Kimberley Garcia and Rachael Benavidez
Using Critical Summary to Frame, Integrate, and Introduce Quotations from the Literary Text
Similar to effective paragraphing, introducing textual evidence or quotation from a literary text must be clear about the point and the purpose. The most effective way to begin talking about a textual moment is to present the relevant elements, facts, or ideas contained within the quotation, which you’ll analyze after and based on the contents of the quotation.
Remember, you’re including a textual moment as the interpretable data for your analysis. As with your entire paper, you’ll need to consider your audience, how informed they are on your subject (the literary text), and how much orienting you need to provide about the context of the quotation. A critical or analytical context that introduces the quotation is similar to the key idea required for introducing sources. Context can often include the relevant details about the point at which the textual moment occurs in plot (see summarizing a literary text); however, contextualizing the quotation might also include your reflecting on what relevant content the quotation contains as interpretive support for your thesis.
Most importantly, all quotation from the literary text should be framed by your own sentence–you must embed the quotation within your own grammatically complete sentence. (When in doubt, punctuating with colons or semicolons can combine a quotation to your own independent clause.)
Framing with Critical Summary
Consider the following excerpt from a paper about Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate and notice how the quotation stands alone without framing that would orient the reader to the story moment or reflect on the analysis vital for the paper:
“Tita made her entrance into this world, prematurely, right there on the kitchen table amid the smell of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, cilantro, steam milk, garlic, and of course onion (1).” This quote from the novel is evidence that Tita had a connection to the kitchen from her birth to growing up. There are scenes within the novel where Tita’s duty to the kitchen turns out to be her greatest strength.
Depending on what a paper engages, summaries need to strike a balance between relevance to your argument and contextual orienting for your audience. In the above example, the two sentence that follow the quotation offer useful context and the relevance under analysis. Let’s revise to use these ideas as the framing sentence.
Option 1: Plot Orientating
The novel opening with Tita’s “entrance into this world, prematurely, right there on the kitchen table,” symbolizes her being born to the kitchen, to serve in it and abide by her family’s custom: “amid the smell of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, cilantro, steam milk, garlic, and of course onion” (1). Tita’s duty to the kitchen turns out to be her greatest strength.
Option 2: Analysis Reflecting
The novel’s opening imagery of Tita’s birth, “amid the smell of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, cilantro, steam milk, garlic, and of course onion,” signifies her link to the kitchen as well as her place among the powerful ingredients of which she’ll claim ownership (1). Tita’s duty to the kitchen turns out to be her greatest strength.
In a critical summary the verbs express what the subject of the sentences does not just the action that occurs; this requires assessment or interpretation.
For further reference on elements of the academic essay (audience, evidence, analysis, reflecting, orienting) see, Gordon Harvey’s “Elements of the Academic Essay.”
Integrating Different forms of Textual Evidence in Different Genres
Integrating Poetic Lines (representing line breaks)
Ex:
The poetic voice in May Swenson’s “Women” repeats the phrase, “Women / should be,” several times (with the alternate pronoun, “they / should be”) which draws attention to the verb and stresses the meaning: should denotes obligation and duty, perhaps even that the voice is one of correcting women’s behavior (1-2, 25-6, 52-3; 28-9). The use of should makes the reader recognize that the opposite might be occurring—or be true—that women are not what the voice would obligate them to be. The effect of repeating should begs the questions of whose perspective the voice represents or who would be trying to correct women’s behavior. Because the poetic speaker remains unidentified, the poem asks its audience to interrogate further not just the speaker’s identity, but also their implied views on women, to read between the lines of the poem for what the poem (and poet) might be critiquing about that viewpoint (and how it’s critiqued), and to extrapolate how the poem might represent or argue through an implicit/unstated contradiction what it instead sees as the current reality of what women actually are or their behavior is.
Integrating Prose Description (mediating voice/narrator, focalizer)
Ex:
The first section of Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire follows the older sister, Isma, feeling the relief of pursuing her graduate studies in New York—after enduring religious profiling at the airport. In the first chapter, and through the focalizer of Isma, the narrator merges the imagery of her mentor, Dr. Shah, with that of the famous statue and harbor landmark : “Seeing her raise a hand in welcome, Isma understood how it might have felt, in another age, to step out on deck and see the upstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty and know you had made it, you were going to be all right” (14). In Isma’s chapters, the narrator focalizes on Isma’s perspective and slips into indirect discourse frequently. Repeating the above pattern, the narrator moves from description of the scene into privileging Isma’s perspective, now, to provide how she perceives the scale and the scope of NYC: “she typed a message into her phone . . . [in a] parking lot with large, confident vehicles; the broad avenues beyond” (Shamsie, 15). The narrator moves freely from the straight-forward description of action into subtle indirect style with what Isma might notice (“vehicles” and “avenues”) yet perhaps using the narrator’s own selected descriptors (“large, confident” and “broad”). It seems possible these mediating thoughts may blur the narrator’s more knowledgeable view of the full story with Isma’s as the focalizer in that moment. Finally, the narrator slips into what might be primarily Isma’s own optimistic view, that, “[he]ere, there was swagger and certainty and—on this New Year’s Day of 2015—a promise of new beginnings” (Shamsie, 15).
Integrating Dialogue/Drama (multiple speakers, stage direction)
Ex:
In the final scene, Act 5 Scene 1 of The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Miranda exclaims, “O brave new world,” rather famously, upon the island’s sudden population growth:
MIRANDA. O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
(V.i. 183-7)
She meets all at once four of the characters new to the island. Alonso and Gonzalo are, according to the stage direction, “attended by ADRIAN and FRANCISCO,” in effect tripling the quantity of people she’s been accustomed to seeing on the island, specifically, Prospero and Caliban. Little does she know that even more survived the shipwreck, though these four are enough to elicit her awe, which Prospero seems to try to mitigate with his response: “’Tis new to thee.” Miranda is understandably enthusiastic, having only recently met Ferdinand, which, according to Alonso’s estimation, “[y]our eld’st acquaintance cannot be three hours”–though for the audience Miranda and Ferdinand have been speaking the duration of the play’s five acts.
