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. I have learned the most about literature from literary criticism.
In this paper, you’ll read selections from one of the most famous Shakespearean scholars of all time: A.C. Bradley. You will then take what you’ve learned from him, then incorporate it into a paper based on a soliloquy or speech from one character in the play.
Paper 5 — Choosing 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.
My goal is for you to be able to read something, disagree with it if necessary. 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 — Understanding Symbolism | Heart of Darkness
The final step in our approach to writing is learning how to analyze symbolism. Heart of Darkness is one of the most famous works of symbolic writing. Conrad drew from real history, real places, and real figures, then shaped that material into something that speaks to universal issues of power 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.
Writing Assistance: The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style is the most widely read writing guide in the English language. William Strunk wrote the original version for his students at Cornell University in 1919. His former student E.B. White — who went on to write Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little and spent decades as a staff writer for The New Yorker — revised and expanded it in 1959. It has been in print ever since.
What it contains is a set of clear, specific rules for writing well: how to punctuate correctly, how to build a sentence, how to cut unnecessary words, how to develop a style that is honest and clear rather than inflated and vague. These are the habits of working writers from the early 20th century. They wrote for a living and learned, through practice, what works and what doesn’t.
If you want to be a good writer, this book will be your friend. We’ll be reading sections of it throughout the class.
