Analyzing and interpreting literature: assignments 1 – analysis essay
Literature is an essential part of our culture and how we express ourselves. In this course, you learned how to understand and analyze different types of literature, from poetry to novellas. For this assignment, you will choose one of the two prompts below and write an 800-1200-word essay in response about it. Include quotations and textual evidence from the works you’ve chosen and cite them in MLA format. Please cite any Study.com lessons you use as resources (including lesson title and instructor’s name). Your essay must be followed by an MLA style References page with at least 2 sources. Do not include an abstract. Including a cover page is optional.
Assignment Prompts
In this course, you learned about a variety of literary characteristics including connotation, denotation, tone and mood. Select a poem from the reading list, explain how at least one of these characteristics is employed and how it contributes to the overall message of the poem. Use examples from the poems you’ve chosen to support your claims.
Oftentimes it’s assumed that the main character of a work of fiction is meant to represent the author, though authors frequently deny that this is the case. Which character that you’ve ‘met’ in this course best represents you? How did the author of that work use literary techniques like inference, context and other literary techniques covered in this course to make this character so relatable? Use examples from the work you’ve chosen to support your claims.
Reading List
Poetry
Select two of the following Shakespearean sonnets to read:
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 60
Sonnet 94
Sonnet 116
Sonnet 130
Read all of the following poems:
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats
‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allan Poe
‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning
‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman
‘Funeral Blues’ by W.H. Auden
‘Birches’ by Robert Frost
Short Fiction
Choose one of the following novellas:
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Select two of the following short stories to read:
‘Story of an Hour’ by Kate Chopin
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor
‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson
‘The Life to Come’ by E.M. Forster
‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’ by Ernest Hemingway
Dramatic Works
Read all of the following dramatic works:
Oedipus the King by Sophocles
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Select one of the following to read:
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde