How can I evaluate a literary work, such as one by Anne Bradstreet?On what things shall I depend to consider the work a good one?

There are many many ways of looking at a literary text. That is what you call different schools of literary criticism.

1. The content/ The themes--the subject matter of a work.

2. The form or the structure in which the work is composed e.g. the five-part structure of The Waste Land, the sonnet form and so on.

3. The style and the language of the work, its diction and use of words, how much denotational and inter/intra-textual the text is etc.

4. The genre in which the work is written and how does the generic choice work itself out through the text.

5. If it is a fictional work, a study of its plotline, characters ,their graphs, intensities and consistencies.

6. The rhetorical angle and the metrical patterning in case of verse.

7. Setting the work against a historical context and study the realism and ideology in the text. Neo-Historicism also sees the text as history.

8. A psychological or psychoanalytical reading of the work, taking into account the minds of the characters and applying theories of psychoanalysis to explain their actions.

9. If it is a performance-text (performatory poetry, theatre), a study of the performance-act.

10. Looking at the gender-patterns in the text, finding out any bias, if any, the sexist angle and so on.