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ENG 2103.01 Spring 2005 Explication An explication (literally an "unfolding") examines a work of literature for a knowledge of each part, for the interrelationship among these parts, and for the ways in which each part contributes to the whole work. It considers all relevant aspects of a work–those issues that have been raised in questions that you have answered on paraphrase assignments and examinations–and deals with at least the most important of them. It is more than a paraphrase (which, though, may be a part of an explication), for it takes into account not only what the work of literature means but how it achieves its meaning. Unlike a paraphrase, an explication is an essay. That means it will have a thesis, which the writer introduces early in the essay and develops throughout by citing specific support from the literary work. That thesis may be an interpretative statement about the poem. The body of the essay will then show how specific features of the poem (for example, use of figurative language, persona and point of view, rhyme scheme, and external form) support the interpretative statement. Like all essays, an explication must follow certain conventions: for example, it must be clearly focused on the thesis, it must provide the reader with adequate background on the subject so that he or she can follow the argument, it should be clearly organized, and it should adhere to the customs of standard English grammar and spelling. Above all, it should convince the reader that the thesis is valid. Your explication, which must be typed and will probably be two or three pages in length, does not need to be documented (unless you use secondary sources–which will probably irrelevant to the explication). (But if you do use a secondary source, you must cite it; otherwise you’ve committed plagiarism, which will automatically produce a failing grade.) While you should do so sparingly, you can quote from the poem you are explicating, and you must be sure that your quotations are completely accurate. You may choose a poem for explication from among the following in the textbook:
While all you will turn in is the essay itself, it is a very good idea to go through the ten questions that you explored on the second paraphrase assignment as well as to consider its contexts (literary tradition, historical and cultural environments). It would also be useful to re-order the poem grammatically and to do a full paraphrase. If you do all of this as part of your preliminary work, writing the explication will be much easier. The worst possible thing to do is to wait until the last minute and sit down in front of a blank computer screen with the intention of producing the essay off the top of your head. The explication is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, 21 April. It may be turned in up until the beginning of the final examination period for this course on Monday, 2 May, at 8:00 a.m. with the loss of one letter. After that it cannot be turned in at all. ***** A Study of Reading Habits When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my cloak and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues.
Don’t read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who’s yellow and keeps the store, Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap. –Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Sample Explication: Philip Larkin’s "A Study of Reading Habits" The first noteworthy feature of Philip Larkin’s "A Study of Reading Habits" is the ironic discrepancy between the formal language of its title and the colloquial, slangy, even vulgar language of the poem itself. The title by its tone implies a formal sociological research paper, possibly one that samples a cross section of a population and draws conclusions about people’s reading. The poem presents, instead, the confessions of one man whose attitudes toward reading have progressively deteriorated to the point where books seem to him "a load of crap." The poem’s real subject, moreover, is not the man’s reading habits but the revelation of life and character they provide. The poem is patterned in three stanzas having an identical rhyme scheme (abcbac) and the same basic meter (iambic-anapestic trimeter). The stanzaic division of the poem corresponds to the internal structure of meaning, for the three stanzas present the speaker at three stages of his life: as schoolboy, adolescent, and adult. The chronological progression and narrative internal structure is signaled in the first lines of the stanza by the words "When," "Later," and "now." The "now" is the present out of which the adult speaks, recalling the two earlier periods. The boy he remembers in stanza 1 was unhappy, both in his home and, even more so, at school. Perhaps small and bullied by bigger boys, probably an indifferent student, making poor grades, and scolded by teachers, he found a partial escape from his miseries through reading. The books he read–tales of action and adventure, pitting good guys against bad guys, full of physical conflict, and ending with victory for the good guy–enabled him to construct a fantasy life in which he identified with the virtuous hero and in his imagination beat up villains twice his size, thus reversing the situations of his real life. In stanza 2 the speaker recalls his adolescence when his dreams were of sexual rather than muscular prowess. True to the prediction of "ruining [his] eyes" in stanza 1, he had to wear spectacles, which he describes hyperbolically as an "inch-thick"–a further detriment to his social life. To compensate for his lack of success with girls, he envisioned himself as a Dracula-figure with cloak and fangs, enjoying a series of sexual triumphs. His reading continued to feed his fantasy life, but instead of identifying with the virtuous hero, he identified with the glamorous, sexually ruthless villain. The poet puns on the word "ripping" (the speaker had "ripping times in the dark"), implying both the British slang meaning of "splendid" and violence of the rapist who rips the clothes off his victim. In stanza 3 the speaker, now a young adult, confesses that he no longer reads much. His accumulated experience of personal failure and his long familiarity with his shortcomings have made it impossible for him to identify, even in fantasy, with the strong virtuous hero or the viciously impotent villain. He can no longer hide from himself the truth that he resembles more closely the weak secondary characters of the escapist tales he picks up. He recognizes himself in the undependable dude in westerns who fails the heroine or the cowardly storekeeper who knuckles under to the bad guys. He therefore has turned to a more powerful means of escape, one that protects him from dwelling on what he knows about himself: drunkenness. His final words are memorable–so "unpoetical" in the traditional sense, so poetically effective in characterizing this speaker. "Get stewed," he tells himself. "Books are a load of crap." It would be a serious mistake to identify the persona of the poem (or his attitudes or his language) with the poet. Poets, writers of books themselves, do not think that "books are a load of crap." Philip Larkin, moreover, an English poet and graduate of Oxford, was for many years until his death a university librarian. "A Study of Reading Habits" is both dramatic narrative and ironic description. It presents a first-person speaker who has been unable to cope with the reality of his life in any of its stages and has therefore turned toward various means of escaping it. His confessions reveal a progressive deterioration of values (from good to evil to drunken indifference) and a decline in reading tastes (from adventure stories to prurient sexual novels to none) that reflect his downward slide. |
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