English 210.01 Fall 1997 Flores
Writing Assignment: Essay 1--Critical Theory and Practice in Analyzing Poetry, approximately 1200 words (5 pp. double-spaced)
Due: 9-18-97
Peer-editing: Bring substantial (two-thirds or more) word-processed draft to share, two copies, on 9-16-97.
In preparing to write this essay, be sure that you have kept up with the assigned reading (up through Sept. 11 and better yet, through Sept. 16). Chapter 12 of Approaching Poetry (222-47) and the section on "Writing Short Papers About Poetry" (454-68) are particularly helpful, but you should also keep in view the major premises and problems posed by the selections from Critical Terms for Literary Study. Although not required, note that I have placed additional resources on reserve that offer advice on writing about poetry (Poger) and writing critical essays (Warhol)--see Reading, Writing, and the Study of Literature.
This assignment, like others for this semester, invites you to engage with our material by exploring the importance of critical theory in relation to a specific work of literature. You may choose to focus your analysis on a particular poem, with your approach or understanding of what's at stake in the poem framed or shaped to some extent by our "theoretical" readings. Or you may explore the significance of a particular assertion or argument about the nature of language and literature or the process of interpretation etc., and then use a poem to illustrate your concerns. In other words, whether explicitly foregrounded or clearly implied, "theoretical" concerns should help shape your essay in significant ways: you should focus your explanations (arguments, analyses, interpretations) on the literary text, though you may devote some significant attention to theoretical concepts, questions, and problems.
For those who may emphasize an analysis of a poem, I expect that the most interesting and thoughtful essays will tend to combine descriptive and interpretive approaches by linking how a poem and its reader(s) produce its meaning(s), why it does so, and to what purposes and effects. Our class discussion should also provide you with examples of various ways to address and to identify problems of interpretation and reception, and the importance of considering the work's historical context and genre. The poem in question should come from our class (see suggestions below) unless I grant permission (well beforehand) for analysis of other works. I also want to note that you should not submit an essay for this class that you have submitted ( or intend to submit) for a grade in another course.
For those who decide to address more directly an argument or explanation presented in one of the essays in Critical Terms for Literary Study (see a few suggestions below, but you could choose from a variety of passages or points), be careful to try to explain and consider thoughtfully what is being argued or suggested in the essay, and why it matters or what difference it makes. Can you illustrate by exploring a particular poem through the terminology and argumentative or interpretive strategies of the essay? What is gained? Are there limits or reservations about such a premise or approach?
Especially for this first essay, be careful of addressing too broad a topic, and generally you will probably be more successful in focusing a hypothesis if you do not attempt to compare two different literary texts (unless they are short poems). You need not refer to secondary sources of criticism, but if you have, for example, useful historical information on your topic you may incorporate this into your argument, and as I note above, you should also make an effort to "theorize" your analysis with some reference to our texts' comments on critical theory and practice. You should consider your audience to be familiar with the literary work you write about (avoid mere summary), using quotes, paraphrase, and summary primarily to support your analysis; however, when focusing or introducing your analysis of a critical approach (theory), you will probably rely more heavily on such explanatory (expository) techniques as quotes, paraphrase, and summary. Also keep in mind that your critical analysis should supplement or build upon our work; in short, don't simply repeat an argument we have already substantially discussed unless you were engaged substantially in that discussion.
Some writers use the first paragraph to describe an interpretative problem that arises in a specific passage or in a character (and the relations of that character to others or to the text's cultural context), or to present a conflict of critical approaches to the work. Here are some more ways to question and to explore the functions and effects of these texts. I encourage you to confer with me and your peers in developing your ideas and your writing.
CRITICAL ISSUES YOU MIGHT CONSIDER
1. Explore how a specific poem represents a particular cultural (social, political, economic, class, religion, gender--ideology) perspective or conflict that may be peculiar to its historical context.
2. What kinds of solutions does the poem offer to the problems it articulates? Why?
3. Explore the relation between a poem's "style" (its language, structure, diction, figurative language) and what it represents or produces (performs, effects, function).
4. Consider, perhaps in relation to a specific poem, these statements by J. Hillis Miller: "Seen from this point of view, fictions may be said to have tremendous importance not as the accurate reflectors of a culture but as the makers of that culture and as the unostentatious, but therefore all the more effective, policemen of that culture" ("Narrative" Critical Terms for Literary Study 69); "Stories, however perfectly conceived and powerfully written, however moving, do not accomplish successfully their allotted function" (72).
5. Explain why Mitchell concludes that "Representation is that by which we make our will known and, simultaneously, that which alienates our will from ourselves in both the aesthetic and political spheres" (Critical Terms 21). You may refer to Browning's poem, but can you illustrate some of the issues/concerns he raises by referring to another literary work from our course materials/handouts?
6. McLaughlin states: "But if figures of speech rely on an accepted system of thought, they also reveal to the critical reader that it is a system, that it is not a simple reflection of reality. . . . Figures of speech . . . are potential weaknesses in the system" (CT 89). Briefly recount McLaughlin's analysis of figurative language, and illustrate the point he makes in the quote above by referring to a poem from our course texts.
Poems you might consider for this essay (in Approaching Poetry)
"What He Thought" (9-11)
"The Victims" (30)
Your Poem, Man . . . " (46)
"Language Lesson, 1976" (49)
"Ballad of Birmingham" (73)
"In Westminster Abbey" (75)
"My Last Duchess" (76)
"The Poem You Asked For" (99)
"The Ball Poem" (105)
"Journey of the Magi" (112)
"The Pomegranate" (115)
"Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God" (147)
"Daddy" (187)
"To His Coy Mistress" (231)
"Facing It" (260)
"Tiara" (262)
"Dover Beach" (267)
"Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races" (271)
"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" (316)
"Do Not Go Gentle" (350)
"Dulce et Decorum Est" (341)
"Home Burial" (handout)
"Bitch" (287)
"I Cannot Remember All the Times . . . " (287)
"Theme for English B" (342)
"Naming of Parts" (351)
"The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle" (436)
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