Essay 1
Home

 

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to acquaint you with different forms of literary criticism. 

Assignment: From the Appendix in our textbook, choose three different forms of literary criticism and tell in your own words how this method of literary criticism works.  Use quotations and textual examples where appropriate.  

Ways to Proceed: First, read through the different methods of literary criticism in the appendix.  It will take you a while to figure out exactly how these different methods of critical examination can be applied to various literary texts.  Next, pick the three methods with which you feel most comfortable explaining how they work.  Using your own words, and perhaps a few quotes from the text, write a 1-2 page synopsis of how this literary method functions.  Make sure that you identify a literary text that might benefit by having it interpreted with the particular literary criticism that you choose. 

Criteria for Evaluation: I expect you to use a 12 point font, to have one inch margins on every page, to have the first page of each literary criticism synopsis formatted like the first page of an MLA document.  I expect you to summarize three different literary methods, each of which should be 1-2 pages.  Finally, I expect you to cite a story or poem for each literary criticism as an example of a literary text that can benefit from being interpreted using that method.