Page 58 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Planning an argument 57
secular poems and a couple which you think are interesting as
marginal cases which could be interpreted as belonging in either
group.
You will not have space to treat all these with equal
thoroughness. Whatever your view may be on the title’s overall
question of comparison, you will need at some stage to offer
sustained and detailed accounts of a few whole poems.
Obviously you must not allow your argument to fragment into
a mere anthology of midget essays each of which offers a self-
contained analysis of one poem. Yet some of your paragraphs
must concentrate on the interaction of different techniques
within a single work.
Do you devote one such paragraph to each poem or should
you deal with even fewer works but give each a more extended
discussion of two or even three paragraphs? The merits of range
have to be weighed against the advantages of depth. You might
explore the cumulative impact of all the techniques used within
each work and go into so much detail that you can give only a
full account of one religious and one secular poem. That would
probably be excessive. On the other hand, readings of as many
as a dozen poems would have to be confined to twelve
vulnerably brief paragraphs. These could show no more than a
superficial grasp of each work’s shifting style and developing
implication.
The choice will, of course, depend on how many paragraphs
need to be reserved for other purposes. Presumably you will
also want to have some paragraphs which can show how a
particular technique remains recognizable throughout the
various poems which deploy it, however varying its immediate
context and localized connotation. If one seems to you
demonstrably crucial, and if you do have permission to write a
relatively long essay, you might allow two, or even three,
consecutive paragraphs to explain how, and how well, the texts
use that particular method. You may, however, have to confine
yourself to writing one paragraph each even on those few
techniques that interest you most. For the others, you may have
to find some logical groupings which will justify your
considering two or three together within a single paragraph.
Your larger ideas on the essay question will also need to be
assessed. Which deserve most and which least space? Which
will strike your reader as relatively fresh? Which, however