• Writing about literature requires a strong thesis statement.Books image by JenJen from Fotolia.com
  
  A thesis statement gives your reader a preview your paper, but it also makes a claim that you will need to support throughout your essay with specific evidence. A literary thesis statement is no different, although you will need to rely on evidence from the work of literature in question along with outside research to support your claim.
  
  

Analytical Thesis

• An analytical thesis tells your audience that you plan to separate an issue or concept into its component parts and then evaluate the issue or concept based on these parts that comprise the whole work/body of work. For example, if you were asked to analyze an aspect of the works of Jane Austen, a strong analytical thesis might be, "An analysis of the novels of Jane Austen reveals that characters end up in the marriages they deserve based on their behavior." You would then spend the subsequent paper exploring several Austen characters and relating how their behaviors directly contributed to their happy or unhappy marriages.
  
  

Expository Thesis

• An expository paper is one in which a writer seeks to explain something to the audience. In the case of a literary paper, you may want to explain why a character has behaved in a certain way, why an author made certain decisions regarding plot and character development or why certain external forces have influenced a writer's work. For example, the thesis statement, "The poems of Sylvia Plath were influenced by her relationship with her father, her German heritage and her depression," would require you to relate evidence from Plath's poetry regarding these three influences along with information and criticism from outside sources (if you are allowed to use outside sources in your paper).
  
  

Argumentative Thesis

• An argumentative thesis presents a position that you will then have to support throughout the paper. For example, "Despite having published only four novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald was the most influential writer of the early twentieth century," is an example of an argumentative thesis that you would need to support with evidence from Fitzgerald's work, evidence of his influence on his contemporaries and later writers and evidence that critics feel he is influential.