Literary Interpretation презентация

powerful work of literature like Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” or Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism,” you may be filled with questions about its meaning.

way to explore your own ideas about the meaning of a literary work and to analyze the elements in the work that communicate the meaning.

B o x

Literary Interpretation at a Glance

RUBRIC

Standards for Writing

A successful literary interpretation should

clearly identify the title and author of the literary work
give a clearly stated interpretation at or near the beginning of the essay
present evidence and quotations from the text to support the interpretation
take into account other interpretations and contradictory evidence

Introduces the literary work and includes a clear thesis statement that summarizes the interpretation

Introduction

Summarizes the interpretation

Conclusion

might select a work that you especially liked or one that you had problems with in some way.

Writing Your Literary Interpretation

than once, taking notes. Freewrite about the literary elements in the work. What are the main character’s most significant thoughts or actions? What is the central conflict? What is the theme? Write your interpretation of the story as a tentative thesis statement.

a chart to list significant passages from the text and how they support your interpretation.
3. Test your interpretation. Does the evidence support your interpretation? What contradictory evidence did you find? How can you revise your interpretation to account for more of the evidence?

Patton, U.S. Army

Writing Your Literary Interpretation

ideas. A good way to start is to try to get through an entire first draft without stopping. You can revise form and style later. Eventually, you should organize your writing into the following parts:

and briefly states the main point of the interpretation
Body—presents evidence from the text to support the interpretation
Conclusion—restates the interpretation and summarizes the evidence

summarizes what was presented in the body of the paper, does not introduce anything new, and leaves the reader with a sense of closure and something to think about.

a literary work, use the present tense (called the historical present); that is, write about a past action as if it were happening now. However, keep the verbs in quotations in the tense in which they were written.