Unit Goal:
Students will be able to write an analysis of “any” poem of literary merit connecting a variety of literary devices – including tone, poetical structure, figurative language, diction, syntax, etc. – with the poem as a whole and be able to write a timed-AP analysis essay scoring in the upper half on the AP rubric.
4 – On an AP poetry prompt the student can successfully answer the prompt and write an essay scoring a 7 or higher on the AP rubric.
3 – On an AP poetry prompt the student can successfully answer the prompt and write an essay scoring a 5 or higher on the AP rubric.
2 – On an AP poetry prompt the student cannot successfully answer the prompt and write an analysis essay. Student scores 3-4 on the AP rubric.
1 - Student is unable to write an analysis essay.
Today, I want to discuss "The Death of the Hired-Man", "Home Burial". But first let's revisit"The Colonel" and talk about Literary Theories, and Introductions to Essays.
Essay on "The Second Coming"
Things to think about when we discuss "The Death of the Hired-Man"
A) Overall meaning - make sure your thesis reference the overall meaning of the poem, section, or text.
B) Titles of poems.
C) Form or structure or where the poem breaks structure
D) Tone
E) Literary Devices - allusion, symbol, metaphor, syntax, enjambment,
F) Speaker/story
G) Literal level vs. analysis
Literary Theories (from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama)
Formalist Criticism: This approach
regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be
examined on its own terms." All the elements necessary for understanding
the work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the
formalist critic are the elements of form-style, structure, tone, imagery,
etc.-that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to
determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its
effects upon readers.
This is also called, “New Criticism” and was especially
promoted by T.S. Eliot.
Biographical Criticism: This approach "begins with the simple but
central insight that literature is written by actual people and that
understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the
work. "Hence, it often affords a practical method by which readers can
better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to
take the biographical facts of a writer's life too far in criticizing the works
of that writer: the biographical critic "focuses on explicating the literary
work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author's life. Biographical
data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant
material."
Gender Criticism: This approach "examines how sexual identity influences the
creation and reception of literary works." Originally an offshoot of feminist
movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including
the so-called "masculinist" approach recently advocated by poet
Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a
central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western
thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature "full
of unexamined 'male-produced'
assumptions." Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance
by analyzing and combatting such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why none
of the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a
husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics
include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a
text" and "examining how the images of men and women in imaginative
literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the
sexes from achieving total equality."
Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that "literature" exists not as an
artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and
the mind of a reader. It attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's
mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing,
is a creative process. According to reader-response critics, literary texts do
not "contain" a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual
readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations
of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may
find the work shockingly different. Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes
how "religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also
overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same
text with different assumptions." Though this approach rejects the notion
that a single "correct" reading exists for a literary work, it does
not consider all readings permissible: "Each text creates limits to its possible
interpretations."
Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach "rejects the traditional assumption
that language can accurately represent reality." Deconstructionist critics
regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium-the words "tree"
or "dog," for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental
images for different people-and therefore, because literature is made up of
words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. According to critic Paul
de Man, deconstructionists insist on "the impossibility of making the
actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual
signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified." As a result, deconstructionist
critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a
text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist
criticism, but whereas formalists' primary goal is to locate unity within a
text, "how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning," deconstructionists
try to show how the text "deconstructs," "how it can be broken
down into mutually irreconcilable positions." Other goals of deconstructionists
include (1) challenging the notion of authors' "ownership" of texts
they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2)
focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to
understand how a some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as
"truth."
From Lance Balla:
1. Do not rewrite all
or part of the prompt. The AP Reading subjects
readers to over 1200 essays, so they yearn for an introduction that does not
have the same phrase that they have read almost a thousand times already. You can get your thesis across effectively
without reusing the words that are on the page, and the reader will think that you
are an original thinker.
2. Make sure that you
include the title of the book and the author’s name. You know what novel you are going to discuss; share
that with your reader! Also BE SURE TO
UNDERLINE THE TITLE OF THE NOVEL YOU ARE DISCUSSING! Remember to give the
reader every reason to believe you are a competent writer.
3. Provide some
context for you discussion. As you jump into your
discussion make sure you provide some clues as to who or what you are about to
discuss. For example, rather than merely
saying “Codi, blah, blah, blah...”, say “Codi, the young woman who is the
central character in Kingsolver’s novel Animal Dreams..”.
4. PROVIDE A THESIS THAT IS CLEAR, CONCISE AND
SOMEHOW RESPONDS TO THE PROMPT! It is critical that you
provide a specific direction in your introduction. You do that by making certain you have a
thesis. Remember that your thesis needs to specifically respond to the prompt.
5. Avoid the “Carl
Sagan” introduction. Carl Sagan, one of the more
interesting people to come along in a while, had a show called “Cosmos.” In that show he would often say “For billions
and billions of years, man has (insert whatever we have wondered about here)...” As young writers you sometimes have a
tendency to try and prove your thesis is important by claiming that it
addresses some struggle that has been occurring for generations. Avoid this impulse. Get to the discussion of your novel
immediately; do not worry about vast, unsolvable issues.
6. Do not talk about
“the Reader” and the effect a passage may or may not have on “the Reader”. It is best not to try and speak for all of the
people who have ever read a particular passage.
It is your task to discuss the effect a literary device has within the
given passage; do not discuss its “effect on the reader.”
7. Avoid wild
speculation and official judgment. Do not speculate as to how a
book may have been interpreted had not certain events occurred (sounds obvious,
but you would be surprised how often it happens.) Also, unless you are asked to comment on the
quality of a novel, which never happens on the AP exam, avoid singing its
praise (i.e. “Kingsolver’s brilliantly written masterpiece of modern
fiction...”) or dismissing it. If you
are writing about a novel it is assumed that it is a novel of literary merit.
