Literature and Textual Analysis
Literature and Textual Analysis examines the prescribed prose, poetry, and drama. You are tested on close reading, not plot summary: what the text does, how it does it, and why it matters.
Poetry
Identify speaker, situation, and tone before devices. Then analyse form: stanza shape, rhyme scheme, rhythm, enjambment, caesura, refrain. Link each device to effect.
Prose
Track narrative voice (first or third person, omniscient or limited), characterisation through action and dialogue, setting, conflict, and theme. Distinguish author from narrator.
Drama
Read stage directions as text. Notice dialogue, soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, and the shape of the plot: exposition, complication, climax, resolution.
Building an answer
Claim → evidence (a short quotation) → analysis of language → link to theme. Never leave a quotation unexplained.
Worked example
Lines: The moon leans low / to listen at the window. Analysis: leans and listen give the moon human intention - personification. The enjambment across low / to slows the line, matching the quiet, intimate mood. The effect is not decorative: it makes the night seem attentive, even protective. Claim: the poet presents nature as a sympathetic witness; evidence: the verbs; effect: intimacy.
Traps that cost marks
- Retelling the story instead of analysing it.
- Naming a device without explaining its effect.
- Treating the speaker as the poet.
- Ignoring form in poetry.
- Quoting long blocks with no comment.
- Importing biography that is not in the text.