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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 20 hours
    Level: Intermediate

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • This unit is designed to develop the analytical skills you need for a more in-depth study of literary texts. You will learn about rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, poetic inversion, voice and line lengths and...
 

1 Approaching poetry

  • 1 Approaching poetry Resource
  • What is the point of analysing poetry? One simple answer is that the more we know about anything the more interesting it becomes: listening to music or looking at paintings with someone who can tell us...
 

2 Using this unit

  • 2 Using this unit Resource
  • In what follows, section headings like ‘Rhyme’, ‘Rhythm’, ‘Line lengths and line endings’, ‘Alliteration’, and so on, are intended to act as signposts to help you use this unit (if terms are unfamiliar,...
 

3 Rhythm

  • 3 Rhythm Resource
  • All speech has rhythm because we naturally stress some words or syllables more than others. The rhythm can sometimes be very regular and pronounced, as in a children's nursery rhyme – ‘JACK and JILL went...
 

4 Alliteration

  • 4 Alliteration Resource
  • Alliteration is the term used to describe successive words beginning with the same sound – usually, then, with the same letter.
 

5 Rhyme

  • 5 Rhyme Resource
  • If a poem rhymes, then considering how the rhyme works is always important.
 

6 Poetic inversion

  • 6 Poetic inversion Resource
  • Poetic inversion, or changing the usual word order of speech, is often linked to the need to maintain a rhythm or to find a rhyme. We noticed Pope's poetic inversion in An Essay on Criticism and...
 

7 Poems that don't rhyme

  • 7 Poems that don't rhyme Resource
  • Are poems that don't rhyme prose? Not necessarily. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), a novelist rather than a poet, and T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), known particularly for his poetry, both wrote descriptive pieces...
 

8 Voice

  • 8 Voice Resource
  • Is the speaker in a poem one and the same as the writer? Stop and consider this for a few moments. Can you think of any poems you have read where a writer has created a character, or persona, whose voice...
 

9 Line lengths and line endings

 

10 Comparing and contrasting

  • 10 Comparing and contrasting Resource
  • Often you will find that an assignment asks you to ‘compare and contrast’ poems. There's a very good reason for this, for often it is only by considering different treatments of similar subjects that we...
 

Glossary

 

References and Acknowledgements

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