Writing about American Literature | American Literature 1865-Present Resources

If you’re coming to this page for the first time, just skim it to see the type of information it contains.

Return to this page when you’re asked to write about the American literature that you have read.

^{Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/book-read-old-literature-books-1659717/}

There are many different ways to respond to literary texts. Generally, engaging with a literary text means that you’re asking and answering questions about what you read. You may ask and answer many different questions depending on your purpose and the type of text you’re reading. Three different ways of engaging with a literary text are explained briefly below.

Summary

Being able to summarize a text is basic to all other ways of response. You need to understand the author’s viewpoint, main ideas, and purpose in writing the text as a basis for considering that text more fully and thoughtfully – you need to know “what’s going on” in the text. Questions that you ask and answer in order to figure out what’s going on in the text may include the following:

What overall idea or theme emerges from the text?
What additional ideas, important to the overall idea, emerge from the text?
What is the author’s purpose in writing this text?

Answers to these questions are usually what you include in a summary. A summary condenses a text down to its main ideas and re-states those main ideas in very concise form, using your own words and sentence structures – your own language instead of the text’s. The idea is that if you can state main ideas in your own way, you’ve digested and understood the text. Note that the author’s purpose actually deviates a little bit from a traditional summary, since the strict definition of a summary is that you do not include any of your own interpretation. However, including the author’s purpose in a summary of a literary text can often help you situate those main ideas.

Additional Resources for Summary

Summarizing, College Writing
Guidelines for Writing a Summary, Hunter College

^{How to Write a Summary, by Shaun Macleod, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGWO1ldEhtQ}

Reader Response

Reader response is just what it says – it focuses on your individual response to a literary text. According to the Writing Commons, “the thoughts, ideas, and experiences a reader brings to the text, combined with the text and experience of reading it, work together to create meaning. From this perspective, the text becomes a reflection of the reader.”^[1] Reader response brings a literary text into your own sphere of personal experience, as you respond to ideas you agree or disagree with and link ideas or experiences from the text with your own. Questions that you ask and answer in order to integrate your own experience with the text and thus make meaning, often include the following:

Do you agree or disagree with a concept/s in text, and why?
What experience/s have you had that relates to the text, and how does it relate?
What questions and feelings do you have about the text? Posit answers and reasons why.
What were your initial thoughts about the text’s purpose, did those thoughts change after you read the text and, if so, how and why?

Additional Resources for Reader Response

Reader Response Criticism – History and Purpose, A Research Guide for Students
Writing a Reading Response, Basic Reading and Writing, Lumen Learning

^{YouTube Video by Tim Nance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnq1nD_bmlc}

Analytical Response

Analytical responses to a text can take many, many forms and represent many critical theories. A basic explanation of an analytical response to a literary text is that it shows how the text works in some respect: as a piece of literature that uses certain symbols, styles, settings, and more; as an expression of its time period; as an expression of its author’s philosophy; and more. Analytical responses can occur through different lenses as well (e.g., critical theories – psychoanalytic, gender-based, language-based, and more), expanding possible ways of interpreting and understanding how that text works. To go back to basics, questions that you ask and answer in order to analyze how the text works may include the following:

How does the author use language, symbols, characters, settings, sentence structures – the tools of writing – to create and enhance the overall idea?
What comment on human nature does the text offer? How do you know?
How does the text represent or contradict the culture and events of its time?
How does the text compare with other texts of its time?
How does the text reflect or contradict social, class, or gender roles?
How does the text represent or misrepresent certain groups or cultures? Why?

Some of these questions, such as those that deal with historical or cultural context, may require research to answer. Other questions require a close reading of the literary text, since your interpretation is backed up by examples from that text. Literary analysis may also include research into literary criticism to see how others who read the text have interpreted it.

