How to do the analysis correctly. How to analyze a verse

We are dealing with a text if the sentences are united by a single topic and are related to each other grammatically and in content. Compositional unity and relative completeness make it possible to give a general title and highlight semantic parts. Literature lessons require a comprehensive analysis of the text, the compilation of which is the subject of this article. As an example, we will consider the parable “About the Weary Traveler.”

Concept

The purpose of the analysis is to develop the ability to understand the ideological and aesthetic value of works and explain the origins of their expressiveness. Thanks to them, students will be able to write reflective essays and other texts, expanding their vocabulary and using different styles of speech. What is text analysis, and how to do it correctly?

M. Gasparov identifies three levels that need to be mastered in the study of a work:

1. Ideological and figurative (impressions and emotions, author’s ideas and motives for writing, main characters and the writer’s attitude towards them).
2. Stylistic (analysis of syntax and vocabulary).
3. Phonic (strophic, rhythmic, metric), used for lyrical works.

Complex text analysis requires certain preparation and knowledge, which we will discuss in more detail in the next subheading.

Algorithm of actions

Most often, literature deals with works of art - the smallest units of literary creativity, where the word spoken by the author about his understanding of life is refracted through the perception of the reader. Analysis of a literary text requires the following actions:

• careful reading, highlighting individual parts (chapters, subheadings, paragraphs);
• reflections on the title, which carries the main idea of ​​the essay;
• drawing up a text plan;
• studying vocabulary and finding out the meaning of unfamiliar words using the dictionary;
• collecting information about the author and his worldview, historical era and features of the creation of the work;
• knowledge of literary theory, revealing what genre, composition, chronotrope are;
• mastering the skills of highlighting artistic means of expression (epithets, metaphors, hyperboles).

Analysis Plan

In order to consider the work in the unity of form and content, the plan must include literary and linguistic aspects. Its diagram must precede the analysis of the text. How to do research on a work of art? The following plan option is proposed:

1. Topic, main problem and meaning of the title.
2. Author's position.
3. Microthemes.
4. Parts of the text and means of communication between them.
5. Speech, style, genre of work.
6. The means of expression used, their role.
7. Composition of the text.
8. The reader's attitude to the problem of the work, emotional perception.

Text analysis, an example of which will be discussed in the article, is based on the content of a literary work. The short parable “About the Weary Traveler” tells the story of a group of people climbing a mountain. Everyone walked cheerfully and easily, and only one lagged behind the others and complained of fatigue. At first he was hampered by heavy luggage, and his friends decided to free him from the burden. After some time, the traveler again began to delay those walking and grumble that his legs hurt. The comrades decided to carry their friend in their arms, but heard groans that he was tired even when he was carried. The traveler was carefully lowered to the ground, but the dissatisfied man again spoke about how hard it was for him to lie down.

The Lord heard the groans and sent the young man eternal rest. Death from laziness frightened his companions, who considered such an end to life despicable. For them, to die with honor is to die from work, raising their soul to the Mountain of Life.

Text analysis: how to do it using the example of a specific work

The theme of the parable is the attitude towards life as an act and constant work, which is the essence of human life. The author is interested in the problem of the relationship between man and society, life and death, work and inaction. His conclusion: only work leads a person to self-improvement and spiritual beauty. And that means to God.

The text contains four stanzas that develop micro-themes: a tired man and travelers, people and God, a moral aspect, and the author’s conclusion. The first two stanzas are connected by a chain connection, and the subsequent ones are connected by a parallel connection. This helps to reflect the sequence and logic of events and the formation of the author’s thoughts.

Analysis of the text, an example of which is discussed in the article, allows us to define the work as a parable - a story containing a lesson. This is a small form of epic work in which there is a didactic idea. The action is not tied to a specific place, but it could take place in any era and in any place.

The style of the work is artistic. Colloquial speech is intertwined with bookish, solemn vocabulary.

