RVP: Term 2, Week 3
Matthew Arnold
The essay
 Consider it as expansion of previous paper, rather than
an invitation to forget close reading
 Suggestion: at least 3,500 words spent on close reading
 Review materials on website if unfamiliar with
expectations of essay form
Expectation and
Fulfillment/Cancellation
 Poems may set up an expectation of a response
 Of a rhyme
 Of a resolution to a problem (plot or idea)
 The idea may be fulfilled, or may be canceled
Metalepsis
 Literary texts may present ideas at multiple levels
 Example: allegory
 Literal story (there are a bunch of people chained in a cave)
 Figurative level (about perception, the nature of truth,
philosophy)
 More levels possible
 Example, “The Scholar Gypsy”:
 Actual story of the scholar-gypsy
 What that story means to the narrator
 What the process of meaning-making says about how humans
in general make meaning
“Memorial Verses”
Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb—
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
Groups
 Choose a stanza from [unread poem]
 Explicate completely
 Discuss how rhyme scheme, verse form coheres
thematically with this passage
 Address three moments of significant diction
 Discuss metalepsis within the poem: what are its
multiple levels?
 Ask a well-formed discussion question