Students need to explicate the poem using the New Critical school of thought. Students will have some experience explicating poems. We will explicate Shakespeare’s sonnet number 73. I will have already put an explanation of the different types of sonnets on the board for students to copy down into their notebooks. Students will get a better understanding of the history of the sonnet studying Shakespeare, even though he is obviously not post-war.
A. Students will read the sonnet to themselves. I will then read the sonnet aloud to them, and then they will read it again by themselves.
B. Students will try to explicate the poem in groups of two or three. They will follow these questions. They can either discuss the questions or write down answers. After they’ve answered and discussed the questions, they will have completed their explication.
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- What is this poem about? Who is speaking? Who is being addressed?
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- What is the tone of the poem?
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- What is being said in the first quatrain? How?
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- Why is the time of year significant?
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- What are the leaves a metaphor for? How do you know?
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- What do the boughs and the choirs represent? How does this reinforce the theme?
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- Why does the poet start with this?
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- What is being said in the second quatrain? How?
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- How does the addressee see the speaker?
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- What function does night serve? What tone does this create?
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- What affect does the alliteration have here?
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- What is being said in the third quatrain? How?
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- What can you notice about the first phrase? How does it compare to the second quatrain’s beginning? What is the point of this?
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- What are the ashes a metaphor for? What is to be inferred from this?
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- What is the speaker trying to say to his audience?
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- What is being said in the couplet? How?
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- Why does this make the poem more poignant?
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- What is the desired outcome from this poem?
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C. After students answer their questions in their groups, each group will present their answers and explication of the poem to the rest of the class. We will discuss the differences and similarities of the answers.
D. Students will have to explicate Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son” for homework.