Literary Analysis by Grade

[LauraClark]

There have been a few questions here that make me wonder what everyone does for literature analysis by grade. We're only up to 7th grade here and have so far not really done anything except discuss and write a couple book reports together (more for writing practice than analysis). 

[freesia]

I can’t tell you grade by grade exactly. Roughly we read books and talk about them—what happens, likes dislikes, etc in the early grades. Late elementary (4-6) I would begin talking more about character development, plots, setting and theme ( I liked the book Deconstructing Penguins.) we’d also compare characters a bit ( how is x like Harry Potter, different from him. How is this story like x, different from x). Sometimes it would be one on one, sometimes in book club groups. Through those years and into middle school I started adding questions from Teaching the Classics. In eighth grade my kids went through at least the first five chapters of Windows to the World. 

[lmrich]

I have developed a nice intro to  lit analysis approach for middle school kids in  my grammar/composition class. 

We start with a poem and write a 1 paragraph essay. Then  we move on to children's book  and write a five-paragraph  essay; I  model and  find all the evidence with the kids. We finish with "The Snow Queen"  and  write  another five-paragraph essay.

I also teach a literature class for middle school where we work on lit analyis all year. Slow and steady with lots  of help and grace as most  kids want to  summarize and not analyze. It takes a lot of   practice. It  also helps for  kids to  read literary analysis essays and talk about the 'rules' and format. 

[EKS]

If anyone is interested, here is an old thread about "why teach literary analysis?"

[Lori D.]

9 hours ago, LauraClark said:

There have been a few questions here that make me wonder what everyone does for literature analysis by grade. We're only up to 7th grade here and have so far not really done anything except discuss and write a couple book reports together (more for writing practice than analysis). 

Sounds like you're doing great.

7th grade is a nice time to consider adding in Figuratively Speaking, and doing it casually, orally together for about 20 minutes, 1-2x/week, to start learning literary devices that are some of the "tools" of analysis.

For more practice using the literary elements covered in Figuratively Speaking, scroll down in this thread to my post, and then further down to Alta Veste Academy's post for specific literature for discussing the devices:

"Figuratively Speaking paired with short stories"

[Porridge]

6 hours ago, EKS said:

If anyone is interested, here is an old thread about "why teach literary analysis?"

Wow. That’s a good thread.

 how do you, as a homeschool parent, equip yourself to guide your kids through literary analysis?

[Amoret]

 

2 hours ago, Porridge said:

 how do you, as a homeschool parent, equip yourself to guide your kids through literary analysis?

 I got a PhD in English 😉 (but that was well before homeschooling was even on my radar)

But I do teach other subjects that I don't know as well and in order to be competent in those, I have read a ton, both in terms of pedagogy and content. I also do a lot of work cooperatively with my kids. For example, we are doing biology labs now, and I am enjoying them quite a bit. I hated biology in high school and love rediscovering these subjects. It helps that they are microbiology focused and not dissections, but we are learning together.

Even with a PhD, though, I am not an expert in all areas of literary analysis. I know Medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian lit very well, and other things not as thoroughly. Though I have a very strong command of the fundamentals, I never spent much time on the persnickety details of the formalist approach to analyzing poetry, for example. So, last year, we worked through Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled together, which was a lot of fun and very informative (if you do this, you may wish to pre-read it first -- especially the section on limericks!). We tried our hand at the writing exercises he includes and applied the things we learned to other poems we read.

Though it might be an unpopular view, I would never ever do AP lit with my kids. I have seen the recent materials and can think of no better way to kill a love of literature than by trying to cram all of those words and definitions, to analyze texts in ways that can be answered in multiple choice questions, or to write essays of the type demanded in the tight time frame required. I took and passed AP lit in high school, but credit some truly fabulous professors who showed me how delightful literary analysis can be with my decision to pursue it academically. The only time I ever encountered many of the terms I learned for the AP test was for the GRE subject test in English.

My own approach in the classes I taught and with my own kids tends toward close reading (new criticism) and new historicism (consider text in its historical context). Both of these approaches are dated and literary analysis (at the upper university level) has moved on to become more closely aligned with philosophy and high theory, or at least it was when I was last active in the academic community. There are many different lenses through which you can read texts (psychoanalytic, feminist, post-colonial, and so on), but these are my favorites because they are both fun and interesting. I agree with the comment above that character, plot, and setting are a good place to begin. We focus first on making sure we understand what is happening (this is not always obvious in older texts), then talk about things we find interesting, which often leads into more in-depth and analysis. Overall, what we are looking for are the themes or larger messages, the "so what" that the text has to offer. What does it have to say about who we are, why we are here, and what we are doing? What can we learn from it? What bothers us? What insight does it offer? Do we agree with it?

Keep in mind that the terminology of literary analysis is there as a tool to help you talk about the texts, not as a goal in itself. We term some characters "dynamic" in order to distinguish them from "flat" characters that don't change. When a main character is "flat," we want to know why the author chose didn't develop it further.  We talk about iambic pentameter as a way of understanding the melodiousness of Shakespeare's language and how he was adapting the sonnet form to work with a recently changed English language that didn't rhyme as easily as Italian (which worked fine for the Petrarchan form), and so on. It's not necessary to memorize the rhyme scheme and meter -- you discover it each time you read one of Shakespeare's sonnets. And when you come across it in more modern sonnets, you know that the poet had Shakespeare's form (and perhaps his content) in mind when writing it. You can still do literary analysis without all of the terminology (so don't let a lack of expertise scare you off) -- you just need time to read closely, an inquiring mind, and the willingness to puzzle through interesting things and look things up when you are stumped. If you are interested and engaged, you kids probably will be too. It's sort of like detective work -- look for clues and put them together to see what you can discover. It should be enjoyable, not drudgery.

One of my favorite books is an old edition of Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice by Charles Bressler (look for a cheap used copy of an older edition, which would be sufficient). I bought it as an undergrad and still refer to it here and there with my kids. It goes way beyond anything you would need for young kids (it could be useful for high school), but it will give you a good idea of some directions literary analysis takes at the undergraduate level.

ETA: I should add that we do very little writing about literature until the high school level. It's almost all conversation, illuminating the margins of poems, sketching character arcs, filling in plot diagrams, working on creative projects, and things like that. Literature will be our writing focus next year (my kids will be in grades 9 and 11). At that point, they will both be well-versed in essay writing, research writing (which is our focus this year), and close reading of texts from a wide range of genres and periods.

 

Edited August 27, 2023 by Amoret

[Lori D.]

Informal appreciation of "craft" -- a writer's style or how a writer chooses to use language and develop the characters and story -- is also a lovely yet often underrated part of looking at literature. Not like you have to dig really deeply, unless you want to, but just pointing out beautifully written passages, or scenes that are very powerful, is a valuable part of literature studies, IMO.

For example, I still remember being so delighted and surprised by both DSs (who tended to be laconic when it came discussion ;)), when they each, independently and unprompted, mentioned how much they appreciated Fitzgerald's writing skill and style in The Great Gatsby.

[LauraClark]

13 hours ago, Amoret said:

My own approach in the classes I taught and with my own kids tends toward close reading (new criticism) and new historicism (consider text in its historical context). Both of these approaches are dated and literary analysis (at the upper university level) has moved on to become more closely aligned with philosophy and high theory, or at least it was when I was last active in the academic community. There are many different lenses through which you can read texts (psychoanalytic, feminist, post-colonial, and so on), but these are my favorites because they are both fun and interesting. I agree with the comment above that character, plot, and setting are a good place to begin. We focus first on making sure we understand what is happening (this is not always obvious in older texts), then talk about things we find interesting, which often leads into more in-depth and analysis. Overall, what we are looking for are the themes or larger messages, the "so what" that the text has to offer. What does it have to say about who we are, why we are here, and what we are doing? What can we learn from it? What bothers us? What insight does it offer? Do we agree with it?

Interesting! I didn't realize that literary analysis had changed, but that makes sense.  Have you read the old thread that @EKS posted (I'm only a little way into it)?  Ester Maria seems to be in the older-style literary analysis camp.  I'd be interested in your thoughts on what she has to say.  If I'm reading it right, she seems to be of the opinion that the kind of literary analysis that you describe ("what does it have to say about who we are...") is more suitable for the college level. 

It does seem like our educational system as a whole is shifting: it used to be (in all areas of study) you get the very basic building blocks and then work up from there to more complex things.  I'm noticing that in things like math, for example, we are expecting younger children to understand complex things earlier too. It's not just "memorize the addition and multiplication tables", now we require them (at the same age) to understand why the addition and multiplication tables are that way. As I'm going through this homeschooling journey with my children the "newer" way of doing things makes less and less sense in all areas.  I'm wondering if it's the same in literary analysis?  All the Language Arts things are my weak point, though, so that's why I pose the question - I'd genuinely like to hear your thoughts on Ester Maria's thoughts ;).

The older way of analyzing seems easier, in a sense, to teach because it is less subjective - it's a multiple choice type of thing (right?). Like, "is this a simile or a metaphor?". But, not knowing any of that and being raised in the educational system where analyzing was "tell me what this story meant", means I have no idea how to teach the easier method. Frankly, I have no idea how to teach the current method either since I almost always got the "what did it mean" questions wrong. I'll be looking into Figuratively Speaking, @Lori D. - thank you. That seems like a gentle introduction for both ds and myself. I started a book that was somewhat similar for poetry with him last year, but it would be good to look at books with that method as well. Lori, did you have your boys do any literary analysis writing in the middle (or high) school years? What does literary analysis writing even look like?

Ugh - sometimes I think I've got this homeschooling thing running like a well oiled machine, and then all of the sudden I realize I'm missing a part of the machine and have to scramble to teach myself so that I can teach my kids. 

[ScoutTN]

@LauraClark We all do a lot of teaching ourselves in order to teach our kids! 

[Amoret]

2 hours ago, LauraClark said:

Ugh - sometimes I think I've got this homeschooling thing running like a well oiled machine, and then all of the sudden I realize I'm missing a part of the machine and have to scramble to teach myself so that I can teach my kids. 

I have other things to attend to right now and can't reply in full to your message, but don't doubt yourself here. As long as you and your kids continue to enjoy reading literature and talking about it, you're doing fine. The problems come in once they come to hate it for one reason or another -- and that often occurs from introducing things too early, so they are set up to fail, or pushing on when something isn't working. The good news is that if you are attuned to your kids needs, you will stop before this happens, regroup, try something new, and carry on. With literary analysis, there are an infinite number of things you can try. Rekindling a love of something is much harder than keeping a flame (even a tiny one) burning. If Figuratively Speaking works for you, that's great. Give it a try! If you need to spend time building a foundation of knowledge for yourself, that will be time well spent, and your kids will benefit. I agree that all of us who homeschool our kids in a traditional way (i.e. at home, parent-taught for the most part) spend a lot of time teaching ourselves so that we can teach our kids (or we make an effort to learn along with them).

And I'll add that you can do high level things (like discussing a text's relevance) at a level that is appropriate at any age. For example, you can read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and talk to kids about times they wanted to do something that they were not allowed to do. How did they react? What did the pigeon do? Why wasn't he allowed to drive the bus? Did the bus driver have good reasons? What about the things you wanted to do, why weren't you allowed? ... that sort of thing. We start with picture books and make our way to Dickens and Shakespeare and Dante and others as skills and maturity allow.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Amoret

[EKS]

1 hour ago, LauraClark said:

Ester Maria seems to be in the older-style literary analysis camp.

My impression was that she was in the newer style (close reading) camp in that she wasn't advocating for analyzing the author's biography or motivations, which was common back in the early-middle of the 20th century (and was taught in high schools up until at least the 1980s--I know because this is how I was taught).  She also seemed to be against having a literary analysis paper be all about the student's own feelings or reactions to the work. 

Ester Maria made reference to bringing in insights from other disciplines--analyzing a literary work through the lens of critical race theory or gender theory would be examples--but she said that this is best left to the university level.  I did a lot of this when I was working toward master's degree in an interdisciplinary humanities program (which I finished when my younger son was in 11th grade).  I found this approach to literature to be a fun parlor trick in that I could make a claim about a text and conjure it into being through cogent argument.  In other words, through the critical analysis process, what was technically in the realm of speculation transformed, in my own mind, into truth.  It was the weirdest thing--and I believe it is at the core of our society's current post-truth uneasiness.

Literary analysis, particularly the way Ester Maria describes it, is a very specialized technique.  After reading through that thread back in 2011, I finally made peace with my decision to skip it with my high school students.  Other genre-specific argumentation took priority.  That said, both kids both got a taste of it when they took English classes outside of our home, though that leaned toward the "personal reaction" variety.

If you want a more human view of how to teach literature (by approaching books in the "exciting, ancient way, as sources of ideas about the world, as possible sources of truth"), the book Classics in the Classroom by Michael Clay Thompson is good.  This approach is much more meaningful than, as one of the posters in the other thread put it, going on a scavenger hunt for literary devices.

[Amoret]

On 8/28/2023 at 8:55 AM, EKS said:

I found this approach to literature to be a fun parlor trick in that I could make a claim about a text and conjure it into being through cogent argument.  In other words, through the critical analysis process, what was technically in the realm of speculation transformed, in my own mind, into truth.  It was the weirdest thing--and I believe it is at the core of our society's current post-truth uneasiness.

Yes, I agree with this completely, and it expresses well my unease with much of literary analysis at the upper levels. One of the reasons that I left academia was because the ways I wanted to study literature were no longer in fashion, and I know that any book I wrote would have been torn apart by critics. I remember sitting in a session listening to a paper on the metaphysical space between the stanzas in Spenser's Faerie Queene. I have read the entire text multiple times and still have absolutely no idea what she was talking about -- but she was one of the big up-and-coming scholars in the field. If that's the sort of thing they are looking for, then I'm out. I think that most substantive works deserve more than a "personal reaction," but there are many ways to go about this.

I don't usually respond to these topics, even though I have a lot to say, because I feel like everything I add should have a thousand qualifications. I know that I have loved going back to some texts that I studied and taught and seeing them through fresh eyes. I had no idea Sir Gawain was so funny, and Bleak House is just melodious to read aloud. I would just love to encourage people just to give it a try, to have fun with it, and not to fear doing it wrong. I think that being open to reading a wide variety of texts (including older ones!) is more important than "doing literary analysis" according to any plan or program. 

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Amoret

[8filltheheart]

Just agreeing with others.  We just spend time talking.  For example, Chronicles of Narnia, especially as a Christian, are easy for us to discuss allusions within the works.   It isn't some lecture/high level analytical discourse.  Our conversations are just a natural extension of how we normally talk about things.  My kids love finding allusions in works bc they appreciate how much more context it gives their reading.

But, my kids never experience literature taught in a way where they have to analyze by literary terms.  They know them in general bc of context in conversations.  (Major ones, anyway.....climax, denouement, foil (Frodo and Sam, Anne and Diana.....we discuss how an author can emphasize character traits by their companions 🙂 ), foreshadowing, etc.) I don't give my kids tests, so they have never had a literature exam in their lives in our homeschool.  We talk and in late middle school, they write their first essay based.

In high school we do things like read Perelandra, Genesis, and Paradise Lost and compare them in general and the character of Eve in particular.  We have fun with our literature selections, and, honestly, we do whatever we want with them.  

[LauraClark]

19 hours ago, EKS said:

My impression was that she was in the newer style (close reading) camp

Ah, ok-I've got it reversed in my mind. Thanks!

19 hours ago, EKS said:

  It was the weirdest thing--and I believe it is at the core of our society's current post-truth uneasiness

I can see that 🙁

 

Thanks everyone-you've given me lots to think about, lots of resources to check out, and the encouragement that I needed! I went from panicking that I had been missing a large chunk of education to feeling reassured that it will be an easy fix of discussion and learning some new words. 

[Lori D.]

On 8/28/2023 at 4:53 AM, LauraClark said:

... I'll be looking into Figuratively Speaking, Lori - thank you. That seems like a gentle introduction for both ds and myself. I started a book that was somewhat similar for poetry with him last year, but it would be good to look at books with that method as well. 

Just to clarify, I see Figuratively Speaking (FS) as just one possible way of learning and practicing seeing some of the devices used in literature. We NEVER analyzed literature by literary device (in other words, NOT like doing a "word search puzzle to find devices and check them off a list, lol.).

We were definitely in the more informal camp, and with lots of discussion, as it arose naturally-- or not, lol. With 2 laconic DSs, sometimes I *did* have to ask a few leading questions to get DSs to tell me what they were seeing in the work. Often it was just a short statement like "hey, that's a lot like Star Wars there," and me asking "how do you mean?"

I tend to refer to what we do when reading some of our literature as "digging deeper," rather than "literary analysis". But because "literary analysis" is the term most frequently is used to talk about discussing lit. or digging deeper into lit at the high school level, even though it's not really the same thing as theformal college-type of "literary analysis" (discussed up-thread), I think most of us just go with "literary analysis" when we are talking about doing something beyond just reading to find out what happens next. 😉 

 

On 8/28/2023 at 4:53 AM, LauraClark said:

.. Lori, did you have your boys do any literary analysis writing in the middle (or high) school years? What does literary analysis writing even look like?...

No. They didn't do that until high school, and even then, literary analysis essays were only a small part of the overall writing we did in high school. DSs only wrote about a few works of lit. during the high school years -- mostly it was discussion.

As a side note, our writing in high school consisted of a lot of different types of "assignments" for writing such as: 
- oral presentation with slideshow
- science labs
- research paper with citations
- real life writing -- resume, cover letter, various types of business letters
- essays for schosarshipship applications or college admissions
- "opinion" papers -- take a topic, decide on an opinion, then build an argument of support
- various types of essays: cause and effect; personal narrative; definition; process ("how to")
- etc.
 

On 8/28/2023 at 4:53 AM, LauraClark said:

... What does literary analysis writing even look like?...

Windows to the World's unit on writing the literary analysis essay is the clearest, most specific step-by-step instruction I've seen. Designed for gr. 9-12, or for a strong reader/writer 8th grader. It starts with teaching annotation, then goes in to how you use some of your annotations as support in writing the literary analysis essay. The last half of the program covers 8-10 of the major literary devices and how they work, but also how they deepen the work.

A high school literary analysis essay would look like NOT narration or a summary of the story. It would look like whatever the student's idea is (beyond the simple plot, or "what happened"), being explained, developed, and supported with points and examples from the work. It might be a character analysis. Or a comparison of some sort. Or writing about a theme that is at work in the lit. Or explaining a "key quotation" in the work. Or how/why the author built a certain mood or created suspense. Or an exploration of an aspect of the author's writing style. Or...

At heart, a literary analysis essay is seeing something in the work and writing about that, using specific examples from the work as support. Like any type of persuasive writing, you have an opinion, or claim, or contention, or have drawn a conclusion about something (which is the claim part of the thesis statement), and then the body of the persuasive essay develops an argument of support for that claim, through points/reasons, which are in turn supported and fleshed out by evidence (examples from the work).

Teaching the Classics is designed to teach you the teacher how to dig deeper with Socratic questioning. Many people watch the videos alongside their 8th or 9th grade student and they learn/do together.

SWB also has an audio lecture on What Is Literary Analysis and When to Teach It -- and here's the conference hand-out that goes with it.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Lori D.

[LauraClark]

Thank you, @Lori D.!! 

[Momto6inIN]

On 8/27/2023 at 4:53 PM, Porridge said:

 how do you, as a homeschool parent, equip yourself to guide your kids through literary analysis?

I read a lot and take the plunge into discussing books with my kids whether I'm "qualified" or not.

Throughout elementary school and middle school they read and once a month write a short two paragraph summary and evaluation of something they've read. We do use Figuratively Speaking like Lori D mentioned, usually in 8th grade. We do Windows to the World in high school at some point. And other than that we just read and discuss. Maybe by senior year if they've mastered other types of writing they might get some vague "read this and write something interesting about it" assignments.

But we really only do a bit of "literary analysis". There's just so many things to learn that we don't want to focus on one thing and neglect all the other stuff!