Critical Essay

While some students might not be able to formally define a shape and structure of a critical essay, most would be able to easily indentify such essay when they read it. One of the major clues would be a particular layout. The thing is, many of the first professors of English were mostly clergymen with expertise in classics. Moreover, in the nineteenth century, literature was perceived by many critics as a sort of a substitute for Christianity, in a secular meaning. As a rule, the critical essay in Enlgish Studies requires of a lot of quatations. This is where it is different from critical essays on the social studies where the students are encouraged more to paraphrase. The critical essay in English Studies, instead, sticks more to a "quote and discuss" principle. It does a lot of replication on the process of reading, so that the writer's responding to literature is dramatized as more of a reader of the text.

When you initiate a critical discussion you are offering your own version of how the text should be read. However, if your essay consist of mostly line-by-line or scene-by-scheme interpretation you cannot really say that you are involved in critical reading. What yo should do instead is try to support your vision of the major idea of the text with evidence collected from various passages. The goal you should pursue should be creating an argumenty that would provide a literary framework for thorough analysis and interpretation of the work you are dicussing.