ENGL 3026 Syntax, Citation, Analysis: Writing About Literature (Grunes)

This guide will help you find resources to conduct a literary analysis and create an annotated bibliography as you work toward your final paper. The intended audience for this guide is undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Colorado, but it may be useful to a number of other scholars and researchers. Please let us know if you have suggestions or ideas or feedback about this guide. 

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Choose Your Topic of Inquiry

Inquiry is a process of posing questions, seeking perspectives, and building knowledge, and in this case, about literature. The first step is to identify a topic, text, or author that matters to you. You may start with a very broad and open area of interest. 

Many of us start with a very broad question in mind. Try these steps to narrow:

• Review class texts to select one that you most enjoyed or that sparked your curiosity
• Read back over your discussion posts, reflection questions, and other assignments to look for ideas, events, or passages, that caught your interest
• Read closely: pay attention to language, diction, imagery, poetic devices, and writing style to develop a literary argument rooted in the text
• Ask: How does your text convey ideas or achieve its goals?
• Browse background sources (see second tab of this guide)

Excavate Ideas from Your Text

Once you've chosen your text, it's time to focus on texture: that is, how the text conveys its ideas. Look for passages, images, even individual words that strike you as surprising or interesting. Why did your author write in this way? Your overall research workflow might go like this, and this guide is organized into tabs accordingly:

1. Read your passages, images, or words closely to analyze their effects
2. Is any background research necessary to fully understand or appreciate what's happening in the text?
   1. This research answers questions about the "who, what, where, when, and why" of a text. It might involve looking at your author's biography or at important historical events from the time.
3. Begin to look for relevant secondary sources that have also analyzed your chosen passages, images, words or related themes
   1. If you find closely related secondary sources, consider:
      1. Do you agree or disagree with the interpretation of these secondary sources?
      2. How might you add your own original ideas to the conversation?
   2. If you cannot find closely related secondary sources, consider:
      1. How can you broaden your search? Are there wider themes or forms of cultural or historical context that would shed light on the details you've noticed?
      2. And don't worry! You may be noticing something others have neglected!
4. Think about how your own ideas relate to the sources you've found. Where do your ideas agree or disagree with what you've discovered?
5. Broaden the scope: think about why your passage, image, word choice, or theme matters. You might look for secondary (or primary!) sources that help establish context, in order to suggest what we can learn from the details you've noticed in the text. Ask yourself: So what?

Tip: Your ideas and research will move forward together. They may seem to zigzag. That's fine! As your ideas develop, you can pivot the direction of your research, and as your research develops, you can pivot the direction of your ideas.