Literature Subject Guide

This chapter from An Introduction to the Analysis of Fiction highlights the importance of fiction in society and gives a brief overview of literary analysis.

This introductory chapter to Surface and Subtext: Literature, Research, Writing informs readers about the literary canon, popular literature, and the importance of reading literature in a critical manner.

An extensive and accessible list of literary terms. OSU's guide offers short written and video lessons for an impressive amount of terminology for literary analysis. Their guide includes lessons in Spanish and English as well as closed captions for their videos.

This chapter from An Introduction to the Analysis of Fiction emphasizes the difference between theme and topic. It also discusses literary elements that can lead to understanding the theme of a text.

This chapter from Surface and Subtext: Literature, Research, Writing by MTC English Department professor, Dr. Rozier, reviews the major elements of a short story.

This chapter from Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication introduces different types of literary analysis arguments. The author breaks down the writing process for a literary analysis and provides different organizational methods.

This chapter from Surface and Subtext: Literature, Research, Writing walks students through the writing process of a literary analysis essay from joining an existing conversation to drafting. This chapter also contains various sample essays.

Helpful for 200-level classes, this textbook discusses different historical, social, and methodological literary theories and their applications

An all-encompassing textbook for reading, analyzing, and writing about literature.

Specifically for the analysis of fiction, this book does an excellent job at describing basic textual analysis and the primary components of fiction as well as writing tips.

This textbook includes an introduction to literature and breaks down the major literary genres with a history and sample analysis for each genre.

With a broader purpose of general analysis, this textbook includes advertisement analysis and creative non-fiction as genres for study.

A useful textbook for discussing how rhetoric plays a role in writing about literature.