Lit Crit Papers: What Faculty Know But Don't Always Articulate

The following is a not-very-exhaustive list of some of the large-scale issues I regularly see in student papers. These are things to keep in mind as you're revising early drafts. They're the type of problems that will (and maybe even should) turn up as you compose the first drafts of an assignment but that you should root out somewhere in the revising process.

Invention/Exploring, or Having Ideas about Texts: Common Missteps in the Early Stages

1. Recognize the distinction between what could be and what must be. The fact that something isn't explicitly ruled out by the text doesn't mean it's worth pursuing or that you're justified in building an argument around it. In, say, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye we're not told much about Holden Caulfield's parents and the quality of their marriage, one way or the other; that doesn't mean you get to build an argument on the assumption that Holden behaves as he does because their marriage must be on the rocks, even if the text doesn't offer evidence that contravenes that assertion. Address what's there in the text or what the text makes necessary, rather than pursuing the infinite possibilities left open. The absence of evidence is just that: an absence.

2. Avoid the pitfall of diosyncratic readings--what Terry Eagleton calls private "psychological associations."  If you find yourself saying, "This detail suggests to me" or "This reminds me of that one time," stop and think.  Are you reasonably sure it would mean this to most readers of the text?  

A subset of #3: the painfully ingenious brainstorm about what's "really" happening in a text.  This has its fullest expression in the Matrix Conceit: "What if the entire text is really just a dream the protagonist is having?" The main problem with these approaches (aside from their pointlessness) is that the entire paper is usually then spent explaining why the text doesn't rule this out as a possibility--and very little, if any, time explaining what such a reading then reveals about the text's meaning. So what if all of Catcher in the Rye is just a hallucination of Holden's? Why does he have these specific hallucinations? Why doesn't he hallucinate rainbow unicorns? What is Salinger telling us about the teenage mind in 1949 by having Holden hallucinate in just this way? The "this-is-all-just-a-dream" interpretation isn't an interpretation at all--it's just a deferral of an interpretation.

An additional subset: the cliched, prescriptive, and/or sentimental personal response. This is a trickier issue, because it moves into the region of values, but be careful about projecting your own assumptions and emotional reactions onto a text. Gerald Graff calls this "the closest cliche syndrome." Read carefully before assuming that, say, a mother who spends money on herself rather than her children is meant to be viewed as a monster, or that we are to condemn a female protagonist who decides to marry someone for his wealth. (I'm frequently surprised, frankly, by the rather pedestrian and predictable moralism of some undergraduates that prevents them from recognizing other perspectives.) You don't need to agree with the perspective, but recognize that your response may not be universal--or that the text may even be critiquing the ideology that informs your response.

3. Delete irrelevancies that seem justifiable. This may be the single biggest issue in papers that require any kind of research. You've learned a lot; you've spent time looking at microfilm or rooting around in web archives. Surely much of this is important and relevant and needs to be shared? Or so you think. If it appears in your paper, it should be necessary to support your thesis. If it doesn't relate to your thesis, it must go.  That means that, even though you learned a lot about the design of Central Park when you researched the settings of Catcher in the Rye, you don't get to include a long paragraph on Frederick Law Olmstead just because you're writing about the carousel as a metaphor for Holden's life. If you find yourself thinking, "I'll include this because it's interesting background," the odds are you shouldn't include it. You don't have to teach the reader everything you learned in the course of your research.  A friend and colleague writes in the margins of student papers "TBI": "True But Irrelevant."

4. Avoid gratuitous commentary, especially evaluative. Most of these sorts of statements are either nervous qualifications, bullshit written to take up a few lines, or throat-clearing/warm-up remarks you babble while you figure out what you really want to say.  Not a huge problem in informal assignments or early drafts, but they should be identified and eradicated in formal papers. Many of these remarks come under the heading of TBI ("True But Irrelevant"), or they're just signposts that remind you of what you want to write about next. Try to pare these away from your final texts:

• Vague references to how a text makes you, personally, "feel," or otherwise excessive reference to your subjective experience of the text: "I can really feel the speaker's anguish."   "I feel like I really understand the emotions this speaker is experiencing."  No one cares.  These responses are especially prevalent in papers on poetry.
• Vague, generalized philosophical pronouncements: "Every poem can be read and interpreted differently, depending on the reader."  (Does that really need to be said?)  "I personally believe that poetry is all about the emotions of the speaker."  (Do you? And you are . . . ?)
• Vague generalizations that could be said of any text:   "Figurative language is very important in this poem."  "The characters are very carefully drawn."  If the statement could just as appropriately be made regarding Hamlet, Frankenstein, Invisible Man, or The Simpsons, it needs either to be chopped out or edited so that it relates specifically to the text under discussion. Above all, avoid phrases about the history of the world or the species: "Since the dawn of time," "For all of human history," and so on. Statements like these are always either a. wrong, b. obvious, and/or c. pointless and unnecessary; if what you're trying to convey is, more or less, "this is a universal truth that has been known forever," stop. On the other hand, precise references are always welcome, especially when they relate to your thesis and situate your analysis historically: "Since the invention of the modern ideology of individualism," "During the second-half of the twentieth century," and so on.
• Gratuitous and vague evaluation: "This poem is really very effective in getting its message across."  "I am so impressed by what the poet accomplishes here!" "This poem is truly profound." “Once the reader has read the poem several times its beauty really shines through.” "The poet utilizes this trope very effectively." Again, this reads like irrelevant filler; your analysis will either persuade the reader of the text's merits, or it won't. But simply insisting that the text has these merits isn't effective; it sounds bullshitty.
• Stuttering starts. Students are fond of attaching qualifying introductions to their sentences: "The writer is suggesting that" or "It is strongly implied that" or "By this we are led to believe that the writer possibly means," "This suggests to the reader that," and so on. Aside from weighing down your prose, these phrases also discourage real analysis; when your assertions are couched so tentatively, you may feel less urgency to defend or support them. These introductory phrases can just be deleted: "It is strongly implied that the speaker feels no real remorse for his actions" becomes "The speaker feels no real remorse for his actions." And now you have to explain why you make that claim, what evidence you see in the text for making this assertion.

