English 1101
Instructions for writing and researching a literary topic for analysis
First, choose a piece of literature that you know well. Review it and determine a topic from the list below. You are looking for three solid secondary sources to support your analysis. The librarian should be there to explain and assist in the research process.
Possible topic choices
1. Explain the changes in a character over the course of a novel, play, or short story. Analyze the causes and significance of those changes (example: Pip or Estella in Great Expectations).
2. Examine a setting in a novel, play, or short story. Explain it in detail. Analyze the significance of that setting, for instance how that setting either foreshadows what is to come, explains a character in the novel, or provides contrast (example: the setting in Jane Eyre).
3. Explain the conventions of a particular genre such as the tragedy, comedy, history, Gothic novel, the Realistic novel or the Romance. Analyze how a particular novel or play meets or goes against those genre expectations.
4. Find out about the background of an author. Examine one of the author's works and analyze how that author's life influenced what he/she wrote (example: Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Alan Poe, or Ernest Hemingway).
5. Describe the way irony is used in a short story, play or novel. Analyze how that irony creates meaning. How does using irony work to create meaning in a shorter work? (examples: Flannery O'Connor's short stories, or Mark Twain's).
6. Describe the climax of a work of literature. Analyze how the author builds up to that climax (example: Death of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play, the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird).
7. Describe the mood of a literary work. Analyze how the author creates that mood through word choices.
8. Describe a critical dialogue in a play, short story, or novel. Analyze how putting the words in a character's mouth is more effective than just having the author narrate the scene and action in it.
9. Describe the use of allegory. Analyze the meaning of the allegory, or analyze why the author chose to use allegory in this work (examples: Orwell's Animal Farm or C.S. Lewis's Narnia books or John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress).
10. Look at one scene in a play, short story, or novel. Analyze how that scene is crucial to understanding the plot or the development of a character (example: Ophelia's death in Hamlet).
(adapted from Fifty Critical Analysis Paper Topics)