Advice for tackling the two essay questions in Unit 6: Critical Approaches

Question A asks for analysis and comparison of texts in the pre-release anthology and of texts printed on the paper. You must analyse TWO of the unseen pieces; you are advised to compare with these TWO or THREE of the pre-release pieces. No more, no fewer.

In this paper, a summary of the approach you must use is as follows:

In question A, use your analytical approaches to find meanings in the texts; in question B, use the texts to exemplify the principles of each of your chosen analytical approaches.

THE KEY AREAS HERE ARE: AUDIENCE & PURPOSE; CHOICE OF LANGUAGE; IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT VALUES

Advice for tackling question A

Address the topic: if the booklet is about 'heroism', then the unseen passages will be too, and your first approach might be to analyse quite how each text deals with this topic.

For example, does it take a positive or a negative approach? Does it write for an audience which shares certain values? Does it therefore make certain assumptions of the reader? Does the piece demonstrate bias or subtext? How, and why? And so on.

In some important ways, all texts are persuasive. How are your chosen texts persuasive: what point of view are they promoting, and how are they working on the reader?

Although I recommend you introduce you chosen pieces (and the work on the 'unseens') with a brief sentence or two giving an overview of the subject matter and theme of each, do not go on to present discrete, separate analyses: integrate the analysis so that you move freely amongst your chosen texts to explore common themes and techniques and reveal interesting contrasts.

You are required to describe and interpret a wide range of textual features. Key phrases to understand and use where appropriate:

Advice for answering question B

In section B, you must explain the kind of analysis you used in section A: you must explain and justify your own method.

It is really important that you actually do describe the analysis you've used: it looks really stupid if you actually write about an analytical approach which - however interesting - you've not actually used!

The approaches to a text which we are going to explore are as follows:

close, practical criticism

You deny yourself any knowledge of the writer or of relevant history: you focus on how the text works as literature, its patterns and shape, its form and its use of poetic devices.

historicism: context & genre

You recognise that texts change meaning over time. You use historical context to clarify some of the ways in which meaning is created. You may use some biographical information about the author to explore meanings.

You recognise that each genre makes specific demands of a writer: a novel must contain characters, for example. You use this understanding to clarify some of the ways in which meaning is created.

You know that some texts are important because they capture the zeitgeist or the spirit of the times.

psychoanalysis

Some books have stood the test of time and some haven't. This may be because they're 'better written' (which is where 'practical criticism' comes in), or it may be because they catch the 'spirit of the times' (which is where historicism comes in), or it may be because they touch themes which go to the very heart of the human psyche. How do they do this?

discourse & stylistics

Treating the literary as non-literary, for example, or analysing the accidental or general use of language requires a more 'linguistic' approach.

However, the concept of 'discourse' is really useful for any text. Although linguistics students use this term to refer to any use of language (written, spoken, considered, spontaneous, sophisticated, naïve), for us it's best to see it as an understanding that all texts mediate between a writer and a reader, who are in some sort of 'discourse'. Interpreting a text like this means that we ignore what 'characters' say (as it were) and focus on what the 'novelist' is saying.

The other three strands - in a way - explain the reasons why written texts 'stand the test of time': they're well written, or they touch on psychological truths, or they offer insights into the philosophical, cultural and social values of another time. Discourse analysis applies especially - but not only - to texts which are not at all designed for posterity - like a chat on a bus, or a leaflet advertising a disco. But you can also apply such analysis to more literary endeavours, especially where, as in some plays, the writer is trying to adopt an 'informal' approach to language.

You may also be interested in a fifth strand,

deconstruction

You can find meaning in unusual places. For example, don't brush over inconsistencies in the text. Get the end of your crow-bar into the gaps of inconsistency and work the piece apart to reveal another layer of meanings. This is an excellent way of revealing the 'underlying assumptions' beneath a text: values the writer believes (consciously or not) he shares with his readers.

For example, in Jane Eyre, we seem to be following the life of an heroic woman, proud of her individuality and defending her independence, when she can. against all the odds. But then, the climax of the book involves her marrying a man. A feminist reading of the book may see this as a complete abnegation of the values the book appears to espouse. What do we gain when we poke around in this area? Well, we find that Jane Eyre isn't quite the original work of art it may at first appear. Much of the indignity which the character of Jane Eyre encounters is the stock in trade of the Gothic novel; Victorian values suggested that the fruition of a woman's life was marriage. Charlotte Brontë unconsciously shares these values, so writes a book which doesn't quite add up.

Wilfred Owen hated the war but begged to go back to the front to be with 'his men'. What a hero.

Or, to put it another way: Wilfred Owen hated the war but begged to go back to the front so he could kill Germans.

How does the tension between these two statements inform a reading of Owen's poetry?