Completing the analysis

• A rich synonymous row for the central character, which makes his image more voluminous ( tired - alone - traveler - dissatisfied - unfortunate traveler - road-weary).
• Repetitions of words that help emphasize the annoyingness of the main character.
• Paired antonyms that turn the work into a complete antithesis: everything is one, fun is grumbling, work is laziness, life is death.
• Variety of vocabulary: from pretentious words ( despicable, dust) to negative-evaluative ( grumbled), which allows us to convey the author’s irony towards the traveler.

When analyzing a text, how do you make the transition to composition? First you need to determine how the plot develops. In this example - linearly. There is a plot - the lag of a tired traveler and his dialogue with his comrades. The culmination is the remark addressed to God that “he is also tired of lying down.” The denouement is the attainment of eternal peace.

The system of images is built in the shape of a triangle: travelers - tired - God. The Almighty is not in a state of interaction with the characters, he is above them, essentially fulfilling the dream of the suffering.

The phraseological units used and the author’s final thoughts about the departure of the tired traveler contribute to the fact that instead of a negative attitude towards the hero, the reader experiences sympathy. He used his life so unreasonably and absurdly. God remains with those who continue their difficult ascent to the Mountain of Life.

Analysis of a text based on literature cannot do without a personal relationship to what is read, because any work of art is designed to influence human emotions.

I used to read a lot of books on efficiency, time management, management and the like. But 6 months ago I came up with my own tool, which has become an indispensable self-development technology for me. This is daily self-reflection. It brings me great benefits and has replaced all other technologies. Hope it helps you too!

Here's how I use this tool. EVERY day at 22:00 my mobile alarm goes off. Consistency is a must! During this time, I MUST set aside at least 20-30 minutes to review the day's activities. I carry out the analysis according to the following list and always in writing (for this I have a separate notebook):

1. What did I do right/well? How can these benefits be enhanced in the future?

2. What I did wrong? What could have been done better? How to deal with similar situations in the future and correct mistakes?

3. What else could have been done? Why wasn't this done? How to avoid repeating this situation in the future?

(This is a mandatory point! You can do nothing all day and pass the first two points like a handsome guy).

4. Has this day brought me closer to achieving my long-term goals? What needed to be done to get even closer to the goals? (Accordingly, you must have goals.)

5. What will I do tomorrow to strengthen my strengths, overcome my weaknesses, and get closer to achieving my long-term goals? This point comes as a conclusion from the previous 4.

To further strengthen this point, you can work through the tasks for the next day in the organizer. Very often, people around us “throw” tasks at us, and without thinking, we write them down in our organizers. If you look at these tasks with a sober head in a calm atmosphere and analyze them from the point of view of your goals, then you can refuse half, and another quarter can be delegated to someone else.

Mandatory rules when performing self-analysis:

1. Analyze only the current day's affairs. You won’t remember with whom and how you “wrongly” communicated or had a telephone conversation yesterday. Everything must be done in hot pursuit.

2. Everything is subject to analysis: why does it take me so long to get to work? How many times and who called me? Why did they call me? Could you call one of the employees? How did the negotiations go and what did I miss? How to optimize the financial scheme of my companies? How to reduce the tax burden in light of the last payment of income tax?..

I review the calls that I received on my mobile phone, look at my email, and my organizer.

3. Do it constantly. It is very difficult to force yourself to do self-analysis constantly. It often happens that in the evening you are tired and want to rest, you have no energy, you want to eat, etc. But you need to use this tool constantly! Otherwise there will be no sense from it.

4. Do everything in writing.

This way the analysis becomes deeper and more meaningful, and you can write down conclusions and important points that are worth paying attention to.

5. Once a month you need to review the conclusions (point 5) and analyze whether all of them have been completed and whether everything is going smoothly. If not, then you need to set a goal for yourself for the week and focus on one aspect. It is very important. Because we all know that there is a huge difference between how it should be done and how I do it.

It would seem that the tool is very simple, but as a result of using it I received real benefits:

1. The load has decreased - I began to give up a large number of tasks, businesses and projects that contradict my goals.

2. Life has become more conscious - daily analysis very clearly emphasizes my strengths and weaknesses, right and wrong actions, relationships with time.

