First of all I want to write a definition of analysis. Analyzing texts allows a fuller, more careful comprehension going beyond surface meaning.

The following points explain what is the correct way to analyze a text.

•1.    Consider the title  (the title is useful to make predictions, conjectures and anticipations  about the possible content of the text)

•2.    Consider layout (it is the form of the text)

•3.    Consider the text (understand the type of text we are analyzing)

•4.    Read the text one or more times (a careful reading gradually unveils the hidden mysteries of a literally text)

•5.    Denotative analysis  (you must explain in your words what the text is about)  

•6.    Connotative analysis (consider phonological  level, syntax, semantic fields, key words, rhetorical figures, word choices)

•7.    Conclusion (it explains an opinion or a possible way to solve the problem posed in the text)

This scheme is used to analyze texts such as ballades and sonnets. Ballads are simple, popular songs, which tell a story. They are narrative poems; they are anonymous and transmitted orally from one singer to another. The language used in ballads is concrete and simple, usually characterized by repetitions. Their theme is often tragic and the events sensational. Concerning sonnets, they are a lyrical form of poetry written in fourteen lines. They can have two different structures: the Petrarchan sonnet is composed by two quatrains and two tercets while  the Shakespearean one is organized into three quatrains and a couplet. The language is characterized by short expressions and rhetorical figures. The main theme of sonnets is courtly love.