Praxis ELA 5038

Theme is a central insight about human experience that a work develops. Themes emerge through patterns of imagery, character development, plot, and symbol rather than through direct statement, and most works develop several related themes. The key distinction is between subject (the topic a work addresses) and theme (what the work suggests about that topic). A novel's subject might be war; its theme might be that violence dehumanizes both its victims and its perpetrators.

Symbols invest concrete objects, characters, settings, or actions with abstract significance. Recurring symbolic patterns (light and darkness, spring and winter, journeys) unify a work and deepen its resonance. A motif is a recurring element such as an image, phrase, or situation that helps develop a theme; an allegory is a narrative in which characters and events systematically stand for abstract ideas, as in Everyman or Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

Irony

Irony is a gap between appearance and reality, expectation and outcome, or surface meaning and underlying meaning.

Type	Defi nition	Example
Verbalirony	Sayingtheoppositeof orsomethingdifferentfrom whatis , ,	Swift's“AModestProposal”calmly
	meant;rangesfromgentlehumortobittersarcasm	recommendingthatthepoorselltheir
		childrenasfood
Situationalirony	Theoutcomecontradictsreasonableexpectations	O Henry's“TheGiftoftheMagi”:each .
		spousesellsatreasuretobuyagiftfor
		theother'streasure
Dramaticirony	Theaudienceknowswhatacharacterdoesnot;produces	Oedipusvowingtofindtheking's
	suspense pathos orcomedy , ,	murderer whoishimself ,
Cosmicirony	Fate thegods ortheuniverseseemtotoywithhuman , ,	Hardy'snovels;StephenCrane's“The
	hopes	OpenBoat”

Tone, Mood, and Style

Tone is the author's or speaker's attitude toward the subject and audience, conveyed through word choice, imagery, syntax, and selection of detail (formal, playful, sincere, ironic, sympathetic, detached, bitter, reverent). Mood is the emotional atmosphere the reader experiences, created through setting, imagery, pacing, and sound. Tone belongs to the writer; mood belongs to the reader. The two often align but need not: a detached, clinical tone can produce a horrified mood.

Style is the distinctive way a writer uses language. Analyzing style means examining specific choices and their effects: diction (concrete or abstract, formal or colloquial, connotation), syntax (sentence length and structure, periodic or loose sentences, parallelism, inversion, fragments), figurative language and imagery, rhythm and sound, and narrative voice.

When a question asks for the tone of a passage, choose the answer that names an attitude supported by specific diction in the passage. Answers that describe how a reader might feel describe mood, not tone.

Critical Approaches

Critical approaches (lenses) are systematic ways of reading that direct attention to particular aspects of a text. No lens is complete; each foregrounds some questions and ignores others. On the exam, match the lens to the question it asks.

Criticallens→Keyquestionitasks

Lens	Focus	KeyQuestion
Formalist/NewCriticism	The text as a self -contained artistic object; close reading	Howdothepartsofthetextworktogether
	oflanguage structure imagery tension paradox and , , , , ,	tocreatemeaning?
	ambiguityresolvedintoorganicunity
Historical	Thecultural political andintellectualcontextinwhich , ,	Whatdoestheworkrevealaboutitstime ,
	theworkwaswritten;explainsallusions concerns and , ,	andhowdoesitstimeexplainthework?
NewHistoricism	conventions Literatureasonediscourseamongmanythatboth reflectsandshapesculturalpowerrelations;reads literaryandnonliterarytextssidebyside(Stephen Greenblatt)	1 Howdoesthetextparticipateinthepower structuresofitsculture?

Criticallens→Keyquestionitasks(Continued)

Lens	Focus	KeyQuestion
Biographical	Connectionsbetweentheauthor'slifeandthework;must	Howdidtheauthor'sexperiencesshape
	avoidreducingtheworktoautobiographyorconflating	thiswork?
	narratorwithauthor
Psychological(Freudian)	Unconsciousdesires repression defensemechanisms , , ,	Whathiddenmotivesandconflictsdrivethe
	andsymbolicexpressionincharacters authors or , ,	characters?
	readers
Archetypal/mythological	Recurringpatterns charactertypes andsymbolsshared , ,	Whatuniversalpatternsandarchetypes
	acrosscultures(Jung'scollectiveunconscious Northrop ,	doesthetextuse?
	Frye JosephCampbell) ,
Feminist/gender	Representationofgender patriarchalassumptions , ,	Howdoesthetextreinforceorchallenge
	recoveryofneglectedwomenwriters critiqueofthe ,	genderrolesandpower?
	canon
Marxist	Class economicpower ideology andthematerial , , ,	Whoseeconomicinterestsdoesthetext
	conditionsofliteraryproductionandconsumption	serve andhowdoesittreatclass? ,
Postcolonial	Colonialism imperialism andtheirlegacies; , ,	Howdoesthetextrepresentcolonizerand
	representationofcolonizedpeoples;culturalhybridity	colonized andwhosevoiceisheard? ,
	(EdwardSaid HomiBhabha) ,
Reader-response	Meaningasconstructedinthetransactionbetween	Howdoesthereader'sexperienceshape
	readerandtext(LouiseRosenblatt WolfgangIser Stanley , ,	themeaningofthetext?
	Fish)
Deconstruction	Instabilityoflanguage;exposesbinaryoppositionsand	Wheredoesthetextcontradictor
	contradictionsthatundermineatext'sapparentmeaning	undermineitself?
	(JacquesDerrida)

Archetypal (mythological) criticism draws on Carl Jung's collective unconscious, a shared store of images called archetypes; on Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, which links comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony/satire to spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and on Joseph Campbell's monomyth. An archetypal critic reads Beowulf's descent into Grendel's mother's lair as a journey to the underworld and a symbolic rebirth.

Reader-response theory holds that meaning is made in the act of reading. Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory distinguishes efferent reading (to carry away information) from aesthetic reading (attending to the lived experience of the text); Stanley Fish's interpretive communities explain why readers who share assumptions produce similar readings. The approach does not claim every reading is equally valid, since the text still guides and constrains interpretation.

New Criticism (formalism, mid-twentieth century) deliberately excludes historical and biographical context. New Historicism (late twentieth century) is the opposite: it embeds the text in its cultural context. The similar names are a frequent distractor.

Writing Literary Analysis

An analytical thesis makes an arguable claim about a text that requires evidence and interpretation to support. It goes beyond plot summary or obvious observation and names specific textual features and their significance.

Weak: The Great Gatsby is about the American Dream. (Names only a subject.) Stronger: Through Gatsby's self-invention and destruction, Fitzgerald critiques how American idealism decays into materialistic fantasy.

Evidence must be introduced, grammatically integrated, and explained. A “floating” quotation, dropped into a paragraph without a lead-in or commentary, does not constitute argument; the writer must show how the passage supports the claim.

Introduce

Set up the quotation with context: who speaks, when, and why it matters.

Cite

Integrate a short, precise quotation into the writer's own sentence, with correct punctuation and citation.

Explain

Analyze specific words or techniques and connect them explicitly to the thesis.

Analytical essays may be organized thematically (by aspects of the argument), chronologically (following the work's sequence), or comparatively (across texts or elements, either block by block or point by point). Each body paragraph develops one distinct point. The introduction establishes context and presents the thesis; the conclusion synthesizes and suggests broader significance rather than repeating the introduction. Literary analysis conventionally discusses the text in the literary present tense (“Gatsby reaches toward the green light”).