معلومات المقرر

literary criticism from a micro cosmic to macro cosmic perspective

 

Writing a critical essay

1.      Identifying the excerpt

State the name of the author, his doctrinal belonging, the era and the commitment to what he is producing, the title of the masterpiece (novel, novella, short story, pamphlet, essay…). The chapter number is also important and the page number if available.

2.      General idea: what is the text about and its relation to the whole work: summarize if it is long, paraphrase if it is short.

3.      The audience or the readership: which kind of readers is he addressing? His contemporaries or an actual or implied readership.

4.      Thematic or theme: the purpose of the author behind his lines; an explicit or implicit meaning.

5.      Literary genre: prose, poetry, drama or short story etc…

6.      Setting (time, place): when and where is the action set? And why in particular

7.      Plot: explain the causality of events at the atomistic (text), and whollistic (the work)

Starting from critical situation that is the exposition of events which is in most cases the beginning the novel until the knitting point which is the climax, arriving therewith to the denouement and resolution.

8.      Characterization: there are elements which perform at an atomistic level within the action an influence at the whollistic one. These are called characters that are displayed in the narrative or the literary work. They can be humans, animals or simply abstractions such as; death, fate, wrath, or natural elements like; wind, sea, trees, etc…

Characters are qualified to be either protagonists or antagonists, that is, round and flat. A round character is the main character and can be recognized through his dimensions and aspects, it develops along the narrative.

On the other hand, a flat character is a minor one, less important to a certain extent that can be questioned in future perspectives.

9.      Point of view: 1^st person point of view: when the narrator is a character in the story (I, we). 3^rd person point of view: is just a voice telling you what is happening (he, she, it, they).

-          1^st person point of view can be central where the narrator is the hero and it is qualified to be 1^st person central point of view; and peripheral when the narrator is not the hero, it is told to be 1^st  person peripheral point of view.

-          3^rd person as intrusive that is found everywhere in the narrative and is labeled to be omniscient third person point of view; if non-intrusive, it is therefore limited third person point of view.

10.  Literary devices: universal and stylistic tools that governs the literary work.

a.       Register: level of language; religious, formal(obeys to conventional syntactic structures), informal, slang, colloquial, taboo

b.      Diction: the words are found within the wordiness; Anglo-saxon like German (neutral words), Latin origin like French, Spanish, Italian, they are emotionally strong words.

c.       Figurative language: most common figures of speech

-          Simile: comparing using like and as

-          Metaphor: comparing without using like and as

-          Personification: attributing a human characteristic to something inanimate.

-          Apostrophe: it is found in poetry( a personification in poetry), to interact verbally with an inanimate object or abstraction as if it could react.

-          Hyperbole : exaggeration for emphasis. e.g. he ate mountains of wheat.

-          Litotes: understatement for emphasis; to say less than normal. E.g. She was not a little dumb.

-          Irony(satire): when the wordiness implies the opposite of their direct semantic endeavour( meaning).

-          Paradox: juxtaposition of opposites( see Charles Dickens’ A Tale of the Two Cities introduction “the period”)

-          Analogy: illustration of an idea by a more familiar idea that is similar or parallel to it in some significant features and thus said to be analogous to it. Verb; analogize. In literary history, an analogue is another history or another plot which is parallel or similar to the one under discussion.

-          Reference: when the name is mentioned or date or event that rings a bell for the general public.

-          Allusion : verb: allude.  An indirect or passing reference to some event, place, or artistic work, the nature and the relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned.