Literature represents a language or a people: culture and tradition.

But, litera
ture is more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature i
ntroduces us to new worlds of experience. We learn about books and literature; w
e enjoy the comedies and the tragedies of poems, stories, and plays; and we may
even grow and evolve through our literary journey with books.
Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author
says and how he/she says it. We may interpret the author's message. In academic
circles, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of liter
ary theory, using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or ot
her approach.
Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze literature, there is st
ill an artistic quality to the works. Literature is important to us because it s
peaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us. Even when it is ugly, literatur
e is beautiful.
When it comes to the study of literature, reading and writing are closely interrelated even mutually dependent activities. On the one hand, the quality of whatever
we write about a literary text depends entirely upon the quality of our work as
readers. On the other hand, our reading isn t truly complete until we ve tried to c
apture our sense of a text in writing. Indeed, we often read a literary work muc
h more actively and attentively when we integrate informal writing into the read
ing process pausing periodically to mark especially important or confusing passage
s, to jot down significant facts, to describe the impressions and responses the
text provokes or when we imagine our reading (and our informal writing) as prepara
tion for writing about the work in a more sustained and formal way.
Writing about literature can take any number of forms, ranging from the very inf
ormal and personal to the very formal and public. In fact, your instructor may w
ell ask you to try your hand at more than one form. However, the essay is by far
the most common and complex form that writing about literature takes. As a resu
lt, the following chapters will focus on the essay.* A first, short chapter cove
rs three basic ways of writing about literature. The second chapter, "The Elemen
ts of the Essay," seeks to answer a very basic set of questions: When an instruc
tor says, "Write an essay," what precisely does that mean? What is the purpose o
f an essay, and what form does it need to take in order to achieve that purpose?
The third chapter, "The Writing Process," addresses questions about how an essa
y is produced, while the fourth chapter explores the special steps and strategie
s involved in writing a research essay a type of essay about literature that draws
on secondary sources. "Quotation, Citation, and Documentation" explains the rul
es and strategies involved in quoting and citing both literary texts and seconda
ry sources using the documentation system recommended by the Modern Language Ass
ociation (MLA). And, finally, we present a sample research essay, annotated to p
oint out some its most important features