Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah

University, Fez
Faculty of Arts and Humanities,
Dhar El MAhraz,
Department of English Language
and Literature
COURSE: Introduction to Literature
Semester: 4
Academic Year: 2022-2023
Prof.: L. Aammari

THE LITERATURE ESSAY

Your essay needs to have a beginning (or introduction), a middle (or body), and an
end (or conclusion). Each of these parts plays its own unique role in creating a
persuasive and satisfying whole.
BEGINNING: THE INTRODUCTION
Your essay’s introduction needs to draw readers in and prepare them for what’s
to come by articulating your thesis and your motive and providing any basic
information—about the author, the topic, the text, or its contexts—readers will need
to follow and assess your argument. At the very least, you need to specify the title of
the work you’re writing about and the author’s full name. Very short (one sentence)
plot summaries or descriptions of the text can also be useful, but they should be
“slanted” so as to emphasize the aspects of the text you’ll be most concerned with.
Every sentence in your introduction should contribute to your effort to spark
readers’ interest, articulate your thesis and motive, or provide necessary background
information.
MIDDLE: THE BODY
The body of your essay is where you do the essential work of supporting and
developing your thesis by presenting and analyzing evidence. Each body paragraph
needs to articulate, support, and develop one specific claim—a debatable idea directly
related to the thesis, but smaller and more specific. This claim should be stated fairly
early in the paragraph in a topic sentence. (If your paragraphs open with factual

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statements, you may have a problem.) And every sentence in the paragraph should
help prove and elaborate on that claim. Indeed, each paragraph ideally should build
from an initial, general statement of the claim to the more complex form of it that
you develop by presenting and analyzing evidence. In this way, each paragraph
functions a bit like a miniature essay with its own thesis, body, and conclusion.
Your essay as a whole should develop logically, just as each paragraph does. To
ensure that happens, you need to do the following:
• Order your paragraphs so that each builds on the last, with one idea following
another in a logical sequence. The goal is to lay out a clear path for the reader.
Like any path, it should go somewhere. Don’t just prove your point; develop
it.
• Present each idea/paragraph so that the logic behind the order is clear. Try to
start each paragraph with a sentence that functions as a bridge, transporting
the reader from one claim to the next. The reader shouldn’t have to leap.
END: THE CONCLUSION
In terms of their purpose (not their content), conclusions are introductions in
reverse. Whereas introductions draw readers away from their world and into your
essay, conclusions send them back. Introductions work to convince readers that they
should read the essay; conclusions tell them why the experience was worthwhile. You
should approach conclusions, then, by thinking about what lasting impression you
want to create. What can you give readers to take back into the “real world”?
In literature essays, effective conclusions often consider at least one of the following
three things:
1. Implications—What picture of your author’s work or worldview does your
argument imply? Alternatively, what might your argument suggest about some
real-world issue or situation? Implications don’t have to be earthshattering.
2. Evaluation—Though literature essays need to focus primarily on
interpretation, conclusions are a good place to move to evaluation. In a sense,
careful interpretation earns you the right to do some thoughtful evaluation.

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 What might your specific interpretation of the text reveal about its literary
quality or effectiveness? Alternatively, to what extent do you agree or disagree
with the author’s conclusions about a particular issue?
3. Areas of ambiguity or unresolved questions—Are there any remaining
puzzles or questions that your argument or the text itself doesn’t resolve or
answer? Or might your argument suggest a new question or puzzle worth
investigating?