Critical Lens Analysis Essay Draft

This assignment asks you to write a ​2 page critical analysis ​of any text on the syllabus, demonstrating the skills you have learned in class. In writing this essay, you must ​select​ ​ONE lens text — a secondary or primary source ​that provides a particular context for interpreting ​one novel from our syllabus. ​The lens text might offer cultural or historical context, a theoretical or conceptual perspective, or a methodological approach that can be used to help illuminate your interpretation of the text. While you can certainly offer a persuasive literary analysis without a particular critical or theoretical lens to look through, looking at your claims through the lens of an additional theoretical, conceptual, historical or cultural text ensures that readers will see your claim in vivid detail.

Think about how we participate in conversations: in order to get your own point across, you probably extend, qualify, contrast, or problematize someone else’s ideas, and that’s precisely what you are doing here in written format.

You should employ close reading and literary analysis to construct a convincing argument that engageswithyourlenstext.While​yourvoiceshouldremaindominant​,youshouldd​emonstrate how it contributes to the intellectual field​ that forms the context for the text you are analyzing. The goal is to put your own analysis into conversation with other writers who are thinking and writing about the same kinds of texts and issues. Remember that you are not responsible for tracing the implications of your lens text across the entire “target” text (i.e., the novel you’ve chosen to analyze). Instead, you should focus on using ​2 focused passages ​that most dramatically illustrate the critical points about the novel that your lens text helps to illustrate (or vice versa). It can be interesting to map out the main ideas from your lens text directly onto the novel you’re reading, and show how the novel exemplifies the theory, historical/cultural context, or concept found in your lens text. The most compelling arguments, however, will illustrate the ways in which the novel revises, challenges, expands, or departs from the ideas presented in the lens text.

Topics can be one of the following: Popol Vuh, or The call of Cthulhu, or Lovecraft Country, or Stranger Things(show),