PARAPHRASE, SUMMARY, DESCRIPTION “I LOVE TO LEARN” -TOM NIXON Writing about literature
Paraphrase To paraphrase a statement it to restate it in your own words. IIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austin (Pride and Prejudice) EEveryone agrees that a propertied bachelor needs to wants to find a woman to marry. ……Making order out of Emily’s life is a complicated matter, since the narrator recalls the details through a nonlinear filter. –George Dillon (Styles of Reading) IIt’s difficult to figure out the order in which the events in Emily’s life occurred because the narrator doesn’t relate them chronologically.
Reasons for Paraphrase First, paraphrase resembles translation. The two examples translate formal prose into a more colloquial* twentieth century American prose. *LANGUAGE USED IN INFORMAL CONVERSATION Second, it tests that you truly understand what you’ve read. It can point out specific significant details that might have otherwise been overlooked. Lastly, paraphrase can help you begin generating the kind of interpretive questions that can drive an essay.
Summary A summary is a fairly succinct restatement or overview of the content of an entire text or source. Generally called a plot summary when discussing text because of its focus on plot or action. Like paraphrases, summaries should always be in your own words. Although a summary should be significantly shorter than the original, it can be any length you need it to be.
Hamlet summaries! A young man seeking to avenge his uncle’s murder of his father kills his uncle, while also brining about his own and man others’ death. A young Danish prince avenges the murder of his father, the king, by his uncle who has usurped his throne, but the prince himself is killed, as are others, and a well-led foreign army has no trouble successfully invading the decayed and troubled state.
Description Whereas both summary and paraphrase focus on content, a description of a literary text focuses on its overall form or structure or some particular aspect thereof. You could similarly describe many other formal elements of a poem – images and symbols, for example. You can describe a play in comparable terms – acts, scenes, settings, time lapses. Or a novel in terms of chapters, books, summary narration, dramatized scenes.