Writing an essay

Abstract

First the bad news. There is no Golden Rule for Writing Successful Essays that this book or any other can provide. It would make life a lot simpler if there were, especially when you are faced with a question on, say, The Prelude and are unsure whether to count the metaphors, speculate libellously about Wordsworth’s relationship with his sister, or settle for a niftily disguised version of what the editor says in the preface. Which of the many possibilities you choose to pursue depends in the end on why you think the subject is worth bothering with at all. It depends, in other words, on some sort of theory, however rudimentary and unacknowledged, of what literature is and what place its study occupies or ought to occupy in society.