History of Literary Criticism--Commentaries

Write each commentary as a letter to the writer of the paper you are reviewing. The purpose of the commentary is to help the writer to produce the best revision possible. In the body of the letter, answer the questions which seem most important for the particular paper you are reading. Always answer questions #1and #3.

Commentary Guide: First Version

Critic:_____________________________

Writer:______________________________

Part One

1. What question is the paper trying to answer? What is the question at issue? Is this really an interesting question for this audience? Can the writer make progress toward answering this question in a short paper?

2. Do you have the background information you need to understand the question at issue? Is there anything more that needs to be done to show you why the issue is interesting/important/worth one's time?

3. What answer does the paper give?

4. Does the paper support its answer with good reasoning, appropriate examples, quotations, definitions, etc.?

5. Who is the implied audience for this paper? Who would be at least to some degree persuaded by it? What assumptions would such an audience share with the writer?

6. Who would reject the reasoning of this paper? Who would be persuaded very little or not at all? What would such people say in response to this paper? Does the paper recognize at least to some degree the objections that could be made to its line of reasoning?

7. What is the structure of the paper? Does it follow from the central purpose of reasoning with the audience about the question? Do some parts of the paper seem out of place?

8. Has the writer demonstrated a sufficient knowledge of the readings for the course, and have the readings been used well to reason about the question?

9. Has the writer earned his or her conclusion? If not, what more could he or she do?

Part Two

10. What expectations does the title of the paper create? What does the title lead you to believe?

11. What expectations does the first paragraph create? Based on a reading of the first paragraph, what do you expect the rest of the paper to do?

12. Is the paragraphing appropriate? Are the transitions between the paragraphs effective? Do the paragraphing and the transitions help to clarify the line of reasoning?

13. Do the paragraphs all contribute to the aim of the paper or do some seem to be off task?

14. How does the paper end? Does the ending have a clear relation to what has come before it??

15. Are there sentence-level problems in the paper? Which one or two kinds of problem seem to cause the most difficulty?

16. What is the single strongest part of the paper? Why?