Page 94 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Making a detailed case 93
Though a superficial digest of the plot might suggest that
Dr Faustus constructs an evenly balanced debate between
the virtuous and the vicious, the Good Angel is allowed
only twenty-four lines. The speeches of the arch-tempter,
Mephistophilis, on the other hand, are exceeded in
frequency and length only by those of Faustus himself.
However, not all of Mephistophilis’ lines serve the diabolic
cause. Consider, for instance:
[quotation]

Naming names can also succinctly specify examples to prevent
an assertion seeming hopelessly vague. Do not write of ‘some
characters’ but of ‘some characters, such as——and——’. If you
are making a claim about what ‘many of the poems’ do, at least
offer the titles of two or three which demonstrate what you
have in mind. Do not leave your reader wondering whom you
might mean by calling some attitude ‘typical of eighteenth-
century essayists’. Name some. So too, expressions like ‘it has
often been argued that’ should immediately be supported by
naming one or two of the published critics whom you are
remembering.
Names, like numbers, or any other factual specifics, must
be constantly subject to the ‘So what?’ test. They only help if
they fuel the drive of your argument. Information is not
necessarily evidence. Its relevance to the literary problem
which you are investigating must be shown. Consider this:
‘Alexander Pope was born in 1688 to Roman Catholic
parents. He was well-educated but had to be privately tutored
since, as a Roman Catholic, he was banned from the
universities.’ Here ‘Alexander’ is unnecessary for
identification: there are no other considerable poets of the
surname. The forename should either have been excluded or
used to begin discussion of the works:
Pope’s parents chose to call him Alexander, reminding us
that the poet’s mature delight in the epic gestures of ancient
history is no personal idiosyncrasy. It is an almost inevitable
response to the intellectual habits of his society. Pope’s
translating The Odyssey and colouring so much of his
original verse with echoes of ancient models (The Aeneid’s
underworld transformed into ‘The Rape of the Lock”s Cave
of Spleen, for instance) are symptomatic of the climate into