Conventions for Writing about Literature

There are certain conventions or rules students must follow when writing about literature.

1. A literary analysis is about a significant meaning examined in the literature. It is not about reading the works or writing about the works. The focus of a literary analysis paper is always on the work of literature.

   • A student analysis should be focused on the significant meaning revealed in the work or works.

   • Students should not refer to themselves (using first person pronouns like I or me) or to the readers of the analysis or the literary works (using pronouns like you or your).

   • Students should not refer to the difficulty in understanding literature or the work being analyzed or the difficulty in writing about literature.

2. A literary analysis is always written in present tense. Only use past tense when quoting a passage that is in past tense.

Example: The Call of the Wild by Jack London examines the transformation of Buck from household pet to sled dog to wolf.

3. The first time an author is mentioned, his or her full name is used. Afterwards, the author is referred to by last name. An analysis will never refer to an author just by first name.

4. Avoid discussing the author of the work or the author's intentions in writing after initially identifying the author and work. Instead, focus on the meaning of the text as revealed by the details within the work. The exception would be in a paper that is examining a work within its cultural/historical context or as representative of the writer's style or life experiences.

5. The voice in a story or essay is referred to as the narrator. The voice in a poem is referred to as the speaker. Students should not assume that the narrator or speaker is the author, even when the work appears to be autobiographical. In autobiographical writing, the voice from the work is considered a persona of the author and not the actual author.

6. Poem, essay, and short story titles will always appear in quotation marks. The titles of books, magazines, journals, newspapers, and databases will always appear in italics.

7. Indicate line breaks in a poem by a slash. Indicate stanza breaks with a double slash.

Example: Shakespeare describes the steadfastness of love as "an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken" (Shakespeare, lines 5-6) because no storm can pull true love off course.

Example: Although the speaker is angry, he does not berate the woman especially after she seems "delighted" (Alexie, line 27 ) after he brings "her an orange juice // back from the food car" (Alexie, lines 28-29).

8. A good analysis is supported by specific evidence from the work or works.

• Students must include internal citations for all facts mentioned from the works.

When Phoenix Jackson finally arrived in town, she stopped a woman to ask for help lacing her shoe (Welty 112).

These exact words do not appear in the original, but the idea and information does, so an internal citation is required.

Unnerved by the children's holographic playroom, Lydia Hadley insists her husband visit the room with her (Bradbury 133). Her husband George is not disturbed at first, but when the lions race toward them, he flees the room with his wife (Bradbury 134).

• When documenting sources, students should cite pages for fiction, creative non-fiction, and essays; pages and lines for poetry. Essays in HTML format are usually just cited by author's name.

The narrator in "Everyday Use" is an ordinary woman, who describes herself as "large," even "fat," and "big-boned with rough, man-working hands." Her clothing is practical, "flannel nightgowns" at night, "overalls during the day" (Walker 211).

The various phrases quoted in this sentence all come from the same page but from different places on the page. Since all of these quotations are from the same page, it is only necessary to put a citation at the end of the sentence rather than after each quotation. Whenever possible, weave key words from sources as quotations in your sentences as is done here rather than having longer quotations followed by paraphrase and explanation.

The speaker in "Digging" describes his grandfather's skill when digging, a man who could "cut more turf in a day / Than any other man on Toner's bog" (Heaney, lines 17-18), "[n]icking and slicing neatly" (Heaney 22), always finding the "good turf" (Heaney 24).

Notice the word "[n]icking." In the original poem, the word nicking began with a capital N, but my sentence grammatically needs a lower case n. So I changed the quote; however, I am required to mark the change with brackets. Changes to quotations can only be made to fit the grammar and usage conventions of your sentences but cannot change the meaning of the original. Here, changing the letter N to a lower case n does not change the meaning.

Phoenix Jackson's confrontation with the hunter symbolizes "the resiliency of the black movement toward equality" (Sykes).

In literary analysis essays, it may not always be necessary to use a running acknowledgement. Instead, ideas, information, or quotations from secondary sources can be woven into the student writer's argument with the appropriate internal citation.

Shevek, Le Guin's protagonist and formulator of the general temporal theory, sees himself as one who "'unbuilds walls'" (Le Guin 289), as the "primal number, that [is] both unity and plurality" (Le Guin 30) crossing interfaces.

His "world spins on this final point / Of cold and wretchedness" (Jarrell, lines 15-16), and he realizes that "all that [he has] done is meaningless" (Jarrell, line 24), that he is "alone" (Jarrell, lines 25-26), and that "all the knowledge / [he] wrung from the darkness" (Jarrell, lines 29-30), is no achievement at all, but "flung" (Jarrell, line 30) at him.

Verb tenses and pronouns have been changed from present tense, first person to past tense, third person in order to fit the grammatical usage of the sentences. These changes are marked in brackets. The changes do not change the meaning of the original.

The windmill represents another temporal association, like the comparison of Phoenix Jackson's gait to the pendulum swing of a grandfather clock. These images represent the significance of her "worn path" as representing the "larger arc of time from creation to resurrection" (Walter), a path for which, like the mythical phoenix, she is reborn to take again and again to care for her grandson.

• Students should avoid using long quotations followed by paraphrase and explanation. Instead, students should weave shorter quotations into the argument being made as in the examples above. In each of the examples above, if the sentences were read aloud without drawing attention to the quotation marks or internal citations, someone listening and not seeing the words on the page would not know that quotations were included. As much as possible, blend quotations into your sentences in this way. Doing that, however, it is even more important that the sentences be properly documented with quotation marks where needed and with internal citations.

• An essay analyzing a work should be filled with references to specific details, which means that the essay will have numerous internal citations. After all, the essay is about the work, so it must, of necessity, frequently reference the work.

9. Depending on the instructor, a writer may be able to write the essay without background explanations about the text or critical tools used. However, other instructors suggest that students' papers should assume the intelligence of the reader but also assume that the reader is unfamiliar with the work or the critical tools applied, in which case, the student will need to give these explanations. Consult the instructor to know which approach to take.