How might certain cultural and social movements during the time period have influenced the writing of some literary works? How might the life that a given author led have helped him or her create the work you are analyzing? Your goal here will be to identify these historical and biographical factors and show where and how they have been worked into the text. Be careful not to read the works as history or biography, though: they are, first and foremost, creative works. Critical/philosophical/theoretical: In this type of reading, you will use an established method of thought to interpret the work.

You will need to establish what the terms and principles of this kind of context are and then explain how an author deliberately works them into the poem or story, or how the text you are analyzing somehow reflects those principles. Adaptive: Some of the things you have read (or could read) have been made into films or TV movies, or have inspired musicians, or can be compared to contemporary media forms, such as video games. In an essay like this, you would want to discuss how an author’s ideas go into the adaptation and how the adaptation helps you understand the original work. For instance, how does the film of “My Son the Fanatic” broaden and develop the author’s concern with the status of Muslims in modern Britain?