writing essays about literature katherine acheson pdf

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• Written by: Katherine O. Acheson
• Publication Date: February 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781554815517 / 1554815517
• 232 pages; 5½" x 8½"

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Writing Essays About Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students – Second Edition

• Description
• Authors/Editors
• Key Features

This book gives students an answer to the question, “What does my professor want from this essay?” Using a single poem by William Carlos Williams as the basis for the process of writing a paper, it walks students through the processes of reading, brainstorming, researching secondary sources, gathering evidence, and composing and editing the paper.

Writing Essays About Literature is designed to strengthen argumentation skills and deepen understanding of the relationships between the reader, the author, the text, and critical interpretations. Its lessons about clarity, precision, and the importance of providing evidence will have wide relevance for student writers. The second edition has been updated throughout and provides three new complete sample essays showing varying approaches to the final essay.

“I’ve been using Writing Essays About Literature in my courses for years now because it is by far the clearest, most direct, and most engaging explanation of the processes of literary analysis. It explains through demonstration, taking readers through each step with the genuine curiosity we want to encourage in our students. The revisions to the second edition clarify the steps students struggle with most: developing the thesis statement as part of the introduction and then revising the thesis after writing the body of the essay.” — Kylee-Anne Hingston, St. Thomas More College

“I was especially impressed by the lively and approachable authorial voice in Writing Essays About Literature . Where students might be accustomed to start with a thesis and write an essay straight through from beginning to end, the book demonstrates a more nuanced writing process that is both inductive and recursive. It gives students the tools to do higher-level research and thinking, and it concludes with sample essays that model those outcomes.” — Sunny Stalter-Pace, Auburn University

Praise for the first edition

“I am a student studying English and American Studies, and this may be a bit unorthodox, but I wanted to say that Writing Essays About Literature was one of the best textbooks I have ever read … You have done a brilliant job making essay-writing easy, structured, and actually enjoyable!” — Lauren Gaylor, University of Kansas

Section One: Introduction

• Communication
• Subjectivity
• How to Use This Book
• Review Questions

Section Two: Research and Analysis

• Taking Notes about Literature
• Do I Like the Work?
• What Words Stand Out?
• What Feelings Does It Give Me?
• Do I Identify with Any of the People Represented?
• Is There Anything about How It’s Written That Stands Out?
• What Is the Work about?
• Definitions
• Examples of Usage
• Scholarly Editions
• Encyclopedias
• Topics for Research: Social Phenomena and Literary Movements
• Useful Resources
• Using Your Findings
• Assessing Publications
• Using Bibliographies
• Reading Critical Works
• Taking Notes from Critical Readings
• Reviewing Your Labeled Evidence
• Categorizing Your Evidence
• Charting Your Evidence

Section Three: Composition

• Inductive Reasoning
• Writing the Subtopic Sentences
• Composing the Body of the Introduction
• Concluding the Introduction
• A Variation: An Essay without Secondary Sources
• The Body Paragraphs
• Features of Strong Paragraphs
• The Conclusion
• Revising the Introduction

Section Four: Polish and Presentation

• Connecting Words
• Apostrophes
• Demonstrative Pronouns
• Pronoun Agreement
• Comma Splices
• Sentence Fragments
• Subordinating Conjunctions
• Conjunctive Adverbs
• Documentation Practices
• Layout and Order
• Illustrations
• Exemplary Illustrations
• Complementary Illustrations
• Supplementary Illustrations
• Last-Minute Checks

Section Five: Conclusion and Review

• Collecting Evidence (Chapters 2-5)
• Categorizing Evidence (Chapter 6)
• Writing Your Thesis Statement (Chapter 7)
• Troubleshooting the Thesis Statement (Chapter 7)
• Writing the Body Paragraphs (Chapter 8)
• Concluding Your Essay (Chapter 8)
• Proofreading (Chapter 9)
• Documentation and Presentation (Chapter 10)

Sample Essay One

Sample Essay Two

Sample Essay Three

Works Cited

Permissions acknowledgment

Subject Index

Katherine O. Acheson is Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and the editor of the Broadview Edition of Lady Anne Clifford’s Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616–19 .

• • Enthusiastic, encouraging tone and lively, direct language
• • Makes repeated reference to William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say” as the basis for the process of writing a paper about a piece of literature
• • Walks students through the processes of reading, brainstorming, researching secondary sources, gathering evidence, and composing and editing a paper
• • Focus is on the strengthening of argumentation skills with particularly fine guidance in close reading and gathering evidence
• • Step-by-step instructions on building arguments from evidence
• • Clarifies the relationships between the reader, author, text, and critical interpretations
• • Includes review questions, exercises, and discussion topics
• • Includes a summary of the writing process at the end of the book
• • New edition includes three complete sample essays showing different theoretical approaches in practice

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Writing Essays About Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students - Second Edition: Edition 2

About this ebook.

Writing Essays About Literature is designed to strengthen argumentation skills and deepen understanding of the relationships between the reader, the author, the text, and critical interpretations. Its lessons about clarity, precision, and the importance of providing evidence will have wide relevance for student writers. The second edition has been updated throughout and provides three new complete sample essays showing varying approaches to the final essay.

Ratings and reviews

About the author.

Katherine O. Acheson is Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and the editor of the Broadview Edition of Lady Anne Clifford’s Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616–19.

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Writing Essays About Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students

Katherine o. acheson.

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2010

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Katherine Acheson

Extension: 30336 Office: PAS 2439 Email: [email protected]

I did my BA at Carleton University in Ottawa (where I grew up), and my MA and PhD at the University of Toronto. I held a SSHRC   (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)  post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford, and I taught at the University of Toronto and Concordia University before I came to Waterloo. I have been at Waterloo since January of 1997.

My areas of interest have changed over the years; while I entered my PhD program thinking I would work on early Canadian literature, I was inspired to switch to Renaissance literature by a course called "Literature and Power in Renaissance England," given by Germaine Warkentin, who would become my supervisor. During my graduate training, I found a manuscript of the memoir and diary of Anne Clifford, and went on to edit the diary for my dissertation project (since published in 1995 and in 2006). When I came to UWaterloo I was influenced by the English department’s unique emphasis on the rhetorical dimensions of literary texts and media forms, and my research and teaching of the last twenty years reflects this.

My published works includes essays on Behn, Clifford, Milton, Marvell, and Shakespeare, Writing Essays About Literature (Broadview, 2011) and Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature (Ashgate, 2013). In 2019 I published a chapter in  The Oxford Companion to Marvell (Oxford UP), a chapter in  The Edinburgh History of Reading, Volume 1  (Edinburgh UP), and a collection of essays I edited entitled  Early Modern English Marginalia  (Routledge). The latter included my essay on women's marginalia in the early modern period as a strategic way of occupying space in early modern culture. My current work is on marginalia; I am working on editing a collection of essays about women's marginalia (with Rosalind Smith), and with a team of collaborators I am leading a SSHRC-funded research project called "The Future of Research in Early Modern Marginalia." 

My undergraduate teaching is primarily in seventeenth-century literature; my graduate courses in recent years have been about book history. My most recent research has been about marginalia, especially by women. I am currently editing a section of  The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing  called "Materialities: Print" and have commissioned 20 essays that will be published online through 2021 and 2022. 

Selected publications

Writing Essays About Literature . Peterborough, ON: Broadview P. First edition 2011; second edition 2021.

Early Modern English Marginalia  (ed.). Routledge, 2019. 

Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature . Material Readings in Early Modern Culture (Series), Adam Smyth and James Daybell, eds. Ashgate, 2013.

Clifford, Anne. The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619 . Ed. Acheson. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006.

The Diary of Anne Clifford, 1616-1619: A Critical Edition . The Renaissance Imagination (Series), Stephen Orgel, ed. New York, NY: Garland, 1995.

Articles & Book chapters

“Visual Form and Reading Communities: The Example of Early Modern Broadside Elegies.” In  The Edinburgh History of Reading ,  Volume 1: Early Readers . Ed. Mary Hammond and Jonathan Rose. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020. 135-159.  

"The Occupation of the Margins: Writing, Space, and Early Modern Women." In  Early Modern English Marginalia . 70-90. 

"Military Illustration, Garden Design, and Marvell’s Upon Appleton House.” English Literary Renaissance . 41.1 (January 2011): 152-198.

"The Picture of Nature in Seventeenth-Century English Aesop's Fables." The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. 9.1 (fall 2010): 26-52.

"Gesner, Topsell, and the Purposes of Pictures in Early Modern Natural Histories." Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation , ed. Michael Hunter. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. 127-144. "Anne Clifford's Style." In Lady Anne Clifford: Culture, Patronage and Gender in 17th Century Britain . Ed. Karen Hearn and Lynn Hulse. Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 2009. 117-130. "Hamlet, Synecdoche and History: Teaching the Tropes of 'New Remembrance.'" College Literature . 31(2004)4: 111-134.

“’Outrage your face’: Anti-Theatricality and Gender in Early Modern Closet Drama by Women.” Early Modern Literary Studies . 6(2001)3: 7: 1-16.

