Poetry Explication Assignment: Fall 2016
The following regulations apply:
• Select any poem of your choosing that has not been discussed in class or assigned as homework. Even if you use a poem that is in our anthology, please attach a copy to your work as you will need to annotate it. It must be at least 14 lines long.
• Read the discussion about responding to literature included in Chapter 27 (684-718). Since this is NOT a research assignment, we will be using the model papers in that chapter as guides for how to select a topic and also create a thesis about a poem. You are being asked to use the critical skills you are learning to create your own interpretation of a poem.
• Annotate the poem (see sample). Underscore and define unfamiliar vocabulary, note formal elements, identify the speaker, situation, etc.
• Answer the questions labeled "Formalist Questions."
• Also answer any other set of questions listed in two categories. Select one category of analysis and answer all the questions in that category; repeat the process for another category.
• Begin drafting your paper, going slowly, so that it conforms to the requirements mentioned on page 704 regarding a "coherent reading." Your essay must comment on each line of the poem and it must include an introductory paragraph that provides an overview and thesis statement.
• Your draft should be 2-3 pages long and make many textual references.
• Please include a "Works Cited" page. While you are not required to do additional research, be sure to cite any other sources that you use in your paper.
• Rehearse reading the poem aloud, noting the time that it takes you to recite it. Be sure that you look up unfamiliar vocabulary and proper names so that you can recite them correctly.
• Prepare a short lecture about the poem based on the work that you have done and any share other relevant remarks about it with your peers. It must be 3-5 minutes in length.
I will not accept any late work. Anyone who is missing from class on peer review day will not be given credit for this assignment. Incomplete drafts will be downgraded significantly.
676 Reading and the Writing Process
GENDER STUDIES QUESTIONS (P. 658)
1. I low are the lives of men and women portrayed in the work? Do the men and women in the work accept or reject these roles?
2. Is the work's form and content influenced by the author's gender?
3. What attitudes are explicit or implicit concerning heterosexual or same-sex relationships? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
4. Does the work challenge or affirm traditional ideas about men and women and same-sex relationships?
MYTHOLOGICAL QUESTIONS (P. 659)
1. How does the work resemble ocher works in plot, character, setting, or use of symbols?
2. Does the work present archetypes such as quests, initiations, scape-goats, or withdrawals and returns?
3. Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation such as a movement from innocence to experience that seems archetypal?
4. Do any specific allusions to myths shed light on the text?
READER-RESPONSE QUESTIONS (P. 662)
1. How do you respond to the work?
2. HOW do your own experiences and expectations affect your reading and interpretation?
3. What is the work's original or intended audience? To what extent are you similar to or different from that audience?
4. Do you respond in the same way to the work after more than one reading?
DECONSTRUCTIONIST QUESTIONS (P. 664)
1. How are contradictory and opposing meanings expressed in the work?
2. How does meaning break down or deconstruct itself in the language of the text?
3. Would you say that ultimate definitive meanings are impossible to determine and establish in the text? Why? How does that affect your interpretation?
4. How are implicit ideological values revealed in the work?
These questions will not apply to all texts, and they are not mutu¬ally exclusive. They can be combined to explore a text from several critical perspectives simultaneously. A feminist approach to Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" (p. 134) could also use Marx¬ist concerns about class to make observations about the oppression of women's lives in the historical context of the seventeenth century. Your use of these questions should allow you to discover significant issues from which you can develop an argumentative essay that is organized around clearly defined terms, relevant evidence, and a per¬suasive analysis.
Arguing about Literature 1 675
BIOGRAPHICAL QUESTIONS (P. 650)
1. Are facts about the writer's life relevant to your understanding of the work?
2. Are characters and incidents in the work versions of the writer's own experiences? Are they treated factually or imaginatively?
3. How do you think the writer's values are reflected in the work?
PSYCHOLOGICAL QUESTIONS (P. 652)
1. How does the work reflect the author's personal psychology?
2. What do the characters' or speaker's emotions and behavior reveal about their psychological states? What types of personalities are they?
3. Are psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire pre-sented consciously or unconsciously by the author?
FORMALIST QUESTIONS (P. 648)
1. How do various elements of the work - plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, and so on- reinforce its meanings?
2. How are the elements related to the whole?
3. What is the work's major organizing principle? How is its structure unified?
4. What issues does the work raise? How does the work's structure resolve those issues?