3. Daily small improvements - in essence, my system helps to implement the same principle as “kaizen”.

4. Before using this tool, I was in Brownian motion - a lot of things, meetings, projects, tasks. After you start using it, everything is laid out on the shelves and becomes clear and understandable.

I'm sure you know the feeling of being constantly busy. You do something, seemingly a lot, all day long. But when a year passes and you ask yourself: “What have I achieved this year, what significant things have I done?” – then all that comes to mind is a new iPhone and a couple of stupid noisy get-togethers with friends, and that’s it. But a whole year has passed! And you promise yourself that next year you will fix everything, you will do something meaningful, but this year passes and nothing really changes. The tool I have described allows you to break this vicious circle.

There is only one difficulty in using this tool - you need to have a fairly high level of self-criticism. A test for self-criticism is the question “what are my weaknesses?” If you don’t have a single answer to this question, then the tool is probably not for you. And to further simplify the analysis of the day’s events, you can approach everything that happened from the point of view of the following chain: what did you want to get? – what did you really get? – why did this happen?

Text analysis is not the easiest thing. In order to comprehensively study and understand a complex literary text or philosophical treatise (we omit scientific and industrial texts), even the most careful reading is not always enough. You need the right tools. Hermeneutics and semiotics are considered such tools. Hermeneutics is the art of interpreting texts, both ancient manuscripts and complex philosophical treatises. What we can borrow from this science on a simple, philistine level, may Gadamer and Ricoeur forgive us, is the method of “getting used to”, try to identify yourself with the characters, transfer yourself to the situation. It may be difficult and requires some preparation, but it is a very effective method. Find information about the author, about the era, make a brief of historical events, a political map of the world - this will help you calculate the correct meanings.

Semiotics is the science of signs. From the point of view of semiotics, culture is the world of sign systems. How can this help? At the most primitive level, the phrase “he showed his thumb or middle finger,” which is very typical for an American detective, can mislead the reader without understanding the interpretation of the signs. A deeper level of semantic analysis, Yu.M. wrote a lot about this in his works. Lotman, - understanding the relationship between signs, the culture of interpretation characteristic of a particular era, country, environment. In other words, we need to understand “who” is telling us - the position of the author in society, the obligations that he had to society, for example, often in modern texts, they refer to Aristotle as the founder of the ideas of democracy, the herald of freedom and equality, that’s all partly true, but when we read this, we should always remember that he was also one of the ardent apologists of slavery, when he spoke about man, it should be understood that this is only an adult Hellenic man, all the rest were not even people according to the great Aristotle. Yaroslav the Wise, who many years later became acquainted with the works of Aristotle, laying the foundations of our understanding of truth and justice, in the eyes of his teacher would be nothing more than a barbarian, an animal.

The second clear example of semantic relationships is an old experiment, with which cultural scientists often surprise their audiences in Russia. If you ask the audience to shout out a song noun that comes to their mind after what you said, and say “cat”, most people will shout “mouse” - in Russia this clear relationship can always be traced, just like the fact that the fox is cunning, and the bear is stupid, but armed with this semantic apparatus, trying to understand the tales of the Ancient East and America, you will most likely encounter misunderstanding.

Let's summarize the above. To understand the text you need: to have information about the author, historical era, culture, language (especially if you are reading the work in translation and can only guess about the true nature of the original meaning), try to pass it all through yourself, get used to the resulting image, so You may be able to get a little closer to the original meaning or idea.

But there is another approach, which says that the text is created by the reader. There are as many versions of each work as there are insatiable pairs of eyes that have scanned it. If you follow this approach, it doesn't matter what the author was trying to say, what matters is what you heard. The interpreter generates a new text, new meanings, a new sign system, perhaps this is precisely the reason for evolution))

Text is a very complex phenomenon. There is no single, final, correct analysis of a literary work. You can do analysis all your life, from very different points of view, getting more and more new results. In addition, the main keys to understanding a work lie not inside it, but outside it - in the context of its creation, in culture, historical era, social processes, the personal fate of the author, etc. It is these two facts that are not visible in the approach to literature with which many of us are familiar thanks to the Soviet high school, where literary criticism largely served ideological and political goals. This is where the very question of “complex analysis” most likely comes from.

