Fordham University Writing Centers Writing about Literature Whenmaking claims about literatureyou will most often be interpreting or evaluating critically a primary text or texts. Like other argumentative essays, the literary analysis is built upon a main claim supported by evidence. In addition, there are certain formal guidelines you must follow when writing about literature, including using theliterary presentand, when necessary,integrating outside sources. Making claims about literature Your goal in an essay about literature is to interpret, not to describe, and to persuade rather than prove.Your claim should be argumentative and debatable, like the claims you have made in your other papers (e.g. those for your composition courses), but it should also be supported by convincing evidence in the form of specific examples from the text.If you're having trouble coming up with a claim, you might consider the following common approaches: A discussion ofpatternsin the text: is there a recurrence of certain kinds of imagery, events, or language? In William Faulkner'sAbsalom, Absalom!,whenever Quentin Compson, the narrator, is retelling particularly traumatic events from his family's past, his sentences become longer and use less punctuation, sometimes going pages without a period.
