Over the course of the year, you will write six, two-page papers. Each paper is a different step in the process of learning how to analyze a work of literature.
You will spend a lot of time reading your papers out loud. First, you will read them to yourself. When you hear your own words read aloud, you catch your problems faster than you do just reading silently. Second, you will read your papers to a parent or sibling and answer the questions they ask about the subject. I learned this method when I spent a semester at Oxford University studying literature. It’s amazing how this process teaches you to improve your own writing.
By the end of the class, you should know how to write about literature at an introductory collegiate level. Here is an overview of the six papers:
Paper 1 — Learning to Convince | The Odyssey
You have probably been taught to write a thesis statement and prove it. What I want to teach you is something more active: to convince. A thesis is a statement, but convincing is an action. When you ask yourself have I convinced them yet? instead of have I stated my thesis? you will feel where your argument is thin, where you need more evidence, where a point isn’t landing. That shift in how you think about what you are doing will make you a more compelling writer.
For Paper 1, you will take a small section of The Odyssey and argue it. The topic will be yours to choose — a comparison, a contrast, a question from our discussion.
Paper 2 — Learning to Explain | The Confessions
Paper 1 asked you to convince; paper 2 asks you to explain. Augustine can be hard to understand — his metaphors, his arguments, the structure of his thought. With this paper, I want you to take something Augustine says and make it clear to the reader. Here is what he is doing, and here is why it makes sense.
The ability to explain something clearly is a very important skill. You will work on that with the second paper.
Paper 3 — Learning to Read Structure | Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
A great work of literature is carefully constructed. The author makes choices about what to put where, what to return to, how to develop an idea from the start of the work to the end of it. For Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you will trace one of those developments and show not just that an idea exists in the poem, but what the poet does with it.
What I am trying to get you to do is become a synthetic, efficient writer. In two pages you should be able to accomplish a great deal. That requires you to limit your scope, condense your argument, and show what the author is doing.
Paper 4 — Entering the World of Criticism | Hamlet
Most high school students think they are supposed to come up with their own ideas about a piece of literature. But that’s not what college students are taught to do. Instead, they realize that understanding works of great literature often comes through criticism.
At your age, you should not expect to come to a work like Hamlet and understand it completely on your own. To be honest, neither can I (and neither can most people). The secret weapon of all English majors is literary criticism. Some scholars have spent entire careers thinking about these works. We should learn from them.
This is a college preparatory class. When you get to college, you will be expected to know how to find criticism, read it, and use it. My job is to make sure that when you get there, it is not a mystery.
Your presentation also shifts with this paper. You are no longer simply reading your paper aloud. You are explaining it — five minutes, looking up from the page, speaking to the room. If you can explain your argument in plain language to a group of people, you understand it. If you find yourself just reading words off a page, that is a sign to go back and make sure you know what you are saying and why.
Paper 5 — Writing with Criticism | Pride & Prejudice
For this assignment, you will choose a paper from one or more scholars. You will bring their thinking into your paper, and then stand above the text and the criticism to argue what you think the author is really trying to accomplish. That is what a literary critical paper is.
My goal is for you to be able to read something, disagree with it if necessary, and explain why. C.S. Lewis does exactly this in the reading we will do on Paradise Lost. He reads T.S. Eliot’s argument, states it fairly, and then shows where it is wrong. When you can do that — take a critic’s position seriously and push back against it with evidence — you have arrived at the highest level of literary argument.
Paper 6 — Reading at Multiple Levels | Heart of Darkness
Unless you understand how to read a work at multiple levels, you do not really understand what an author is doing. Heart of Darkness is not a simple work. It is a work of interior, symbolic writing. Conrad drew from real history, real places, real figures, and then shaped that material into something that speaks to universal issues of sin and corruption.
Your final paper asks you to take something concrete, identify the historical source, and show how Conrad transforms it into a symbol. You will read the book closely, research the history, engage with criticism, and stand above all of it to make an argument about what Conrad is doing.
My hope is that, after finishing this class, you will be able to take any work of literature, confidently read it, carefully understand it, then accurately write about it.