Textual Analysis

This assignment is intended to exercise students analytical skills in producing a compact (400-500 words) but penetrating analysis of a selected passage drawn from one of our course texts.  The analysis should place the selected passage in context and subject it to a critically detailed examination of its parts (the Greek word analusis means to loosen the parts which make up the whole in order to better understand them individually and as they relate) and interpretation of the texts inherent or implicit meaning (i.e. reading between the lines) and its larger significance.

Please select one of the following passages and write a 400-500 word analysis of its inherent meaning.

–Candide and Cacambo’s near-fatal encounter with the cannibalistic but fair-minded Orejones in Voltaire’s Candide (51-53)

–Poprishchin’s entry for 86th Martober concerning a triumphant return to the office in Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” (190-91)