If the work is prose fiction (a short story or novella), one key thing to discuss is its way of proceeding as narrative, i.e., as a piece of writing that tells a story. What strikes you about it: is it the story itself? The narrator? The characters? What is distinctive, that is, about this particular piece of story-telling fiction by this author?

A Doll’s house

For each literary analysis assigned, choose a work found in our class textbook and, focusing on issues you find relevant and manageable, write a 4–5-page, double-spaced, literary analysis specific in its initial thesis, easy to follow in structure, and clear and consistent in style that adequately and appropriately references the text of the work(s) selected. Be sure to expand beyond what we may have discussed in class in any discussion board forums. Mere regurgitation of ideas presented in various discussion threads is not the purpose of this assignment.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to select a different genre for the second literary analysis. For example, if you selected a poem for Literary Analysis 1, you need to select a work of prose fiction or a drama for Literary Analysis 2. Also, the Works Cited/References/Title Pages do NOT count towards page length.

1. If the work is prose fiction (a short story or novella), one key thing to discuss is its way of proceeding as narrative, i.e., as a piece of writing that tells a story. What strikes you about it: is it the story itself? The narrator? The characters? What is distinctive, that is, about this particular piece of story-telling fiction by this author?

2. If the work is a poem, one key thing to discuss is its quality as language: in poetry, it’s often not so much “story” or “action” that matters most, it’s the medium itself: the refined, thought-provoking, emotion-inducing, clarity-enhancing arrangement of words on a page. Words are playing in a very intense spotlight in poetry. How is that quality on display in the particular poem(s) you’re now reading?

3. If the work is a drama, one key thing to discuss is the play’s manner of representing an action: a play’s script is meant to bring carefully delineated or imagined events to life on a stage and thereby to evoke an intellectual/emotional response in an audience. What specific resources (language, structure, settings, realism, symbolic content, character development or revelation, etc.) does the playwright most fully bring to bear in order to further the play’s aims as a representation of some “action”?