Quoting the Critic Instead of the Text
In a Critical Study of Literature essay, a student supports her reading of a Shakespearean tragedy with four quotations from secondary critics and two from the play itself. The secondary quotations are accurate and well-chosen; one is from a scholar whose reading the student privately disagrees with, but she includes it because 'it sounds authoritative.' The two play quotations are both from the same scene. The question asks students to 'evaluate' a particular critical interpretation. The student's essay agrees with the interpretation throughout, using the critics to confirm it. She has read the play twice and knows it well.
1. Assess the evidentiary balance. What does the ratio of secondary to primary quotation reveal about the essay's stance?
Read the worked answer
The ratio (4 secondary : 2 primary) reveals that the essay is arbitrated by critics rather than by the text. In a critical study, secondary material is a position to be evaluated, not a source of proof. When critics outnumber the play, the essay's authority has migrated away from the primary text.
Compounding problems: both play quotations come from one scene, so the textual evidence base is narrow - the reading may hold locally but is untested across the play. And the inclusion of a critic the student disagrees with, purely for authority, is a stance failure: the essay agrees with everything, so 'evaluate' collapses into 'endorse.'
The fix is not fewer critics but repositioned ones. Secondary quotation should appear where the student is testing a claim - 'this reading illuminates X but strains against Y' - with the play as the instrument of the test. The dissenting critic the student already disagrees with is the most valuable material she has; suppressing that disagreement wastes it.
2. The student says she 'doesn't feel qualified to disagree with a published scholar.' How do you reframe evaluation so it becomes achievable rather than intimidating?
Read the worked answer
Reframe evaluation as precision, not contradiction. The student does not need to claim the scholar is wrong; she needs to specify where the reading is strongest and where it is under pressure. That is a defensible scholarly move at any level.
Offer three legitimate evaluative moves:
- Scope - the reading explains one relationship well but is silent on another.
- Cost - the reading is persuasive but requires downplaying a passage the student finds central.
- Alternative - a different emphasis produces a different but equally supported reading.
None requires saying 'the scholar is mistaken.' All require the student to return to the play, which is the point. The dissenting critic already in her essay is the natural place to practise: she can write two sentences on why that reading is attractive and one on what it costs.
This also answers the qualification worry directly - the student has read the play twice; her warrant is textual attention, which is exactly the warrant the task asks her to exercise.
3. How should the essay's evidence base be rebuilt, and what constraint would you set on secondary quotation?
Read the worked answer
Rebuild: raise primary quotations to at least five or six, drawn from at least three distinct points in the play, so the reading is tested against the whole text rather than one scene. Keep two or three secondary quotations, each attached to a specific evaluative claim.
Constraint: every secondary quotation must be immediately followed by a textual test - a passage that confirms, qualifies, or complicates it. A critic's sentence that is not answered by the play should be cut. This converts the critics from authorities into interlocutors.
The student's existing knowledge supports this: she knows the play well, so generating cross-textual evidence is a matter of selection, not new reading. I'd ask her to map her current two quotations onto a scene-by-scene grid and identify two scenes where her reading predicts something she hasn't yet checked. That turns revision into a genuine test of her interpretation, which is what 'evaluate' requires.