How Form Affects the Meaning of a Piece of Literature

(Analysis of CHINESE MASTERPIECES 中国文学)
* Your essay should be about 500–700 words in length, or roughly 2–3 pages of double-spaced,
12-point font with 1-inch margins.
You may use your books, consult your notes, and review lectures. （if you need any material, please message me.）
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Pick one of the following books and discuss 2–3 of the passages from it provided below (document "Essay 1 Books ").
Be sure to describe how the literary form contributes to the meaning of the passages, and note any
connections between the passages you choose to write about. Some key terms you may wish to and need to
use are:
● exposition (賦)
● comparison (比)
● affective image (興)
● simile
● metaphor
● repetition
● onomatopoeia
● aphorism
● chiasmus
● contrast
● list (catalogue)
● dialogue
● parable
● couplet
● parallelism
● convention
● allusion
● speaker
● poet

Greetings! You can now check your grade of the first essay on GauchoSpace. Most of the students have done a good job analyzing the specific texts in relation with the literary
However, the most frequently appeared problem in your essays is how to come up with a thesis. In Prof Mazanec’s “guide for essays,” it reads, “A-level papers present a clear and compelling thesis that makes a claim about a text or set of texts which can be argued, the culmination of original thought.” A thesis is the major argument you make through analyzing the two or three passages you have chosen. It needs to be specific and closely connected to the passages rather than a general introduction of the author or the book or a list of literary forms.
Atypical way of forming a thesis in an essay is: by analyzing (the texts), (the author) uses (the literary forms) to demonstrate (a theme).
A good example from your classmate is as follows:
From the exploration of three of his famous works, “Painted Hawk,” “Weary at Night,” and “Stirred by Autumn: Eight Poems IV,” people can discover that Du Fu utilized parallelism, metaphor, and imagery description to demonstrate his ambitions, worries, and depressions, which also implied the transformation of him from youth to old.
This said, you do not need to follow the formula. Other good examples are as follows,
By showing instead of telling, Zhuangzi induces the readers to believe in his beliefs and leaves unforgettable images and stories to the readers even millennials after.
Therefore, his poems expressed strong patriotic feelings and criticized the crimes of the ruling class that brought disaster to the country and the people.
In order to find a thesis, you need to compare the passages you have chosen. What are the similarities among them? What are the differences among them? How do these passages relate to the major themes and the literary forms you have learnt from the lectures? These questions are even more important for you to write the second essay because you are required to compare two sets of texts. In this sense, you need to read all the texts carefully, compare them, and come up with a specific thesis.
After you come up with a thesis, you need to arrange the essay in a logical way with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. All these three parts need to be in line with the thesis you are arguing about. In the introduction, you need to state your thesis first and directly. In the body, you need to analyze the texts along with the literary forms. Instead of generally introducing the literary forms, go directly to the text and illustrate how the definition of one literary form is manifested in a text. In the conclusion, you need to reemphasize your thesis and somehow elevate it in relation to your textual analysis.