For A-Z Answers

Using one of the critical perspectives below, closely read one of the following poems and present your analysis in a 1250-1500 word essay:

Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd…” (466-467)

New Historicist (Connections 157-159): Read your poem like a historical document. If you choose this perspective, you should do some research on the historical context of your poem and cite the secondary sources you find in your essay. Questions to consider from this perspective include: What would the poem have meant to its original audience? What was happening in the author’s society at the time? How does the poem comment on those events? What do we learn from the poem about the lives of everyday people of the time? What is the political message of your poem in its historical context? Does the poem reveal a historical narrative that competes with the dominant narrative of its time?

Marxist (Connections 159-160): Read your poem with any eye for economic and social class issues. If you choose this perspective, you should do some research on the historical context of your poem and cite the secondary sources you find in your essay. Questions to consider from this perspective include: What does your poem say about money and wealth? What does it say about work, labor, or leisure? Does the poem subvert or reaffirm the existing power structures of its time? What does the poem say about social class or social mobility? Is the poem politically radical or conservative?

Gender-Based/Feminist/Queer (Connections 160-162): Analyze your poem to see what it reveals about gender roles and stereotypes. You may or may not need to consult outside sources to perform this type of analysis, so if you choose this perspective you can decide for yourself whether your argument necessitates research outside of the poem itself. Questions to consider from this perspective include: What cultural presuppositions concerning gender does the poem reveal? What does the poem say about masculinity? Femininity? What does the poem say about gender and power? What does it say about sex and power? How does gender function in the poem? How does the poem deal with homosexuality or homo-eroticism?

Psychoanalytic: Analyze your poem to see what it tells us about the human/cultural psyche and our perceptions of the world around us. If you choose this perspective, you may want do some research on the psychoanalytic concepts that you see operating in your poem. Questions to consider from this perspective include: What does the poem say about the nature of the human self and identity? What does the poem say about self-knowledge? What does the poem say about sexual desire or desire in general? What does the poem reveal about the cultural unconscious or symbolic order of the society from which it springs? How does the poem rationalize subjects like death or animality? As you will recall from class, I find the characterization of this approach in the “Psychological Approach” section of Connections (162-164) to be highly outdated and somewhat inaccurate, so don’t rely on it as a guide for this perspective. Specifically, do not attempt to psychoanalyze the author of the poem as Connections suggests critics of this persuasion do.

Guidelines:

Your essay should have a unifying thesis, which expresses your interpretation of the poem’s message on a subject important to thinkers from the critical perspective you choose, and you should support that thesis with evidence from the poem and secondary sources. Please do not systematically answer each of the questions that I’ve listed with the perspectives, since an essay that does this would lack a sense of unity. Furthermore, not all of the questions I give will be relevant to all of the poems from which you may choose. I’m giving these questions only as a guide to help you start thinking from any one of these perspectives.

The quality of the sources you consult will have an effect on your grade. I consider a source that appears exclusively electronically (i.e. a print edition does not exist) to be a weak source—especially if the website does not have editors. A strong source would be a book or an article from a scholarly (typically peer-reviewed) journal. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a strong source that can help you understand not only the meaning of words, but also how they have been used historically. You can access the OED on-campus at oed.com or off-campus through the Sawyer Library website.

Logistics:

Four copies of a rough draft (at least 950 words) due: Thursday 7 November

Workshop: Tuesday 12 November

Final draft with revision worksheets due: Thursday 14 November