Page 59 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

58 How to write critical essays
promisingly unfamiliar they may be, are sufficiently straight-
forward to be explained briefly, and which are so marginally
relevant that they merit only a sentence each? Which are so
complex or controversial that they will need to be accompanied
by a great deal of detailed evidence to make them clear and
convincing?
Some paragraphs might need to be reserved for principles.
The premises which will only be implicit in more specific
passages may need to be more openly debated and defended.
On this Donne question, for instance, you might wish to gather
together your thoughts about the difficulties of defining
‘religious’. Can this be done in a couple of sentences of the
opening paragraph or will it need a whole paragraph to itself?
Moreover, this set question about similarity of techniques
may strike you as frustratingly tangential to the comparisons
that you find most interesting between Donne’s secular and
religious verse. You may need to allow space for arguing that
the issues which seem to you more certainly important are in
fact inseparable from those explicitly specified by the title.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question of how
many texts or topics should receive sustained treatment and
how many must be discussed more briefly. The thoughtful critic
is simply the one who sees the problem at the planning stage,
and chooses a strategy which is defensible as the least of
available evils.

Paragraphing

Each of your paragraphs must of course be centred on a
particular issue which is raised by the set title. Each paragraph
must be recognizable as a logical next step in a coherently
developing argument that directly answers the set question.
Nevertheless, in debating the value of including a particular
paragraph, you should also ask yourself the following
questions:
1) Will this paragraph prove that I have read one or more
specific texts which are demonstrably relevant?
2) Will it show that I have read observantly? Will it contain
specifics which only an attentive reader would have noticed?