Additional Resources for Analytical Response

Creating Literary Analysis, Libre Texts (includes discussions of different analytical approaches and how to create them; also includes pages on Reader Response)

Critical Reading: A Guide, by Professor John Lye
Analyzing Poetry, by Maureen Kravec
Tim Nance, the author of the video on Reader Response (above) also has videos on What is Literary Criticism?, What is Historical Criticism?, What is Psychological Criticism?, and What is Feminist Criticism?

The following videos provide insight into how to analyze literature, using literary elements (e.g., character, symbol, theme, and more).

^{YouTube video by Amy E. Harter,}^{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREopphW5Bw}

^{YouTube video by Ms. Peer Editor, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkQB_wPDCcc&t=101s}

Please know that the video analyzing Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” analyzes many literary elements chronologically, for instructional purposes. The video shows a useful method of annotating a literary text as a reading and pre-writing technique before writing an analysis. When you actually write an analysis:

You may be inclusive and look at multiple literary elements, or focused, looking at symbols only, or even just one symbol in a text. Your analysis depends on the literary elements that interest you as a reader, and about which you want to offer insights into how they function in the literary text.
Your organization should develop organically from your essay’s thesis statement (which means that you do not have to analyze literary elements chronologically as they appear in the text).

^{YouTube video by Oxford Comma, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DEQ8OSe-bw}

^{YouTube video by Catherine Leach, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V–P3hWzXY}

Essay Writing

If you’re asked to write a full reader response or analysis, as opposed to a short journal entry, then the fuller writing may be in the form of an essay. Make sure any literary analysis essay has the following elements.

Introduction-Body-Conclusion Structure

An essay needs to introduce a topic and then make a thesis assertion at the end of the introductory paragraph. The assertion is key to the essay; it controls the type and order of information in the essay’s body. The body should have a paragraph or set of paragraphs supporting each element of the thesis assertion. The concluding paragraph encapsulates and re-states the main idea in the thesis assertion.

Thesis Assertion

A thesis assertion, which usually comes at the end of the introductory paragraph, is key to a literary analysis essay. A thesis offers your main analytical insight about the literary text, and may also indicate supporting ideas. For example: “Although approaches to enacting change in contemporary society can be very different, approaches should be tailored to the particular situation in order to be effective, just as Wheatley and Tecumseh did in their poetry and prose.”

The example thesis makes a promise to a reader about what the essay will include. In this case, you’d expect

insights about two different approaches to enacting change that the writer observed in contemporary society
insights into how they were adapted to make them effective or how they were not adapted and were thus ineffective
insights into which approaches Wheatley and Tecumseh took, how those approaches differed, and how and why those approaches might have been effective or ineffective given their historical contexts

Examples/Evidence from the Literary Text/s

When writing fuller reader responses and literary analysis, always bring in details and examples from the literary texts themselves to explain your insights. These examples are like evidence; they “prove” that your interpretation has merit, since elements of the literary text relate to your insight.

This video reviews the elements of a literary analysis essay.

^{YouTube video by Laurie Harmon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho_VCSlzot4}

Using Secondary Sources

You may want to consult secondary sources when you analyze a text from a historical, cultural, social, or literary perspective. You’re reading primary sources in this text, first-hand accounts of experience, letters, creative works such as short stories and poems. Secondary sources, on the other hand, explain, interpret, and/or analyze primary sources.

To find appropriate secondary sources, use library online databases as well as Google Scholar – you’ll want to find thoughts from knowledgeable readers as opposed to X’s rant on a literary text in a personal blog.

Citing Sources

Whenever you use an example from a primary source or information from a secondary source, you need to cite that information in your writing so that you do not inadvertently plagiarize. Provide the author and source, along with other relevant information. You don’t have to learn format; simply put required information into an online tool that will create the citation in your chosen format. Literature courses use MLA (Modern Language Association) format.

For a discussion of why and when to cite sources, and a link to an academic integrity quiz, access the Citing Sources page from Introduction to College Reading and Writing.

Some useful online tools that will put your citations into proper format include: