-:- Commentary Writing -:-

What is a commentary?

The most useful answer is to be found under the term used by the French: explication, which can be defined as: “a formal and close analysis of a text: its structure, style, content, and imagery - indeed every aspect of it.”

What is the difference between a commentary and an essay?

The writing of essays is a skill that goes back to classical times, and just as an essay can focus upon any one of a virtually unlimited range of topics, it can also be written in a wide variety of styles and attitudes and degrees of formality. It is one of the most flexible of literary forms, but it generally consists of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion with some form of argument linking the parts together. A commentary is one specific type of essay which is written in a formal style appropriate to literary criticism, and is normally only concerned with analyzing a single, relatively short text. In IB exams this will be a poem or a prose extract no more than about 60 lines in length.

Resources for further reading:

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster

Writing About Literature by Edgar Roberts

N. B., The evaluation rubric for your midterm exam is posted on the Glee forum.