I wrote briefly last week about the importance of technique in academic writing. Academic writing is, above all else, a specialised form of communication, which remains true whether we are teaching essay writing to first year students or working on a journal article addressing our research. Articles, essays, theses, and dissertations are all modes of communication that serve to share with readers how we have approached our topic and the conclusions to which we have come. And the success of this communication is dependent each writer’s display of technical mastery. This does not, of course, mean mindlessly following the model, although many writing teachers would agree that is preferable to write with good technique and be a bit monotonous than to write with no technique and lose the reader from the outset.
The aim of good technique is to create a fluid and organic microcosmic structure. What this means is, simply: 1) each paragraph is a self-contained unit, 2) which contributes to the argument of its individual section, 3) which contributes to the argument of its chapter, 4) which contributes to the argument of the work as a whole. No matter the length of the writing, these key building blocks will always stay the same, and should always help your reader to enter into your analysis with the tools to engage meaningfully with what you have to say.
Yesterday I wrote about how I introduce secondary source research to students. Those 7 questions, are, of course, only the starting point for helping students to get the full benefit from engaging with the work of other thinkers.
When our students are working with secondary source material in their writing, we should be encouraging them to use their sources to explicitly support, develop, or refine their own argument. We sometimes forget that student writers can become part of the wider critical conversation on a topic. By helping them to use their sources to develop their argument, rather than simply reiterating the arguments of others, we can help them to enter that conversation as well.
The university-level study of English is paradoxically both an individual and collaborative effort, with students developing their own analytical skills while simultaneously learning to think in collaborative ways with tutors and fellow students. What this paradox demonstrates, of course, is that communicating with those around you plays a significant role in the development of ideas, including communicating with the critical body of material surrounding the topic (even if the line of communication is, in this case, distinctly one-way).
Academic writing, even at the most introductory level, is not created in a vacuum. Indeed, any piece of writing that students produce will be be a conglomeration of voices—some contemporary, some more distant—and their success in that writing will be dependent upon how well they harness this mass.
Academic writing is both an art form and a science. Various conventions of style and argumentation have emerged because they tend to produce clear, effective pieces of writing. To a great extent, the conventions of grammar that we will be covering must be taken as rules that must be followed. But conventions of structure, organization, and argument formation are merely tools that you must learn to make work for yourself. They might sometimes seems overly reductive or formulaic, but it is important to remember that they are only guidelines to help you develop your own personal, authentic critical voice. In the same way that a painter, sculptor, dancer, actor, or architect must practise and refine his or her art, academic writers must practise and refine the art of writing.
TCLC – Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (Photo credit: CCAC North Library)
Textual Analysis, or ‘close reading’
You might be surprised to discover that the academic discipline of English literature, as we know it today, only came into existence around 1900. Eager to make the study of English literature an academically rigorous undertaking, early twentieth-century literary critics sought to codify and professionalize their discipline, and developed a technique that is now called ‘close reading’. By paying careful, specific attention to the ways in which words are put together, we can form some significant evidence for what we believe to be happening in a literary text. In many ways, close reading forms the backbone of what we now know of as literary criticism, and is the skill that differentiates English literature students from students in other Humanities departments. Historians, art historians, theologians, and philosophers share many of the same skills that we do, but what sets us apart is our sensitivity to the words on the page. The skill of close reading is an important one, and one which you will develop over the course of your degree.
Historical Context
Much of the debate in twentieth-century literary criticism centred on the role which historical and authorial context should play in analysis. Should the critic be concerned that Charles Dickens’ childhood experience in a workhouse contributed to many of his most famous novels? When reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library should the critic be aware that AIDS-victims were heavily stigmatized during the early 1980s? The answer is almost certainly ‘yes’ in both cases. In order to put forward a clear, convincing argument about a text, it is important that the critic has a working knowledge of the relevant contextual material which bears weight upon the text.
Critical Context
Literary analysis does not happen in a vacuum, and the changing understanding of texts across generations is important. We know that Bram Stoker was convinced that Dracula was a moral, ethical parable about good versus evil. Literary critics, however, have been unable to leave unacknowledged the significant, and sometimes subversive, sexual imagery which marks that text. Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw was left purposefully ambiguous as a stylistic feature, and that is an issue with which generations of critics have contended. It is for this reason that a compelling argument about a literary work must take into account the critical context and what other critics have said about it.
Theoretical Context
A theory is a system of acute observations of the material world, which can provide the literary critic with a useful framework for exploring meaning in literary texts. Through the accumulated conventions of style, lexis, and incentive, theory creates cogent models of analysis. These models often seek to foreground the sociological issues which bear significant weight in English literature (e.g. psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, queer theory, eco-criticism, and disability studies). Theory can provide a powerful, robust route into texts, but it is important that you do not allow theoretical context to overpower your analysis. Remember, your argument is about the text, and theory is only one of four analytical tools which you have at your disposal.
The major debates between various schools of twentieth-century literary criticism came from the differing levels of importance afforded to each of these four categories. For example, New Criticism favoured textual analysis at the expense of historical context; psychoanalytic literary criticism saw historical context as significantly more important than critical context; the Poststructuralists thought that theoretical context was of prime importance. Literary criticism in the twenty-first century tends to acknowledge the value of all four of these categories of evidence, though each critic will inevitably develop his or her own personal style of working with these. As you develop increasing confidence and skill in analysis, you will likely find yourself moving through these categories. It is important to remember, however, that it is impossible to produce sophisticated, well-nuanced essays if appropriate attention is not paid to textual analysis. It is for this reason that many of your tutors will focus a great deal of attention on the skill of close reading.
This post is based upon teaching materials developed while I was teaching at the University of Leeds.
