Once you return from Ireland, you need to write a 5-7 page essay that addresses any Yeats related topic of your choosing. Ideally, your topic will relate to the seminars that you attended.
As a university student you have probably had some experience writing analytical essays for your courses, and you may very well have already written essays on literature, if not while attending college at least during high school. Therefore, much of what I will be talking about below won’t be new to you, and some of it may seem redundant. At the same time, in my experience I have found that students usually benefit from a basic review, particularly when they are in the initial planning stages of composing an essay. So here are some things to keep in mind as you select your topic and begin to think about your essay. Keep this handy and refer to it as you write.
General Points About Literary Criticism
1. Literary “criticism” means analysis and interpretation. When you hear the word “critic” in everyday life, you probably call to mind a film critic, a person who tells you whether or not a movie is worth seeing, or you might think of someone who offers critiques, for example a newspaper commentator who evaluates the President’s current economic policy. The literary critic, the role you will be adopting in your essays, shares a few of these characteristics: you will highlight important aspects of the text (a play, poem, or group of poems), explain the artistic techniques employed by the Yeats, and formulate an argument about the text. There are, however, some important differences. As a literary critic, your goal is to offer one specific interpretation of the text, a way of reading the work of literature that other critics may not have thought of before or have only touched on briefly. In addition, whereas a film critic will invariably tell you whether or not a movie is good, the literature critic will be less concerned with making explicit value judgments and more concerned with offering new ways to understand the text (of course, some of those interpretations will contain implicit value judgments about the ideas advanced by the text). Finally, the literary critic will focus in detail on the actual words in the text, providing extensive evidence to support his or her interpretation.
2. Literary criticism does not mean plot summary. As you write your essay, remember that I am familiar with Yeats’s works and will not need a shorthand summary of the “plot”–what, for example, a poem is about on a basic level. This may seem obvious, but it is a common problem, especially when the student runs out of things to say. As you write, continually check over what you’ve written. If you find that you’ve been explaining “what happened,” you’re on the wrong track. Go back to your original argument and work to expand it by finding new evidence, by going into more detail with previous evidence, or by complicating the argument itself.
Writing a Literary Criticism Essay
1. Create a “problem” in your introduction. Early on you need to sell your reader on the importance of your topic, and doing so usually entails creating a problem, a question that your essay will answer. You can’t do that by opening with lines like: “Throughout history poetry has been important in society”; or “Yeats’s poem, ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” is a beautiful work that I enjoyed reading.” Believe it or not, many students do open with these types of mundane sentences, and I react to them as you would react: So what? What’s new or thought provoking about these points? A better strategy is to begin by focusing on ambiguities or points of uncertainty in the text itself. One way to do that is to jot down questions you had while reading the work. For example, Why does the author keep returning to ___ image or ___ metaphor throughout the poem? How does ___ character’s perspective change during the course of the play? Why does the poem conclude with the words ___? Use these questions as a starting point for locating aspects of the work that are unclear, uncertain, troubling, or thought provoking. Then, write an introduction that highlights these points of ambiguity. Another strategy is to think carefully about the issues that come up during the lectures and seminars at the Yeats Summer School. You’ll find that the lecturers will often come back to the same series of questions, even though each lecturer will have his or her own unique perspective on that question. An easy way to begin is to introduce one of these key issues. For example, in recent years critics have focused on Yeats’s politics, with some accusing Yeats of being an elitist, who cares only about the upper classes, while others have argued that Yeats embraces a more democratic form of politics. Thus, you might start your essay by focusing on this question by, say, mentioning one of the lectures: “In her lecture at the Yeats International Summer School on Yeats’s later poetry, critic ___ argues that Yeats offers a vision of Ireland that excludes the middle classes. A close analysis of the poetry, however, suggests that the middle classes do appear, though frequently in a negative light….” Once you’ve introduced a core issue or question, you can now move into your own central argument.
2. Construct a clear thesis. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a clear thesis when you write. That doesn’t mean treating your reader like a child—“In this paper I will prove…”—and it doesn’t mean coming up with a simple or obvious argument; but it does mean setting forth a clear, specific argument at some point (usually early on in the essay). Note my language: a “specific argument.” For literary criticism essays, your goal is to prove something about the text, to make an argument that you will support with textual evidence throughout the essay. Once you have a clear argument, make sure that it is a fairly complicated argument. Often students will do a great job proving a point that is far too obvious. For example, proving that Yeats’s “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” is a poem that vividly describes the speaker’s love for an ideal woman is the basis of an accurate and clear thesis, but such a thesis wouldn’t tell your reader anything new about the poem. A better thesis might be the following: In “‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ Yeats both embraces and reacts against the type of Romantic poetry that tends to idealize women. By calling attention to the formulaic nature of love poetry, Yeats offers a slightly different perspective. He does idealize his beloved, but at the same time he makes it clear that this type of idealization is all part of a formula–a type of performance that prompts us to question the speaker’s sincerity as he professes his eternal love.”
3. Support your thesis with textual evidence. A common error in student criticism is a lack of concrete textual support, an absence of specific examples to illustrate and prove the author’s claims. Consider the thesis I offer at the conclusion of the previous section. A good essay would draw attention to the poem’s rhyme scheme: the way that the poem simply repeats the same words again and again, as if the speaker is following a preexisting formula. It would also include an analysis of the imagery and metaphors, showing how the poem calls to mind an older, courtly tradition in which men were supposed to abase themselves before beautiful women. The point, in any case, is that your argument should reference the words on the page. As you write, continually check yourself to be sure that you are providing textual evidence. At the same time, your essay should not simply be a laundry list of quotes. Make sure that when you offer textual evidence, you analyze that evidence—the specific wording—in as much detail as possible.
4. When in doubt, ask me. If you’re not sure about your topic or are having trouble finding support for your claims, send me an email. That’s what I’m here for.
5. Start early. It’s tough to write an essay when you haven’t spent any time thinking about what you want to say in that essay. So think about your topic before you leave for Ireland, and then take notes during the seminars and lectures whenever your topic comes up.