Assignment
ONE-page Explication of the Gospel of Luke (ESV)
Explicating a Lyric as defined by Leland Ryken
The key to a good discussion or explication of a lyric is to have an orderly and discernible procedure, so a reader or listener knows what is going on. The best plan of attack is to move from the large to the small according to the following fourfold procedure.
1. Identifying the topic, theme (what the poem says about the topic), underlying situation or occasion (if one is implied). This part of the explication should produce an understanding of what unifies the poem.
2. Laying out the structure of the poem, including the following considerations (using whichever ones are appropriate for a given poem):
a. Identifying whether the primary controlling element is expository (a sequence of ideas or emotions), descriptive (of either character or scene), or dramatic (an address to an implied listener).
b. Dividing the poem into its topical units from beginning to end, thus showing the sequential flow of the poem.
c. Identifying underlying contrasts that organize the poem.
d. Determining whether a given unit develops the theme through repetition, catalog, association, or contrast.
e. Applying the framework of theme and variation.
3. Progressing through the poem unit by unit and analyzing the poetic "texture" (in contrast to the "structure" already discussed). This means identifying and exploring the meanings of the figures of speech and poetic devices discussed in the previous chapter of this book. We should isolate whatever unit lends itself to separate consideration; it might be an individual image or figure of speech, a line, a verse, or a group of verses.
4. Techniques of versification (in biblical poetry, parallelism) or patterning that make up part of the artistry and seem worthy of comment. For example, the imagery in Psalm 1 is organized around an envelope pattern in which the metaphors of the assembly and the path appear early and late, with harvest imagery occurring in the middle. After we have said all that we wish to say about the structure and meaning of a biblical lyric, there tends to remain a residue of artistic beauty that simply deserves comment and admiration.
Title: How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It
Author: Leland Ryken
Publisher: Zondervan, 2016.