Appendix A: Writing Literary Arguments

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When you write an essay about literature, you have a number of options. For example, you can write a response (expressing your reactions to a poem, play, or story), or you can write an explication (focusing on a work’s individual elements, such as a poem’s imagery, meter, figurative language, and diction). You can also write an analysis of a work’s theme, a character in a play or a story, or a work’s historical or cultural context. Another option, which is discussed in the pages that follow, is to write a literary argument.