Notes
Literary analysis
- A strong thesis explains how an author's choices create meaning and why it matters.
- Organize body paragraphs by idea, not plot. Use the literary present tense.
- Italicize long works (novels, plays, epics); put short works (poems, stories, essays) in quotation marks. Cite plays by act.scene.line.
Research
- Start with a narrow, open-ended research question.
- Primary sources are originals; secondary sources interpret them.
- Evaluate with the CRAAP test (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) and lateral reading.
Using sources
- Quote exact words, paraphrase in your own words and structure, summarize main ideas. Cite all three.
- Plagiarism includes patchwriting. Common knowledge needs no citation.
- MLA in-text: (Last Page), period after the parentheses. Works Cited: alphabetical, double-spaced, hanging indent. Book: Last, First. Title. Publisher, Year.
Topics in this unit
Each topic has its own short notes and practice.
Practice
It uses the literary present and makes an analytical point.
Original documents from the time are primary sources.
MLA: Last, First. Title. Publisher, Year.
Missing authority and currency plus a selling purpose make it unreliable.
It changes both the words and the structure; the others are copied or patchwritten.
A slash with spaces marks a line break in a short poetry quotation.
Free response
Write your answer first, then open the scoring guide.
Free-response question
You are writing a literary analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), in which the narrator insists he is sane while describing a murder and finally confesses because he believes he hears the dead man's heart beating.
(a) Write a thesis statement that names a technique and an insight.
Show the answer and scoring guide
In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe uses an unreliable first-person narrator who insists on his sanity to show that guilt can overpower even a person who denies it.
Check off the points you earned:
(b) Write a research question that a secondary source could help you answer, and name one type of credible source you would use.
Show the answer and scoring guide
Research question: How did nineteenth-century ideas about madness shape Poe's portrayal of the narrator? Source: a peer-reviewed journal article on Poe found through a library database, or a scholarly biography of Poe.
Check off the points you earned:
(c) Write a correctly formatted MLA in-text citation for a quotation from page 12 of a book by a critic named Ana Ruiz, in two ways: once with her name in the sentence and once without.
Show the answer and scoring guide
With the name in the sentence: Ruiz argues that the heartbeat "is the narrator's own guilt made audible" (12). Without the name: The heartbeat may be "the narrator's own guilt made audible" (Ruiz 12).
Check off the points you earned: