If you are planning to write a critical analysis, you can look into the four basic components in evaluating a literary material. Literary scholars call them as literary theories. The first one is mimetic where you look into the realities the material copies or represents. This discussion comes naturally as you delineate the main elements of the material you are evaluating. The second one is expressive where you check how the author's biography and milieu affect or define the meaning of the work. The third one is affective where you discuss the effect of the material to you as a reader, or how does the material leaves an impact. The last one is objective which is the focus of most literary research these days. This study calls for a detailed discussion of how the elements of the literary piece contribute to the overall value of the work. These four theories are inseparable. As you discuss one, the other theories come in naturally. These are key words that may help you define your literary assumption so you could get yourself focused on one research problem: literary analysis critical analysis elements of fiction, poetry, or drama objective theory literary neoclassicism formalistic theory in literature comparative literary study intertextuality I wish you the best of luck