English 271 Short Critical Essay Assignment
Early in the semester you will complete a 3-5 page Formalist literary analysis or your choice of literature. Everyone will hand in drafts for instructor and peer feedback.
Instructions,
Audience, and Purpose
Write a 3-5 page literary analysis, using the Formalist/New Critical lens, to any literary work. Imagine you are writing this
essay for an undergraduate and graduate-level casebook (critical anthology) on
the work in question, OR for a contemporary literary journal which features
articles on contemporary fiction and poetry.
Your purpose is to illuminate the work in question, help a college-level reader get more out it, and convince such a reader that your analysis of the work in question is valid. The purpose of the assignment itself is to give you practice applying basic terms and to understand the New Critical approach, which, while no longer favored in its strictest form, still plays a role in literary studies.
Be sure to:
Suggestions
Ask this question about whatever piece of literature you are examining: what is the author doing to lead me to the work's theme? What formal elements is she applying?"
Look at these two statements:
- Ai's poem, "The Anniversary," has to do with the paradox of love, the violence and danger underlying feelings of intense affection and surrender to always-imperfect commitments. We see this when the speaker of the poem freely invites a difficult (if not abusive) spouse into her bed. It appears that she both does and doesn't love her spouse. In the meantime their son dances around like a clown, which of course is odd and paradoxical, because his parents are so unhappy and/or smoldering with tension.
- The theme of Ai's poem, "The Anniversary," is the paradox of love, the violence and danger underlying feelings of intense affection and surrender to always-imperfect commitments. This is revealed through the author's use of irony, image, and tone.
For instance, the title, "The Anniversary," implies celebration, but the images which predominate in the poem suggest tension and antagonism. Two such images are the blade "pointed at my head," and the harsh aural "crackling" of cooking corn. Such images undercut the title, or show us the bad side of the couple's love at the same time that we are told that such love is being celebrated. Love, in other words, is paradoxical. Again, it is the poem's strong images which lead us to this theme.
Ai further points us toward her poem's interesting theme through use of irony; in particular the fact that the little son happily dances and plays like a clown, even while his parents are smoldering and barely containing their antagonism toward one another. His playing isn't what is seems to be—it is a child's mistaken or intentional denial of the tension permeating the setting. And the speaker's tone of voice, of course, is terrifically ironic—fairly bristling with alternate meanings—when she says, "Come in, sheets are clean..." Clean sheets are trivial compared to the difficulties facing this couple, and only magnify what is not "clean" in the relationship. The sense of that word is therefore not straightforward, but ironic; it doesn't mean what it seems to on the surface.
The first statement above is not wrong; it just doesn't examine the work in question in formal terms. The second statement does, making it more properly New Critical or Formalist. As you can see, it's important to understand the elements of literature; they are the very vocabulary of the Formalist analysis.
Evaluation Criteria
Grading scale:
23-25 = A
20-22 = B
17-19 = C
14-16 = D
Below 14 = F