The concrete detail - Paraphrase the gist of the
actual textual information as CONCISELY as possible. It is
important for your reader to understand what you're talking about, but only
as an illustration for your own ideas.
The interpretation - Go back to the questions you've
asked yourself during the close reading. What answers have you found that
you can explain here? As always, remember that good interpretation avoids
both summary and opinion - your arguments must be original but crafted from
actual evidence.
Example: "Coleridge opens his poem
with an immediate statement of locale: ‘In Xanadu’. This fable-like
invocation makes the reader immediately conscious of distance, as well as
the mystical connotations of the Orient in the context of Victorian
imperialism. By choosing a setting with such dual reverberations of
reality and fantasy, Coleridge creates a landscape parallel to his view of
the imagination - vast in breadth, yet potently accessible."
Note
how very little textual detail was necessary to come up with quite a bit
of interpretation.
Keep an eye on the big picture -
As tempting as it is to fill space with any interesting idea you come up
with, do not put a single thought onto the page that you cannot relate
directly to the proving of your topic sentence.
Remember,
your paper must act as the impetus for an idea, not merely a description
of your sources, however subtle that description might be.
Integrating quotes - Sometimes the
textual details you include will necessarily take the form of direct
quotation, particularly when analyzing language. It is always best to do so
as inconspicuously as possible. The quotes should serve only to prove your
ideas, not to supplant them. Rather than using big block quotations,
wherever possible include only that which is specifically necessary to your
point, within the framework of your own sentence.
Bad Integration: Keats
describes the Grecian urn as follows: "Thou still unravish'd bride
of quietness; Thou foster child of silence and slow time; Sylvan historian
who canst express; The flowery tale more sweetly than can rhyme.".
Good Integration: Keats
begins by personifying the urn in terms of human innocence, as an "unravish'd
bride" and a "foster child of silence and slow time".