“Authorship, Sexuality and the Psychology of Privation in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” ELH 67(2000)4: 905-924.

“The Modernity of the Early Modern: The Example of Anne Clifford.” In Discontinuities: New Essays on Renaissance Literature and Criticism . Eds. Viviana Comensoli and Paul Stevens. Toronto: U of T P, 1998. 27-51.

Fellowships & Awards

• SSHRC 4A, 2011
• uWaterloo-SSHRC 2005, 2008, 2010
• University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2004, 2007, 2010, 2013)
• Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art Research Grant (2008)
• Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Fellowship (2007 and 2013)
• Learning Initiatives Fund, University of Waterloo
• SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellowship (1995-1996)
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (1987-1991)
• Queen Elizabeth II Doctoral Fellowship (1991-1992)
• Royal Society of Canada, Alice Wilson Award, for most distinguished tri-council doctoral award holder (1988)

Current research

Currently I am working on these projects: one, editing and contributing to the section called "Materialities: Print" in the   Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing ; two, editing and contributing to a collection of essays early modern women's marginalia; and three, exploring ways to open research into historical book use to a broader and more diverse set of researchers. 

Areas of graduate supervision

• Early modern literature and culture
• Visual culture
• Visual rhetoric

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Writing Essays About Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students , 1e

Broadview press.

This book gives students an answer to the question, “What does my professor want from this essay?” In lively, direct language, it explains the process of creating “a clearly-written argument, based on evidence, about the meaning, power, or structure of a literary work.” Using a single poem by William Carlos Williams as the basis for the process of writing a paper about a piece of literature, it walks students through the processes of reading, brainstorming, researching secondary sources, gathering evidence, and composing and editing the paper.

Writing Essays About Literature is designed to strengthen argumentation skills and deepen understanding of the relationships between the reader, the author, the text, and critical interpretations. Its lessons about clarity, precision, and the importance of providing evidence will have wide relevance for student writers.

“I am a student at the University of Kansas studying English and American Studies, and this may be a bit unorthodox, but I wanted to say that your book Writing Essays About Literature was one of the best books I have ever read in the world of academia! I am taking a Critical Theory class, and we were assigned only the first 55 pages, but I really could not put the book down. Your writing is magnificent, and I am constantly referring to the book when writing papers. You have done a brilliant job making essay-writing easy, structured, and actually enjoyable!” — Lauren Gaylor, University of Kansas

“Katherine O. Acheson’s Writing Essays About Literature is a concise, fully portable and very well-priced guide that gets it right. Acheson’s emphasis on inductive reasoning is wonderfully refreshing. It really helps English professors persuade their students to argue from the specific to the general, to found their arguments on the details of evidence and on the careful—and affectively sensitive—analysis of that evidence. And the very best thing about this book is that Acheson’s casual and unassuming prose style makes students want to read it. And they do. And then they bring it to class!” — Glenn Clark, University of Manitoba

“For those of us interested in teaching writing through literature, Katherine O. Acheson’s guide is an indispensable companion, teaching students that writing is more about process and less about imagined giftedness. The book begins by teaching students how to perform a close reading of a text—a craft that every writer should learn to hone. After this groundwork has been laid, Acheson builds upon it with chapters on research, analysis, methodology, argumentation, and revision; all of this from an author whose writing style is clear, witty, and intelligent.” — Jack R. Baker, Spring Arbor University

“ Writing Essays About Literature is a useful and refreshingly entertaining guide for both students and instructors. The focus on one poem (the eminently teachable ‘This Is Just to Say’) allows for a comprehensive dissection of the process from initial reading and response, to final polish of an argument grounded in current modes of critical analysis. Acheson’s witty, subjective style is consistently engaging, and reminds students that instructors are also readers and writers; that they too constantly revisit and refine these processes.” — Gisèle M. Baxter, University of British Columbia

Katherine O. Acheson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and the editor of the Broadview Edition of Lady Anne Clifford’s Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616–19 .

Section One: Introduction

CHAPTER 1: THE PURPOSE OF AN ESSAY ABOUT LITERATURE

Literature: Instruction, Delight, Imitation The Literary Essay

• Evidence Communication Subjectivity

How to Use This Book Review Questions

Section Two: Research and Analysis

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH WITHIN THE TEXT

Taking Notes About Literature Recording Your Responses to the Text

• Do I Like the Work? What Words Stand Out? What Feelings Does It Give Me? Do I Identify With Any of the People Represented? Is There Anything About How It’s Written That Stands Out? What Is the Work About?

Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER 3: USING REFERENCE WORKS

The Oxford English Dictionary

• Etymology Definitions Examples of Usage

Scholarly Editions Encyclopedias Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH ABOUT SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

Topics for Research: Social Phenomena and Literary Movements Useful Resources Using Your Findings Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH ABOUT THE CURRENT CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF LITERARY WORKS

Finding Critical Works

• Assessing Publications Using Bibliographies

Reading Critical Works Taking Notes From Critical Readings Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER 6: INVENTING YOUR ARGUMENT

Arranging Your Evidence

• Reviewing Your Labelled Evidence Categorizing Your Evidence Charting Your Evidence

Section Three: Composition

CHAPTER 7: COMPOSING YOUR ARGUMENT

Inductive Reasoning Composing the Thesis Statement

• Writing the Subtopic Sentences Composing the Body of the Thesis Statement Concluding the Thesis Statement

A Variation: An Essay Without Secondary Sources Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER 8: WRITING THE BODY OF THE ESSAY

The Body Paragraphs Features of Strong Paragraphs Writing the Conclusion and Revising the Introduction

• The Conclusion Revising the Introduction

Section Four: Polish and Presentation

CHAPTER NINE: EDITING AND PROOFREADING YOUR ESSAY

Conventions of Essay-Writing Style

• Diction Vocabulary Connecting Words

Common Grammatical Errors Apostrophes

• Demonstrative Pronouns Pronoun Agreement Verb Tense

Common Errors in Punctuation and Sentence Structure

• Semicolons Comma Splices Sentence Fragments

Subordinating Conjunctions Conjunctive Adverbs Conclusion Review Questions

CHAPTER TEN: DOCUMENTING YOUR SOURCES AND PRESENTING YOUR WORK

Reasons for Documenting Sources

• Documentation Practices

Presenting Your Work

• Layout and Order Illustrations

Multimedia and the Literary Essay

• Exemplary Illustrations Complementary Illustrations Supplementary Illustrations

Last-Minute Checks Conclusion Review Questions

Section Five: Conclusion and Review Collecting Evidence (Chapter 2, 3, 4, and 5)

CHAPTER 11: THE PROCESS OF ESSAY WRITING—A SUMMARY

Categorizing Evidence (Chapter 6) Writing Your Thesis Statement (Chapter 7) Troubleshooting the Thesis Statement (Chapter 7) Writing the Body Paragraphs (Chapter 8) Concluding Your Essay (Chapter 8) Proofreading (Chapter 9) Documentation and Presentation (Chapter 10) Conclusion

Works Cited Subject Index

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• Created May 25, 2022

Writing Essays about Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students - Second Edition - 2nd Edition by Katherine O Acheson (Paperback)

About this item

• This book gives students an answer to the question, "What does my professor want from this essay?
• About the Author: Katherine O. Acheson is Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and the editor of the Broadview Edition of Lady Anne Clifford's Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616-19.
• Language + Art + Disciplines, Writing Skills

Description

About the Book

Using a single poem by William Carlos Williams, this book walks students through the processes of reading, brainstorming, researching secondary sources, gathering evidence, and composing and editing the paper.

Book Synopsis

This book gives students an answer to the question, "What does my professor want from this essay?" Using a single poem by William Carlos Williams as the basis for the process of writing a paper, it walks students through the processes of reading, brainstorming, researching secondary sources, gathering evidence, and composing and editing the paper.

Writing Essays About Literature is designed to strengthen argumentation skills and deepen understanding of the relationships between the reader, the author, the text, and critical interpretations. Its lessons about clarity, precision, and the importance of providing evidence will have wide relevance for student writers. The second edition has been updated throughout and provides three new complete sample essays showing varying approaches to the final essay.

From the Back Cover

Review Quotes

"I was especially impressed by the lively and approachable authorial voice in Writing Essays About Literature . Where students might be accustomed to start with a thesis and write an essay straight through from beginning to end, the book demonstrates a more nuanced writing process that is both inductive and recursive. It gives students the tools to do higher-level research and thinking, and it concludes with sample essays that model those outcomes." - Sunny Stalter-Pace, Auburn University

"I've been using Writing Essays About Literature in my courses for years now because it is by far the clearest, most direct, and most engaging explanation of the processes of literary analysis. It explains through demonstration, taking readers through each step with the genuine curiosity we want to encourage in our students. The revisions to the second edition clarify the steps students struggle with most: developing the thesis statement as part of the introduction and then revising the thesis after writing the body of the essay." - Kylee-Anne Hingston, St. Thomas More College

About the Author

Katherine O. Acheson is Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and the editor of the Broadview Edition of Lady Anne Clifford's Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616-19 .

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