Rhetoric and Literary Analysis

Course Overview

Whereas earlier English classes focus on the writing traits and fundamental elements of writing, Rhetoric and Literary Analysis places a greater emphasis on developing meaningful ideas and building effective support for those ideas. We’ll be using a combination of “real world” issues and literary texts as vehicles with which to practice our newfound writing and analytical skills. In preparation for American and British Literature, we will focus on largely on formal literary criticism. Literary criticism is the tradition of analyzing and evaluating texts and presenting your thoughts in ways that draw interesting conclusions, push the thinking of your readers, clarify ideas, and support your point of view. The first step in doing this successfully is to focus on developing strong written arguments. Practicing various elements of the Persuasive Essay will consume most of our time in the fall, with the last few weeks reserved for an introduction to the literary devices that will populate our criticism. In the spring, we will study and practice techniques for writing introspective, illuminating literary analysis papers. Throughout the course, we will read non-fiction articles, short stories, novels, and poetry. Students will be exposed to a variety of writing formats and situations, including expository writing, persuasive writing, summary, analysis, and informal written discussion via discussion boards, and other asynchronous online platforms.