Literary and Rhetorical Analysis

What is literary analysis?

Interpreting a text and presenting an argument for how it might be understood.

What is rhetorical analysis?

Analyzing the means of persuasion in a text and how the language affects the intended audience.

(Very) Broad Categories of Literary Criticism

1. New Criticism or Formalism: Concerned with examining language of the text itself without focusing on historical or biographical context.

2. Cultural Criticism: How the text informs culture / how culture informs text.3. Historical: Examines historical moment of the text. 4. Biographical: Attempts to illuminate writer’s life, background, and

concerns. 5. Psychoanalysis: (often Freudian or Jungian) Concerned with psychology, identity, consciousness, how and why we do what we do. Freud = sex, Jung = archetypes / metaphors6. Feminist / Gender Criticism/ Queer Theory: Analyzes stereotypes of gender and implications of texts on gender identity. Attempts to raise awareness of repressive concepts. 8. Marxism: Concerned with analyzing capitalist exploitation, injustice, politics. 9. Moralism, Ethics, Wisdom: Aims to read text for what it teaches (citizenship, community, life purpose, morality, spirituality).10.Reader-Response: Reader actively participates in text for self-

discovery, epiphany.11.Postcolonial: Examines role of colonialization (exploiting less

developed countries)12.Post-modernism : Concerned with primacy of emotions,

experience, 20th century concepts, relativism, pluralism.13.Aestheticism: Appreciation of art , philosophy of beauty, the

sublime, imagination. 14. Modernism: Examines fragments of human experience15.Eco-Criticism : Looks at relationship between humanity and the

natural world

Rhetorical = how the text “works” on the audience (persuasion)

Literary = what the text “means.”

Goals for this unit:

1. Advance a thesis about what a text argues and how the author persuades us of this position.

2. Use evidence in the form of quotations from a text.

They Say / I Say Chapter 3

The Art of Quoting

1. Frame EVERY quote with context. No hit-and-run quotes.

2. Introduce the quotation.

3. Then explain what the quote means and why it matters for your argument.

4. Blend author’s words with your own.