Week 10 Discussion

To prepare you for Essay 3, the Research Paper, this discussion asks you to begin explicating and analyzing William Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Instructions

Make sure you have read the Week 10 Instructional Content before proceeding with this discussion.

In a response of at least 250 words, explicate and analyze one of the following three sonnets from the Week 10 Instructional Content:

• “Sonnet 73”
• “Sonnet 116”
• “Sonnet 130”

An explication is a close-reading of a poem or short prose passage. It takes what is implicit or subtle in a work of literature and makes it explicit and clear. Literary language tends to be densely packed with meaning, and your job is to unfold that meaning and lay it out for your reader. Pay special attention to such elements of the language as syntax (sentence structure), style, imagery, figurative language (such as similes and metaphors), diction (word choice), and perhaps even grammar and punctuation. The job of an explication is to point out salient elements of style and to explain the purpose and effect of these elements within the text.

However, avoid simply walking through the text line by line, pointing out interesting features of style as they occur. A response or essay written in this way can devolve into little more than summary or restatement of the literature in more prosaic language. A better idea is to isolate various features of the literature on which you will focus and then deal separately with the specifics and implications of each.

In your explication and analysis, consider the following:

• Which elements of poetry (Schlib and Clifford 192–197) do you notice in the sonnet? How do these devices enhance meaning?
• Which images are most striking in the sonnet? Do they seem conventional? Surprising? Experimental? Why?
• A sonnet often reveals its own logic in order to argue for a point of view. What is the argument of this sonnet? Do you find it persuasive? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What is the rhyme scheme of this sonnet? Which words are aligned as a result of this scheme? What effect does this have? What does it reveal?
• How does Shakespeare use enjambment (Schlib and Clifford 196) and caesura Download caesurato manage the tempo of the sonnet? What effects does this create?

Ultimately, your argument should make an interpretive claim (see Schlib and Clifford, Chapter 3). Think of your Discussion Board post as potential body paragraphs that you could adapt for Essay 3.