Map out your essay’s argument by first mapping out the arguments of the critics

To write an essay is to write an argument, but sometimes it is difficult to know which position to argue for in your writing. It is vitally important to have on outline of your essay’s argument before you begin though, so that your writing can cohere to it in a focused way, and not deteriorate into a descriptive commentary without rigorous analysis. One method of deciding what to argue for in your essay is to compile a list of argumentative quotations from secondary material. For example, if your topic concerns the extent to which John Donne’s poetry springs from reason rather than emotion, then you will collect a list of quotations that argue for each of these conflicting positions. Then you will use these quotations as a starting-point to generate your own creative and original argument, whilst using quotations from established critics to illustrate the existing scholarly debate.

So the first thing to do is map out the existing arguments in your quotation list e.g. Lewis says “……..”, but Elliot argues against Lewis, saying, “……..”. During the process of producing this list you are seeking to discover the linchpins on which the critics are resting their competing arguments. Then, as you come to understand what their arguments hinge upon, you should notice contentious points that you disagree with, and want to challenge in your own essay. Similarly, you will notice points that you agree with, and want to develop in your essay by using new evidence from the primary texts.

This technique will inevitably produce an argumentative essay because your starting point is the raging debate amongst the critics, and you are simply stepping into this contest to take a stand for one of their positions – or more desirably, a unique position formulated by amalgamating aspects of their arguments with previously unexplored evidence from the primary texts. But by beginning with significant engagement with the critics, followed by producing a quote list outlining their debate, you are forming an argumentative framework within which to make your own nuanced discoveries of the primary texts. The essay-argument that you then write will be original whilst remaining thoroughly rooted in the existing critical literature.

Note: This method is not given to belittle the importance of genuine one-to-one engagement with the primary text. There is clearly great value in making inferences from the primary text before you have read any secondary material at all – this is your uninfluenced reader experience, and might lead to you seeing things in the text that have never been seen before. But your discoveries are likely to remain very superficial until they are positioned with regard to the often voluminous amount that has already been said by established critics.