In science there are the concepts of “object”, “subject” and “subject” of research, without defining which any analysis will float in a (literally) boundless space. Without going into details and definitions, I will give several possible options.

For the object of study (what we are considering) we can take the original text of the work, but with no less success (albeit with a different set of possibilities for analysis) we could use its oral forms, or the totality of material embodiments of this text from the moment of its appearance, or a set of different forms of presentation of a given text in a certain era, or reflection and reproduction of a given text in various forms of culture over a certain period.

For the subject (what we study) - the psychology of the author or era; some psychological aspects from a historical perspective; structure of the work; variants of messages that it conveys to various recipients of different eras without involving special analysis and methods of interpretation from different positions; some ideological, historical, historiographical, linguistic, literary, psychological, social, semiotic, aesthetic, cultural aspects in various contexts, etc.

And finally, the subject is the person who conducts the analysis. The most obvious thing is from the position of what science he approaches the study of the text. Is he a philologist within the framework of this analysis? Historian? Historiographer? Semiotic? Culturologist? Psychologist? Costume designer? Playwright? etc. What specific questions from his field does he examine in this analysis? In addition, his own culture, language, history of his people and state, life experience, level of training in various issues, interests, motives. All this can give very different conclusions when analyzed. For example, some works, even those belonging to one’s own culture, are very difficult to understand without going through certain events, elections, situations in one’s own life. Or, I suppose, a phenomenon familiar to you, when, 10 years later, returning to reading the same book, you suddenly perceive it completely differently.

Now another example to illustrate the limitlessness of the concept of “analysis of a literary work.” Let's take a text about human life in the ancient Near East, written by a Dutch author in the 16th century, translated in the 19th century. into Russian by a Russian translator, and read by you in the 21st century. These are four very differently organized cultural positions in interaction! Each of which has a huge number of aspects, examples of which are listed above! And if from the point of view of modern anthropology or paleontology this text may not be of interest, then, for example, from the point of view of historiography or cultural studies it is a real treasure trove! Humanitarian science is a myriad of mirror-spotlights directed at each other and repeatedly reflecting each other.

If you do not take highly specialized views and focus on some everyday understanding of the work (which can also be very complex, diverse, and change over time: this is just another point of view, not in the least detracting), then it is worth briefly familiarizing yourself with the era in which the author lived , way of life, structure of society, social processes at that time, personal history of the author; and also know your language and history well, have more of your own acquaintances with different people and achievements in your own life.

It all depends on who is analyzing. At this stage of its development, the science of literary criticism has already accumulated enormous experience, which cannot be forgotten when analyzing works. For example, let’s take a philologist who devoted 20 years of his life to this field. He will never be able to simply do a complex analysis, as you put it, because, in his opinion, a complex analysis must certainly include a search for hidden meanings, allusions, associations, etc. Secondly, it all depends on the author and the work you are analyzing. If this is Dostoevsky or Bulgakov, then refusing to search for “hidden meanings” is simply stupid, because the authors themselves wanted readers to look for these hidden meanings. But if it occurs to you to analyze Daria Dontsova, then the search for hidden meanings and associations clearly speaks of paranoia :)

Every time you pick up a book, ask yourself: “Why? For what purpose am I taking this book?” In this way, the approach to analysis will itself be formed properly, that is, correspond to very specific goals and objectives, and will not become a formal “analysis in general.” After all, the analytical approach depends on many circumstances: goals, properties of the material, properties of the recipient (reader).

In general, it is interesting to read, fascinating to read. Reading is generally useful. After all, what is reading? Receiving the information. Just like observing the pictures of the world around us. Just like listening to the sound of the world around us. Receiving and processing information is directly related to the ability to survive. The overwhelming majority of the population of “developed” countries, living, as they themselves think, in comfortable conditions, have long forgotten about this.

Instructions

Indicate the theme of the poem. Ask yourself: “What is the poet talking about in this?” Poetic works can be about patriotism or politics. Some describe landscapes and the beauty of nature, others are reflections on philosophical topics.

