How to Write a Literary Essay
HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ESSAY
SUGGESTED LENGTH: 600 WORDS
THE TITLE should be specific. You should identify a particular problem in the literary text you’ve chosen to write about.
Acceptable: The Role of the Narrator in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews; Family Politics in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Unacceptable: Jane Eyre; Shakespeare’s Sonnets; William Blake’s Songs of Experience
(ii) PRESENTATION The essay should open with a clear introduction. The introduction tells your reader what the essay is about. You should state your aims. Please don’t tell the reader what a great text you’ve chosen to write about or what a wonderful writer produced that text. The statement of aims should remain flexible until the paper is actually finished. If you discover new information in the process of writing, then you can rewrite the statement. On the other hand, if you discover that the statement includes things that you haven 't actually addressed, then you need to limit that statement by cutting some of the aims. The body of your text should be organised in clear paragraphs with each paragraph focusing on a particular aim. The concluding paragraph must draw together the ideas and arguments presented in the text and provide a closing commentary on the set topic.
(iii) DISCOURSE MANAGEMENT This includes good use of English, accurate and appropriate vocabulary, cohesion, consistency, and coherence.
Please pay attention to the following:
Write about literature in the present tense unless logic demands that you do otherwise. Even though a story is written in the past tense, we say that the main character writes to her brother because she thinks she knows something important. Even though Shakespeare is long gone, we say that Shakespeare suggests or uses or says. And in his plays, we say that a phrase or word suggests or means or implies something (all present tense verbs).
However, when you refer to an
SUGGESTED LENGTH: 600 WORDS
THE TITLE should be specific. You should identify a particular problem in the literary text you’ve chosen to write about.
Acceptable: The Role of the Narrator in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews; Family Politics in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Unacceptable: Jane Eyre; Shakespeare’s Sonnets; William Blake’s Songs of Experience
(ii) PRESENTATION The essay should open with a clear introduction. The introduction tells your reader what the essay is about. You should state your aims. Please don’t tell the reader what a great text you’ve chosen to write about or what a wonderful writer produced that text. The statement of aims should remain flexible until the paper is actually finished. If you discover new information in the process of writing, then you can rewrite the statement. On the other hand, if you discover that the statement includes things that you haven 't actually addressed, then you need to limit that statement by cutting some of the aims. The body of your text should be organised in clear paragraphs with each paragraph focusing on a particular aim. The concluding paragraph must draw together the ideas and arguments presented in the text and provide a closing commentary on the set topic.
(iii) DISCOURSE MANAGEMENT This includes good use of English, accurate and appropriate vocabulary, cohesion, consistency, and coherence.
Please pay attention to the following:
Write about literature in the present tense unless logic demands that you do otherwise. Even though a story is written in the past tense, we say that the main character writes to her brother because she thinks she knows something important. Even though Shakespeare is long gone, we say that Shakespeare suggests or uses or says. And in his plays, we say that a phrase or word suggests or means or implies something (all present tense verbs).
However, when you refer to an
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