Text Analysis-How To

Assessment Criteria
Outline
1. Starting the analysis:

• Short introduction
• Situate the fragment/poem within the work
• Brief summary of the fragment’s contents
• Brief summary of its main formal features
• Suggest a structure for the text that you will then follow in your detailed (part-
by-part) analysis

2. Body of the analysis/Part-by-part analysis: In-depth focus on each of the sections in

the structure you proposed (explain each part’s contents in greater detail and the
rhetorical figures and other stylistic devices used to convey them; that is, explain what
the text “says” and how it is said, blending your comments on thematic and formal
issues). Quote from the text and provide examples.

3. Closing the analysis: Conclusion

 Some of these guidelines (the first three points
below, on things like the word limit, the double-
Formal Guidelines (I) spaced text, etc.) are to be followed if you
submit a text analysis to be corrected by your
teacher. The other guidelines are applicable to
the exam exercise as well.
• Word limit: 1,000/ 1,200 words

• Word document with justified text, Times New Roman 12pt size, double spacing;
remember to number pages and indent the first line of each paragraph except for that
in the opening/first paragraph, which is not indented.

• Academic (i.e. formal) style. Do not use contractions (“It is”, rather than “It’s”) or
colloquial expressions. Use “text analysis” instead of “text commentary/comment”.

• Do not use section headings to structure your text. Use linkers and transitional devices
whenever possible (Regarding/ With regard to/ Concerning/ With reference to/ In
terms of/ In relation to/ In connection with versification, it must be said that in
Anglo-Saxon poetry...). Please, do not use “Talking about versification…” or “According
to versification…!
Formal Guidelines (II)
• When you quote from the text, use inverted commas and add the line or lines after
the quotation. For example: “quoted text” (l. 103) or “quoted text” (ll. 103-104). In
English, the term is line, not verse! l. stands for “line” ll. for “lines” (if you
quote more than one line.

• To indicate line breaks, use a slash / Example:

The protagonist’s strength is emphasised by means of hyperbole when Beowulf’s handgrip
is described as “harder than anything/ he had ever encountered in any man/ on the face of
the earth” (ll. 750-52).

• Think whether you should use italics or inverted commas when you refer to the
work’s title. As a general rule, titles of books and full works are italicized, whereas
titles of fragments, chapters, short poems and short stories are written within
“inverted commas”. Example: Cotton Vitellius AXV, Beowulf but Shakespeare’s
“Sonnet 32” or Blake’s poem “The Lamb”, or Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia”
(a Sherlock Homes story).
Content (I)
1. Starting the analysis
• When introducing the fragment, ask yourself these questions: what is the title of the work in
which the fragment/poem is contained and what is the genre it belongs to? Who wrote the
work and when? If it is anonymous, do we have some clue as to who may have composed it? Is
the date we have approximate? Do we have different dates for the same work? (date of
composition, date of the written version, etc; or different dates because it is impossible to be
precise…). You need to offer the necessary context for a reader to understand where the
fragment comes from. In this section, it is usually a good idea to go from the general (period,
genre…) to the specific (author, work…).
• Where in the whole work does the text comes from? Does the work have different sections, or
parts? Explain. Where do you situate your text within this sturucture and within the parts in the
story it tells?
• Provide a very brief summary of the fragment’s content and deal with the most general formal
aspects (versification features with examples). For example: “This fragment/poem deals with…
Regarding general formal features, versification …”.
• Suggest a structure. It is always advisable to divide the text into sections, which you will follow
later to structure your analysis. For example: “This fragment/sonnet could be divided into three
sections. The first one goes from line 203 to line 215 and it deals with…. The second one goes
from….” Do not divide the text into too many sections, because you will be fragmenting it too
much. It is better to consider a few “big chunks” and then, if you see different subsections in one
of them, you can explain about it later, when analysing that part in particular.
Content (II)
2. Body of the analysis/ Part-by-part analysis (the most detailed and longest section in the exercise)
• Provide an in-depth analysis of each section, following the structure you proposed. “Regarding the first part/section, …” “Moving
on to the second part/section…” Start a new paragraph as you move from the analysis of one section to the analysis of the next. Be
detailed, but also try to connect the specificities of the text with what you know about the work from the information given in class
and in the dossier of materials for each unit.
• Connect form and content (that is, do not explain what a section is about and then, once you have finished that, start telling about
rhetorics and stylistic devices; combine and integrate, do not separate: explain what contents are conveyed at the same time you
comment on how they are conveyed).
• Likewise, when you mention rhetorical figures, you need to explain why those figures are employed, the meaning they have. It is
irrelevant to say: “There is a metaphor in line 1 and a hyperbole in line 4” if you do not provide an interpretation of the use of
those figures. (Why? To express what?)
• Always quote from the text and provide examples of every stylistic aspect you mention (rhyme, metre, rhetorical figures). Be
ready to find some irregularities, too (always remember that, when you work with texts translated from Old English, or Middle
English, there may be more irregularities than in the original, as something is always lost in translation; or perhaps words that
rhymed in a sonnet by Shakespeare may not rhyme now because the way to pronounce them has changed with time…).

3. Conclusion
• Close your analysis with a personal conclusion where you provide your final thoughts on the fragment. Do not repeat what you
already said in the Introduction. Reasoned personal opinions (good or bad) are welcome.
• Do not forget the conclusion should be somehow connected with the analysis of a specific text, probably a fragment from a longer
work, so what you write here should take the fragment into account somehow. Additionally, though, you can relate your final
remarks to the work as a whole, the culture of the time, you can compare it with our present times, with works or movies you are
familiar with, etc.