The following are ideas for our third critical analysis. pick one of the following topics. Again: please include title of the essay, then 3-5 pages, typed, double-spaced. Support your essay by citing specifics (quotes, events, style, language, characters/speaker(s), point of view narrator, tone, symbolism, setting, irony, details, etc.) from the work(s). Refer to page numbers in short, parenthetical citations for stories and poems. Focus your essay solely on poetry or a combination (comparison/contrast) between two or more poems. You may also write about a choice other than the topics listed below (for example, you could consider one or more of the poems from a critical perspective).
1.Dickinson once described herself as a literary artist by saying, My business is circumference. Looking at one or two poems in detail, discuss how they both explain and express this characterization of her poetry.
2.Looking at two or three of Dickinson’s poems, compare and contrast them in regards to their them; symbols or imagery (fly, death, that slant of light, etc.); tone; her use of abstraction; perspective, etc. OR look at how the rhythm of certain lines relate to their meanings and contribute to the overall meaning or effect of the poem. You are welcome to do some research and use sources if you so desire, but this does not have to be a research paper. At this level, I would rather see students working out their own readings of Dickinson’s work.
3.Write an essay that examines.
A.Dickinson as a religious writer
B.Dickinsons characteristic brevity in the explanation of situations and the expression of ideas
C.Dickinsons use of personal but not totally disclosed subject matter
D.Dickinsons use of imagery and symbolism: sources, types, meanings
E.Dickinsons humor and irony
F.Dickinsons ideas about love, separation, personal pain, war, death, faith, religion, science, the soul
G.Dickinsons power as a poet
H.Dickinsons poems as they appear on the page: the relationship of meaning to lines, stanzas, capitalization, punctuation, the use of the dash
I.The structuring of a number of Dickinsons poems: subject, development, conclusions
J.The character of the speaker in a number of Dickinsons poems: personality, things noticed, accuracy of conclusions. If there appears to be a listener in the poems, what effect does this listener have on the speaker?
K.Dickinsons verse forms and use of rhymes.
L.Themes of exhilaration, sorrow, pity, triumph, and regret in Dickinson
4.Consider the subject of war as brought out in Jarrells The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, Hardys The Man He Killed, and Northrops Ogichidag. What ideas are common to the poems? What ideas are distinct and unique? In an essay, on the basis of your comparison, argue that poetry is an excellent vehicle for the expression of moral and political ideas.
5.In an essay, describe how accurate the proposition is that poetry is a particularly compressed form of expression. To support your position, you might refer to one or more of the following poems: Dickinsons Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Franciss Catch, or Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
The following poems can be compared/contrasted: You will need to decide what elements/themes they have in common:
Brooks, The Mother / Olds, The Planned Child
Dickinson, Some Keep the Sabbath / Donne, Batter My Heart
Evans, I Am a Black Woman / Hughes, The Negro Speaks
E. Browning, How Do I Love Thee / Shakespeare, Shall I Compare Thee
Frost, Mending Wall / Hardy, The Man He Killed
Angelou, Still I Rise / Donne, Death Be Not Proud
Hughes, Let America / Whitman, I Hear America Singing
Henley, When You Are Old / Yeats, When You Are Old
6.Basing your work on the poems in this chapter (13) by Coleridge, Griffin, and Hopkins, write an essay discussing the poetic use of images drawn from the natural world. What sorts of references do the poets make? What attitudes do they express about the details they select? What is the relationship between the images and religious views? What judgments about topics such as nature, God, humanity, and friendship do the poets show by their images?
7.Consider some of the rhetorical figures in the poems of this chapter (14). Write an essay describing the importance of figures of speech in creating emphasis and in extending and deepening the ideas of poetry. Here are some possible topics, all on poems in this chapter.
Paradox in Wyatts I Find No Peace or Whitmans Facing West from Californias Shores.
Metaphor in Mintys Conjoined or Piercys A Work of Artifice.
Metaphor and simile in Hardys The Convergence of the Twain.
A comparison of contrasts and paradoxes in Queen Elizabeths On Monsieurs Departure and Wyatts I Find No Peace.
Similes in Donnes A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, personification in the poems by Wordsworth or Keats; metonymy in Keatss To Autumn.
please only choose one of the numbered topics to write about
The referenced chapters are from the book, “Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing”, Compact Edition (6th Edition) 6th Edition.
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