This document provides guidance for a literary analysis paper assignment. Students are asked to closely read and interpret a poem through an analysis of the poem's specific language choices and how they contribute to the poem's meaning. The interpretation does not need to be comprehensive, but can focus on a particular element of the poem, like rhyme scheme, and how it generates interpretive effects. The goal is for students to practice close reading and showing how a text works at a local level through careful examination of the language.

1. Literary Analysis Paper.
Rationale: ​This paper is intended to allow students to practice two important skills that
are central to the practice of English Studies here at Biola: writing and “close reading.”
Taking time with a text, reading and rereading, looking for patterns, and asking yourself
important questions about “how a text works” are important parts of the practice of close
reading. Writing will, of course, be central to the English program here at Biola as you
develop your understanding and use of language. Writing will be a central way in which
you process, develop, and articulate your understanding of the texts you read (as in this
particular paper), your own experiences and imagination, and the ways in which you will
pass along knowledge to students and other scholars.
Prompt: ​Select a poem. It can be any length, but a shorter poem might work well (a) as
you get used to the practice of close reading and (b) considering relative the brevity of
this paper. Your assignment for this paper, therefore, is to interpret this poem by a careful
assessment of the language in the poem. Here it might be helpful to think of the
questions asked and insight given by Pope on page 41 of ​Studying English Literature
And Language.​ By focusing exclusively on specific details of a single poems, you can
reveal how the poem “works” at the local level, and how an author’s specific language
choices contribute to the way a text makes meaning.
The interpretation of the poem for which you argue need not be comprehensive. Put
another way, you don’t have to argue for “what the poem means,” although you are
welcome to do so if you would like. Instead, you might make an argument for how a
particular portion, dynamic, or linguistic phenomenon in the poem generates a particular
effect upon the reader that yields a kind of meaning or interpretation – even if that
meaning or interpretation of the poem is only partial One might, for example, make and
argument for how the rhyme scheme of the poem mirrors particular images that occur
throughout the poem and, from there make particular conclusions about how that
dynamic might yield a level of interpretation without saying that this dynamic and the
interpretation it generates is the final, definitive meaning or interpretation of the poem.
It’s OK to leave some interpretive stones unturned in this essay.

2. Details:
Length: 1000 words
Font and Spacing : up to the student, but please be uniform
Format: MLA
Sources : no secondary sources
Due Dates: On syllabus on Medium page