In addition to the theme, sometimes it is also necessary to determine the idea or main idea of ​​​​the work. Think about what exactly the poet wanted to convey to the reader, what “message” is hidden in his words. The main idea reflects the poet's attitude to what is written; it is a key factor for a true understanding of a literary work. If the author of the work raised several problems at once, list them and highlight one as the main problem.

Write what artistic means and stylistic devices the author resorted to in this work. Give specific ones from the poem. Indicate for what purpose the author used this or that technique (stylistic figures, etc.), i.e. what effect was achieved. For example, rhetorical questions and appeals increase the reader’s attention, and the use of irony indicates the author’s mocking attitude, etc.

Analyze the compositional features of the poem. It consists of three parts. These are meter, rhyme and rhythm. The size can be indicated schematically so that it is clear which syllable the stress falls on. For example, in iambic tetrameter the stress falls on every second syllable. Read one line from the poem out loud. This will make it easier for you to understand how the stress falls. The mode of rhyming is usually indicated using the notation "a" and "b", where "a" is one type of line ending for the poem and "b" is the second type.

Every student asks the question: how to do text analysis when the time comes to complete such a task. The first thing to start with is to make a plan. And then, following the steps, analyze the proposed text. Actually, nothing complicated.

What is text analysis?

So, more details. Analysis is a method of briefly describing (short summary) to better understand the meaning. You can analyze anything: a poem, a text, an action, words spoken, and so on. The main thing is to follow some rules. As for text analysis in school subjects (literature or the Russian language), this activity helps not just read books, but read meaningfully. So that after reading you can easily retell the work and catch the author’s thought. Of course, at the first stages the student will ask himself the question of how to analyze the text. But later it will become easier for him to understand the works when they become more complex. This method of work also helps to tune in to creative work and reveals personal perception.

Comprehensive text analysis

This task includes many parameters that make it easier to understand an excerpt from the work. But there are no clear instructions or diagrams, although it is necessary to adhere to some kind of plan in order to compose the text of the analysis, where the conclusion will follow from certain facts supported by the arguments given.

It’s worth starting with the fact that after reading, you need to title the text. So you can determine the theme and topic for yourself and first answer the question: “what did the author want to say with this passage?”

It is worth remembering that a topic is a subject of discussion. And the topic is a set of topics that may be in the proposed passage.

To assist in the analysis, means of communication can be used, divided into lexical and morphological. Those. it is necessary to determine whether synonyms, repetitions, conjunctions, verbs and gerunds are used.

It is also necessary to mention the style of the text, which can be artistic, official business, scientific or colloquial. You should also clarify what type of speech is used: narration, reasoning or description.

Knowing all the points will undoubtedly help during analysis, and the student will no longer ask the question: how to analyze the text. He will immediately begin to study the proposed work according to a certain plan, and in the end he will easily be able to draw a conclusion with the arguments given.

In Russian language and literature

And finally. Analyzes of texts in Russian language and literature may differ slightly from each other. If it is taken from any work, several identical steps must be used. In order:

1. - legend, poem, parable, memory, essay
2. Theme of the text - any work has its own theme
3. What techniques were used to construct the text - repetitions, contrasts, intensification, dynamism, contemplation?
4. Use of visual media
5. The general impression of what you read - if you read the text thoughtfully, then a certain impression will definitely remain, and you should talk about it at the very end of the analysis

Example

How to analyze the text of the presented passage? Below is an example:

You should take it step by step to see the underlying meaning.

1. The author’s idea is to show and tell about the participants in the hunt, and on the other hand, demonstrate the greatness of nature.
2. Type and style are a work of art, or rather a narrative with elements of description.
3. Means of communication and artistic means - conjunctions (and, but), adverbs (long, firmly, away). The main technique is antithesis, i.e. when there is a contrast - verbs (jump out, rush and besiege, freeze), adjectives (desperate, mad and dead). There are also epithets, metaphors, and gradations.
4. Syntactic features - simple sentences are used, which are also included in complex ones, definitions and circumstances are common.
5. Spelling features - unstressed vowels in the root (hooves, valley), alternating vowels in the root (freeze, jump out).