Eng 101: Writing and Critical Inquiry
Summer 2010
The Formal Analytic Essay: Contextual Analysis
Introduction.
All of the informal writing assignments you’ve done so far this summer were intended to give you practice in
aspects of analytic writing distinct from the nemesis of critical thinking, the undergraduate “opinion essay.” What
I’ve tried to get across is that effective analytic writing is a creative process of inquiry and discovery that emerges
from close observation and careful research: sound analysis makes meaning by exploring the complex connections
that emerge between carefully observed texts and the world. I’ve had you come at the texts we’ve read from
different angles in my on-going effort to move you away from habitual and conventional approaches to essaywriting (practiced by many of you as the five-paragraph-essay) toward something far more creative and authentic.
At this point I have to assume that you’re ready to take this approach into a more formal direction, but we’re still
working on something distinct from the opinion essay, or argument paper. Your task for the formal analytic essay is
to analyze any one of the texts we’ve been reading or will read through a specific theoretical “lens,” which simply
means that you’re going to apply particular kinds of questions and make specific kinds of connections in a process
of analytic inquiry:

Historical Analysis: “Historical analysis” can refer to all kinds of things, from a comprehensive study of the
historical period from which a text emerged to an attempt to place a text within the context of some grand
historical “big picture.” The questions that guide such a paper look into the connections between a text and the
historical conditions that surrounded its creation, or a text’s specific comment on historical narratives and
processes (how the text “looks backward.”) In other words, the writer of an historical analysis attempts to
explain a text within the context of specific historical sites, developments, and stories.

Cultural Analysis: “Cultural Analysis” is a common term used to refer to a great range of postmodern
approaches, some of them exceedingly complex. I’m just asking you to pursue something fairly basic: you’ll
explore the meanings of a text in light of contemporary culture—as in right now, the 21st century. In other
words, you’ll explore how a particular text might either reflect or illuminate specific cultural sites and
conditions of the contemporary world. You’ll have to be as specific and rigorous in your research as you
would be when doing historical analysis, and this one will take you dangerously close to “society today”
unless you’re specific. Generalities are fine when we’re shooting the breeze in class discussions, but when
you’re writing an essay you have to be specific.

Formal Analysis: “Formal” here refers to artistic form, not strict format or pretentious language. When you’re
doing a formal analysis you’re looking at how specific formal features of a text (details) work together as
systems of meaning apart from any cultural, historical, reader-response, or biographical context. Formal
analysis can take many forms, but the most useful form of formal analysis to take to the kinds of texts we’ve
been reading is a rhetorical approach that examines how ideas and arguments are presented and developed.
Such analysis often reveals ways that apparently seamless arguments can be complicated.

Reader-Response Analysis: This form of analysis makes rigorous text-to-self connections. An essay of this
sort looks into how a particular text illuminates meaning in the writer’s experience. In other words, this is an
“I” paper in which you (the specific you, not the general you) make meaning from a text in the creative space
between a given book and your memory and experience. When you feel that a book has something new to
show you about your own life, an understanding that you would not have arrived at without the reading, you
begin to ask yourself specific reflective questions to help you clearly articulate this new understanding. This is
not a reaction paper, but an intense and specific application of a text to your own life.
ALL OF THESE APPROACHES WILL REQUIRE RESEARCH. There is no “society today” or “people” or
“The Reader.” There is only the data of our texts and the specific connections you make. Even the reader-response
essay will require you to understand your own experience better through research.
Also note that none of these critical approaches are “pure”; they just provide convenient analytic frameworks—there
are certainly broad categories of similarity, but analytic writers often blend and combine them to fit the specific
requirements of a particular writing project. My goal for you here is that you understand what an analytic context is
and how to apply one. If you want to refocus one of these approaches a bit, just let me know. As long as you can
define a specific analytic framework, I’m fine.
Subject Text
You must base your essay on one of the required texts, but you may write about any text we have read or will read;
this includes texts you’ve already written about. The text you choose will provide you with the foundation of your
essay, the other side of the analytic “conversation” that defines academic writing. Your own contribution to this
conversation is guided by the questions and complications you bring to this text. Be careful at this point not to
mistake your analytic context for your subject—the center of your essay is one of the texts from the course reader,
not the topic itself.
Composition Requirements
Whereas the informal assignments focused on various aspects of the analytic process, this formal assignment will
require you to bring it all together for an audience that extends past our little group:

Your essay will develop an original analytic idea through a coherent point of inquiry.

Your essay will avoid the major obstacles to sound analytic writing.

Your essay will develop through careful consideration of specific evidence.

Your essay will make effective global and local analytic moves: you’ll be doing more than simply listing
examples, and your essay will follow a clear structural progression of warranted interpretive connections
from beginning to end.

Your essay will use sources clearly and accurately.

You’ll attend to the clarity of your language and the presentation of your paper, writing for an audience
appropriate to a formal analytic essay.
I’ve provided a sample evaluation rubric for this assignment in the writing guide to help you self-evaluate. I’ve also
included an example of a solid analytic essay so that you can see these elements in context.
Format: 7-10 pages, double-spaced, 10-12 pt. type, 1” margins, MLA-style citations and “Works Cited” page
REQUIRED.
The Working Draft
Prior to the evaluation draft, you’ll be bringing in and posting a working draft. Although I don’t expect you to have a
fully developed essay, your working draft should include some basic elements:

You should have the key data of your subject-text gathered and presented. (I can’t overstate the importance
of solid pre-writing. Don’t neglect the data-gathering!)

You should have some starting research gathered and applied toward the definition of your analytic
context. (Some kind of informal annotated bibliography would be a good idea.)

You should have a fully articulated point of inquiry/main idea, including the warrant. Use the writing guide
to test your main idea for viability.

You should have begun the analysis, taking your point of inquiry to some complicating/forwarding
evidence. Some kind of coherent structure should be emerging.
What your working draft should NOT have is a solid conclusion. The “work” of a working draft should be taking
you in that direction.
The working draft of this essay is due on the 4 th of August. It will be graded as an IWA.
The evaluation draft of this essay is due on the 11th of August.
Everything I’m expecting of this essay is discussed in greater detail in the writing guide. Use it to check your
progress as you go.