brain Implant at OHSU Successfully Controls Both Seizures and OCD,” OHSU News, accessed March 3, 2024, https://news.ohsu.edu/2023/10/25/brain-implant-at-ohsu-successfully-controls-both-seizures-and-ocd.

[xxxi] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines”; Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces.”

[xxxii] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines.”

[xxxiii] Sara Green, Barbara Prainsack, and Maya Sabatello, “The Roots of (in)Equity in Precision Medicine: Gaps in the Discourse,” Personalized Medicine 21, no. 1 (January 2024): 5–9, https://doi.org/10.2217/pme-2023-0097.

[xxxiv] Green, Prainsack, and Sabatello, 7.

[xxxv] Robyn Bluhm and Kirstin Borgerson, “An Epistemic Argument for Research-Practice Integration in Medicine,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 43, no. 4 (July 9, 2018): 469–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhy009.

[xxxvi] Vijay Mahant, “‘Right-to-Try’ Experimental Drugs: An Overview,” Journal of Translational Medicine 18 (June 23, 2020): 253, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02427-4.

[xxxvii] Michael S. Okun et al., “Deep Brain Stimulation in the Internal Capsule and Nucleus Accumbens Region: Responses Observed during Active and Sham Programming,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 78, no. 3 (March 1, 2007): 310–14, https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.2006.095315.

Ian Stevens

MA Philosophy University of Tasmania in Australia, MS Bioethics Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics

Article Details

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .