Dear Literary God: What are the best techniques to analyze prose?

September 14, 2014 8:22 PM

I signed up for a senior-year seminar class for prose fiction. My GPA cannot suffer. I'm willing to learn anything and everything on the subject. Book recommendations are also appreciated. (English TAs and Profs are preferred! You are the next best thing to Literary Gods)
posted by lorn to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

OMG- you must buy "How to Read Literature like a Professor"

SUPERB!

Its short and sweet and very very smart. It will empower you!
posted by misspony at 8:29 PM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

There aren't necessarily best practices for analyzing literature. You might want to take a look both at a basic summary of concepts of literary analysis and the major concepts in critical theory (though theory is on the outs somewhat at this point). A knowledge of basic history and culture will also help.

In short, you become better at literary analysis the more you widen your intellectual net -- and the more mature you become. For now, know that reader response ("I don't like this character because X", etc) really isn't appropriate in a college classroom unless you're specifically asked to write a response. Formal analysis (of the work, itself) is fine, though usually, at the college level, you'll be dealing with context and criticism.

If you're really stuck in terms of analyzing a piece of writing, log on to your college's EBSCO Host and see what academics have been saying about it. Then you can base your own analysis on the conversation that's already happening about the work (your prof will appreciate this).

Good luck!
Source: English PhD student
posted by Bluestocking_Puppet at 9:55 PM on September 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

I signed up for a senior-year seminar class for prose fiction. My GPA cannot suffer.

Can you take it Pass/Fail? That's what I did when I took a senior year seminar that was way out of my academic league and I wanted to preserve my GPA.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:28 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, I remember one professor telling us about a job he had writing literature reviews for a lit magazine. He said he had a lot of trouble with it until he focused on
- What did the author say?
- How did the author say it?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 5:45 AM on September 15, 2014

I advise my students to think in terms of questions, not answers. And remember that if something bores you or irritates you, that too should become a question. I just finished teaching Oliver Twist, for example, and yup, the students found Oliver boring. But if you transform that response into a question (what about Oliver puts me to sleep?) and think things through (wait, why would someone write the supposed protagonist this way? Is there a point Dickens is trying to make here?), you may find that there's a lot to say.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:38 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]