- Part 1: Reflection on portfolio (/10) + podcast assignment (/10) = without preparation
- Part 2: Pronunciation (/20)
- You receive a set of allocated exercises from the IPA guide (10 words) that you need to pronounce correctly
- IPA guide + material class 5
- Part 3: Literature (/20)
- You receive a set of three questions (one open question + one detailed question + terminology)
- Analysis of "Zombie"
- Analysis of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
- Analysis of The Crucible
- Analysis of selected poems from class 8
- Analysis of selected dystopian prose from class 10
- Literary elements and terminology from class 3 + class 8 + class 10
How to Analyse a Poem: CLIFS
- The importance of context and tone
- Speaker:
- Is the speaker the poet or a specific persona?
- Omniscient or first-person witness?
- Primary Audience:
- Who is the poem written for initially?
- Particular or general audience?
- Setting:
- What information is provided about the time and/or place where the poem takes place?
- Why does or doesn't the poet mention it?
- Identifiable time period?
- Historical, political, and social context?
- Tone:
- The mood or attitude conveyed by the poet's style.
- Does it change throughout the poem (difference between beginning and end)?
- Tension:
- What is the conflict or point of tension in the poem?
- External or internal conflict (physical, spiritual, moral, philosophical, social)?
- Is it resolved?
How to Analyse a Poem: CLIFS - The Importance of Language
- Word Choice:
- Is it formal (ceremonial) or informal (conversational)?
- Meaning:
- What are the connotations and denotations of particular words?
- Are certain words repeated?
- Are they abstract or concrete, literal or metaphorical?
- Are they used in a special way, or do they express an unusual or interesting idea?
- Anaphora:
- Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive lines.
- Ellipsis:
- Homonym:
- Spelling and pronunciation are the same, but meaning is different.
How to Analyse a Poem: CLIFS - The Importance of Language (Continued)
- Homophone:
- Pronunciation is the same, but spelling and meaning are different.
- Homograph:
- Spelling is the same, but pronunciation and meaning are different.
- Pun:
- The clever or humorous use of a word that has more than one meaning or of words that have different meanings but sound the same (wordplay).
- Hyperbole:
- Exaggeration of a statement for emphasis.
- Onomatopoeia:
- Words containing sounds similar to the noises that they describe, e.g., to hiss.
- Parallelism:
- The use of similar structures in two or more lines.
How to Analyse a Poem: CLIFS - The Importance of Language (Continued)
- Oxymoron:
- A phrase that combines two words that seem to be the opposite of each other, e.g., a deafening silence.
- Paradox:
- Use of seemingly contradictory words or ideas to point out some underlying truth; they seem contradictory, but on closer examination you find that they are actually not.
- Personification:
- Attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or animals.
How to Analyse a Poem: CLIFS - The Importance of Imagery
- Metaphor:
- Does the poet use metaphors to make comparisons and express images or abstract ideas?
- What is the effect of the metaphors on the tone and theme of the poem?
- Simile: Comparison of one thing to another by using words 'like' or 'as', e.g., I wandered lonely as a cloud (Wordsworth)
- Metaphor: An implied comparison (words 'like' and 'as' are left out) in which one word or phrase denoting a person, an object, or an action is used instead of another to suggest a similarity between them, e.g., You're the cream in my coffee.
- Allegory: An extended metaphor, a poem in which characters and events are symbols of something else.
- Rhyme:
- Identifiable? Overall purpose or effect?
- Paired rhyme: aabb
- Crossed rhyme: abab
- Envelope rhyme: abba
- Slant rhyme: imperfect rhyme
- Eye rhymes: Rhyme of words that look the same but are actually pronounced differently, e.g., home-come, bough-rough.
- Assonance: The effect created when two syllables in words that are close together have the same vowel sound but different consonants or the same consonants but different vowels, e.g., boughs-towns, green-leaves, milk-walk, cold-killed.
- Alliteration: Series of words (in the same line) that begin with the same consonant or sound, e.g., three grey geese in a green field grazing.
- Enjambment:
- How are lines broken?
- How does the use of enjambment create a duality of meaning in the lines?
- Does it speed up the pace?
- enjambment: Breaking of a syntactic unit (phrase, clause, sentence) at the end of a line in poetry, continuing the unit into the next line(s).
- Verbs:
- Active or passive?
- Tense?
- Consistent?
- Sentence Structure:
- Complete sentences, fragments?
- Pattern?
- Word order?
- Punctuation:
- Grammatical conventions?
- Effect: speed, pauses?
- How does it affect the speed?
- Italics, bold fonts, dashes, or other uncommon fonts or punctuation devices?
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
Dulce et Decorum Est – Context
- English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
- One of the leading WWI poets
- Contrast with other patriotic war poems of the time
- Killed in action one week before the end of WWI (at the age of 25)
- Fought in the trenches of WWI
- Written in 1917; published posthumously in 1920
Dulce et Decorum Est – Context
- Speaker: an eye-witness, probably a soldier, from World War I
- Audience: society in general; it is a warning & criticism toward war
- Setting: clearly in the trenches of World War I
- Tone: very negative, harsh, and descriptive; the goal is to show the horrors of war
- Tension: internal (sense of duty and horrors of war) and external (war rips society apart)
Dulce et Decorum Est - Language Elements
- Word choice: rushed language, feeling of panic = informal language
Dulce et Decorum Est – Language Elements
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
- Onomatopoeia: hissing sound of gas
- Oxymoron: marching & sleeping
Dulce et Decorum Est – Language Elements
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Dulce et Decorum Est – Imagery
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
- Simile
- Metaphor
- Metaphor
- Symbolism: disfiguration
Dulce et Decorum Est – Imagery
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
- Simile
- Symbolism: nightmares
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
- Rhyming Scheme: crossed rhyme
- Assonance
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
- Rhyming Scheme: crossed rhyme
- Assonance: distant explosions
- Alliteration
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
- Alliteration
- Assonance
- Rhyming scheme: crossed rhyme
- Enjambment: lines are broken up at times to emphasize the horror of war (shorter & longer sentences); to emphasize the meaning of the poem
- Active tenses + active verbs (literally): action of war
- Incomplete sentences: chaos of war
- Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud
- To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Protest Poetry
- Divide the class into groups
- Each group is to analyze a different protest poem.
- Answer the following questions:
- Who wrote the poem? What is important biographical background information?
- When was the poem written? What is important historical and contextual background information?
- How do the tone of the speaker and the context of the work change your understanding of the poem?
- How do the language and rhythm contribute to the meaning, purpose, or emotional force?
- How does the imagery construct the poem's theme, tone, and purpose?
- How does the form of the poem correspond to the theme and main idea of the work?
- How do the poet's syntactical choices change or expand the ideas in the poem?
- Conclusion: what does the poem protest against?
- Present your analysis to the rest of the class.
- Divide the work amongst the group members.
- The presentation should last approximately 8 minutes.
- You will present this on the 8th of May