K7
Literary Analysis
There are many different ways of reading and analyzing literature. One should approach a piece of literature
individually, taking into consideration its given form and genre. Still, there are common guidelines that will help students
achieve a careful, well-observed reading of any text.
Use the questions and terms in this tipsheet to guide your reading. It may be helpful to interrogate the text using
the following guidelines, or to use these sections as a model to develop an outline of what you have read. Consult the
terms and definitions on the reverse side of this sheet in your analysis, and consider whether these literary devices are
present in the work you are reading.
Point of View:
Is the work in first person, second person, or third person? Is there a narrator? Is the point of view omniscient
(everywhere, all-knowing) or limited to one or more characters? Is the narrator trustworthy? Is the narrator biased? Is
the narrator mentally ill? Is the narrator young? Does the narrator have an accent, a style of speaking, a distinct voice?
Tone:
What is the author’s attitude towards subject or audience? Is it humorous, satiric, sad, ironic, serious, light, sarcastic,
bitter, or complimentary? How does this tone affect the meaning?
Setting:
What is the physical or psychological setting? How does time function in the work? Does the story move forward or
backward in time suddenly? Does the story take place in a moment, a day, a year, ten years? What role does place play
in this work?
Character:
Is there a protagonist, antagonist? Are characters round (described in depth) or flat (shallow, underdeveloped)?
Are characters allegorical (representative of larger principles) or archetypal (personalities that reoccur in literature)?
Are characters static (unchanging) or dynamic (evolving)?
Plot:
What is the story? What has already happened before the first section/chapter? Does the work begin in medias res—in
the middle of action? Where is the central conflict? Where is the climax? Where is the resolution?
Theme:
Has the writer focused on any subject in the piece exclusively? Are there any reoccurring images, items, situations?
Is there a motif—a dominant, reoccurring image/symbol?
Symbol:
Are there natural symbols in the work (objects, characters, or settings that suggest larger concepts by nature—for
instance, fire suggests destruction, water suggests change or time)? Are there contextual symbols in the work (objects,
characters, or settings that suggest larger concepts, but only to those who are familiar with a given culture)? Are there
constructed symbols in the work (symbols the writer has built and developed through the narrative)?
Context:
During which era/movement did/does the writer live and write? What is the writer’s identity (race, gender, class,
religion, sexuality), and how does this affect the writer’s perspective? Who were/are the writer’s contemporaries?
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 7th Ed. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.
Allegory: A narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning because its events, actions, characters,
settings, and objects represent specific abstractions or ideas. Characters may be given names such as Hope, Pride,
Youth, and Charity.
Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words.
Allusion: A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature.
Archetype: Universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in a reader.
Caesura: A pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line.
Comedy: A work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and
that ends happily for the main characters.
Conflict: The struggle within the plot between opposing forces.
Connotation: Associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word.
Dialogue: The verbal exchanges between characters.
Elegy: A mournful, contemplative lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead.
Foil: A character in a work whose behavior and values contrast those of another character.
Foreshadowing: The introduction early in a story of hints that suggest what is to come later.
Form: The overall structure or shape of a work following an established design.
Hyperbole: A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true.
Image: A word, phrase, or figure of speech that addresses the senses.
Irony: A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to
be true.
Metaphor: A device that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using the word “like” or “as.”
Meter: When a rhythmic pattern of stresses recurs in a poem, it is called meter.
Oxymoron: A condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together.
Paradox: A statement that initially appears to be contradictory but is nonetheless true.
Parody: A humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work.
Persona: A speaker created by the writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem.
Personification: A form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things.
Pun: A play on words that relies on a word having more than one meaning or sounding like another word.
Satire: Ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it.
Scansion: The process of measuring the stresses in a line of verse in order to determine the metrical pattern of the line.
Simile: A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things y using words such as “like,” “as,” “than,”
“appears,” and “seems.”
Soliloquy: A dramatic convention by means of which a character, alone onstage, utters his or her thoughts aloud.
Symbol: A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more
abstract than its literal significance.
Tragedy: A story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a
dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death.
Center for Transformative Learning
Peer Consultation
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