Analyzing Romantic Poetry
In this task, you will closely examine a poem from the Romantic period. You will then write an essay that explains the poem by presenting a claim about it and providing an argument to support the claim. Your essay will also include an analysis of how specific elements affect the poem as a whole.
Part A
Choose one of the following poems:
“The World Is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth
“Mutability” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“This Living Hand” by John Keats
“Work Without Hope” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Which poem did you choose, and what influenced your selection?
Part B
Once you have chosen a poem, read it carefully.
What is the poem’s theme or central idea? How does the author’s use of figurative language or other poetic devices and what effect do those have on the poem? How would you describe the tone of the poem? How would you describe the structure or organization of the poem?
After you have read the poem thoroughly, present your analysis of the poem in an essay. Think of a major claim that you can make about the poem and build an argument to support that claim using evidence from the text. (An essay that contains such an argument is called an explication of a poem.)
Your claim may be a specific interpretation of the poem, a view about the poet’s attitude toward the subject, the relationship of the subject to the historical context of the poem, the significance of some element of the poem’s form, or another similar type of analysis.
Your essay should include the following:
your interpretation of the poem
textual evidence to support your interpretation
an analysis of specific elements of the poem
a discussion of how specific elements of the poem (such as theme, figurative language, or structure) affect the meaning of the entire poem
a major claim about the poem
an argument to support your claim
Next, write briefly about how you revised your essay, addressing the following points:
Did you revise certain sections of the explication?
What was the reasoning behind your decision to revise those sections?
How do you feel about the results of the revisions?
Analyze your choices in revision based on the checklist. How does your essay align with the revision checklist?
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