The remaining items in this list are more mechanical/structural/stylistic than conceptual, but they're important, just the same!

5. Ignorance of basic conventions--or inattention to them.  As English majors, you are now officially required to care about trivial little details of format, style, and usage.  You should even bore your friends with them, and post comments about them as your Facebook status:

• Periods and commas inside quotation marks.  Always--whether they appear in the original or not, unless the quotation is followed by a parenthetical citation. And do please memorize the rules regarding apostrophes.
• Titles of books, films, periodicals, etc. should be italicized or underlined; titles of songs, short fiction, poems, periodical articles, etc. should be enclosed in quotation marks.
• Capitalization.  Some words, terms are always capitalized; others never are.  Some sometimes are.  Don't guess--look it up.  A quick consultation with a dictionary will tell you that the Great Depression is capitalized, but the psychological condition isn't.  When you refer to the sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it's capitalized: Bible (also, not italicized).  When you use the term as a metaphor--"Bill James writes a book that is widely seen as the bible of baseball"--it isn't.  
• Refer to authors--male or female--by their second names, never their first names. (Were you and Emily Dickinson BFFs? Then don't call her "Emily.")
• For characters, follow the author's style. In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton's narrator refers to the protagonist, Lily Bart, as "Lily," but to Lily's friend and confidante Lawrence Selden as "Selden."
• Follow manuscript formatting and citation conventions of the MLA, whether you're explicitly told to or not (unless, of course, your instructor explicitly asks for a different citation format--Chicago, for instance). Cite your sources--parenthetically and with a Works Cited page at the end. Even if the instructor doesn't expect it; he or she will be impressed by your professionalism.
• In-text parenthetical citations: if you mention the author in the actual sentence, or if it's clear from overall context in the paragraph the text you're citing, you don't need to include the author's name in the parenthetical citation--only the page number. Remember to end a quotation with closing quotation marks, hit the space bar, enclose the page number in parentheses, and add the terminal punctuation (period, question mark, etc.) Please remember to hit the space bar before beginning the next sentence.

Examples:

CORRECT: Lily Bart's rival Bertha Dorset is said to resemble "a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room" (Wharton 35). While being relatively small in stature and affecting a vapory evanescence, Bertha pointedly makes her presence known.

NOT: Lily Bart's rival Bertha Dorset is said to resemble "a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room." (Wharton 35) While being relatively small in stature and affecting a vapory evanescence, Bertha pointedly makes her presence known.

NOT: Lily Bart's rival Bertha Dorset is said to resemble "a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room. (Wharton 35)" While being relatively small in stature and affecting a vapory evanescence, Bertha pointedly makes her presence known.

NOT: Lily Bart's rival Bertha Dorset is said to resemble "a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room."(Wharton 35)While being relatively small in stature and affecting a vapory evanescence, Bertha pointedly makes her presence known.

• Quotation: Always avoid the FSQ ("Free Standing Quotation").  Note that in the examples above the quotation from the text is followed by a commentary on that quotation--an interpretation of it, if you will.  QUOTATIONS DO NOT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES; you're responsible for ensuring that the reader sees in the quotation what you want him or her to see in it.  Some faculty speak of "quotation sandwiches": begin with an introductory statement, followed by the quoted material, followed by commentary on the significance of the quoted material.  

• There's a special circle of hell reserved for students who don't proofread with care.  I will set aside my pencil and get out the red pen for excessive egregious errors that proofreading should have caught: missing words, repeated words, "and" when you meant "an," incorrect (or inconsistent!) spelling of the names of authors and/or characters (Seriously, English majors? You can't crack open the text and check on the character's name?), weird capitalizations, text crushed together without adequate spacing, isolated words floating in a sea of blank space, abrupt changes in font type or size, and so on.  It's time to take some pride in the appearance of your work.  Figure out how the word processing software you use works--how to change margins, how to create hanging indents, how to insert and format a header, etc.

• Mechanics.  Again, as English majors you should recognize a fragment or a run-on sentence at a hundred paces; you should know how to use colons; you should have a philosophical position on the Oxford comma. FFS, there are rules governing the use of apostrophes--you don't get to be "creative" or "intuitive" about it. If you know that you don't have an ear for these things, you need to become a grammar nerd, pronto.  There are books on the market that can help; there are web sites.  At the very least, find a friend who's good at these things and get him or her to read your paper over to correct your syntax and punctuation in return for a latte or a beer.

• Beware of pronouns with no referents.  "This establishes the speaker's ironic intentions"; "It suggests the speaker's insincerity." Don't use pronouns to wave back vaguely towards entire sentences, as if to say "All of that that I just told you?  Yeah--all of that; plug that in here."

• FYI:  "In which" is not a thing.  The pronoun is "which," and it gets used with many different prepositions: "by which," "to which," "with which," etc.  If you want to avoid the preposition at the end of the clause, put it before the pronoun, but use the appropriate preposition: