CHAPTER 24 – WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE and the ARTS

This chapter’s goal is to experience an artwork or performance, understand its elements, and then write an essay analyzing and perhaps evaluating the work. We choose an art form or type of performance with which we are familiar or are willing to learn about. We understand the work, experience it thoughtfully, looking carefully its content, form and overall effect. We gather information, take notes on what we experience, seek to understand the whole work before we analyze the parts. We organize our thoughts, review the notes that we took as we analyzed the work. The key what insight about the work has our analysis let us to see and we make judgment our thesis through this, and organize supporting points logically in a scratch or full outline. We write the first draft then we review and revise the essay, once we have revised our appraisal, clarified our transitions, and checked our evidence, polish the phrasing and diction. In particular, we should check that we have used the special terms of the special terms of the literary genre or art form clearly and accurately.