Foundations of Critical Analysis

Upload your assignment to Canvas using the assignment link provided by 9 PM on Wednesday, 27^th May. Please upload only Microsoft Word documents (.docx).

This test is designed to evaluate your ability to perform critical reading and analysis through semantic field analysis, close reading, lexeme analysis, problem identification, argumentative development, and logical organization. Your responses should move beyond description or summary. Instead, they should critically engage with the semantic tensions, narrative implications, and ideological structures operating within the text.

Your responses should demonstrate the following:

•  identification of a focal semantic problem or tension

•  analysis of key lexemes and related semantic fields

•  formulation of logical premises and critical inferences

•  argumentative organization and coherence

•  close reading supported by textual evidence

•  clear and analytical prose

The evaluation criteria for this assignment follow the rubric, emphasizing semantic field analysis, critical engagement, argumentative coherence, organization, prose clarity, and grammatical precision. 

Rubric                                                                

Section I: Analytical Paragraph (Close Reading) 25%

Read the following passage carefully and write ONE analytical paragraph (approximately 250–350 words). Your paragraph must begin with a clear analytical conditioning of a central lexeme and develop a focused argument through close reading of the passage’s semantic field, diction, and narrative implications. Do not summarize the larger text. Your analysis should scrutinize the quoted passage itself while briefly connecting it to the broader concerns of the narrative.

“Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins. Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered teasets. At the door of the stall, a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.”

Question Prompt:

Discuss the reasons and causes of the narrator’s “difficulty” in remembering his own intentions versus his “remarking” on English accents through proper textual analysis which would enable you to explain how this tension reflects the narrative’s attitude toward the central thematic concerns of the passage.

Section II: Short Argumentative Response 25%

Choose ONE of the following prompts and write TWO well-developed argumentative paragraphs (approximately 350–500 words each): one that conditions and problematizes the text, and one that presents a clear line of argumentation about that problem. Your response must establish a clear argumentative stance supported through semantic field analysis and close reading of key lexemes.

1.     In Thomas King’s “Borders,” how does the narrator challenge settler colonialism’s use of identity fragmentation through the concepts of “reserve,” “spreading jelly on the truth,” and “television people” in undermining Blackfoot identity and maintaining social control, in order to foster a burgeoning awareness of his own identity? 

2.     How does the use of orality and storytelling in “Borders,” where the mother tells a story about the “stars,” challenge the legitimacy of colonial hegemony in order to redefine geographical boundaries and technicalities? 

Section III: Mini Essay 50%

Respond to the following prompt and expand it into a short argumentative mini essay

(approximately 750–800 words). Here, not only do you need the two components practices in the previous section, but you also need to provide analytical insights from a few other lexemes from the same semantic field, each elaborated in one well-structured paragraph. The same rubric will be applied to grading this section as well. 

Your essay should:

•  develop a clear thesis statement

•  establish a central semantic problem or contradiction

•  analyze multiple lexemes and their narrative implications

•  formulate logical premises and argumentative progression

•  integrate close reading and textual evidence throughout

•  maintain strong paragraph organization and coherence

•  avoid plot summary and descriptive retelling

Your essay should move from: Conditional Problematization → Analysis → Implications → Premises → Argumentation

A successful response will demonstrate how semantic fields generate ideological, political, and narrative tensions within the text rather than merely identifying literary devices or summarizing events.

Question Prompt: 

In Sophocles’ Antigone, when Eurydice claims that she “voices” the “discourse” by “telling the tale again,” how does her advocacy for amplifying the social contract of “sisterhood” challenge Creon’s newly established order to generate more profound perceptions among the people?