Writing About Literature

Writing about

Literature

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Select from the following * Grammar Guide Home Page * * INDEX * Princ. of Comp. (home) THE WRITING PROCESSWriter BlockFreewritingClusteringOutliningA Sense of PurposeToneMaintaining ObjectivityConcrete, Specific LangUnbiased LanguageBuilding VocabularyAvoiding PlagiarismBeing LogicalFormatting PapersEditing ProcessComputer as AssistantDeadly Sins Checklist Proofreading SymbolsSTRUCTURAL MATTERSThe Thesis StatementTransitionsBeginningsConclusionsFive Paragraph EssayPATTERNS OF COMPOSITIONOrganizing PrinciplesMixing the PatternsThe Personal EssayNarrative or DescriptiveDescribing a ProcessComparison and ContrastUsing ExamplesClassification -- AnalysisDeveloping a DefinitionEvaluative EssayCause and EffectArgumentative EssayWriting about LitRight or Wrong in Lit PapersWriting Research Papers

For additional advice on writing evaluative essays, see the digital handout in the Principles of Composition section of The Guide to Grammar and Writing. That handout contains a complete student essay on a poem and there are hyperlinks to other sample essays. For questions about subjectivity, telling right from wrong in a paper on literary topics, see "Discerning Right from Wrong in the Garden of Literature."

The titles of plays, novels, magazines, newspapers, journals (things that can stand by themselves) are underlined or italicized. Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye don't seem to have much in common at first. If you're using a word processor or you have a fancy typewriter, use italics, but do not use both underlines and italics. (Some instructors have adopted rules about using italics that go back to a time when italics on a word processor could be hard to read, so you should ask your instructor if you can use italics. Underlines are always correct.) The titles of poems, short stories, and articles (things that do not generally stand by themselves) require quotation marks. Robert Frost's...