Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Orientation

This is Unit Seventeen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one named the age four familiar writers share and set five expectations. This part gives the exam's questions, the procedure, the traps, and the checks. Part one's governing idea was that this unit introduces no new writer and no new term. This part pays it off at its close, where the answers are found still to come from the passage: nothing in an orientation unit answers a question by itself; every expectation exists to make a first reading faster and a wrong one less likely. First, three question types cluster on this band, all mechanical, and the board's own sample puts four of ten on one Renaissance sonnet; a four-step procedure follows. Then five traps, from devotion read into diction to Milton read at speed. Then what a candidate does not need against five facts worth holding, and the likely shapes: the sonnet, the dramatic extract, and prose as suspended as the verse. Then the century's range, where the band stops, form reversed inside two generations, the record with no new terms, and decision D6 applied to an age. Last, one check for an unplaceable passage, what to do when it fails, and three things to carry. By the end you will be able to run the procedure. To defeat five traps. To hold five facts and expect three shapes. To treat the band as a century. And to check a passage in a second and carry three things.

Three entries to start: the three question types that cluster on this band, the board's own Renaissance item, and a four-step procedure whose first step prevents the most errors.

Three types cluster here.

AIL 1631 What the Exam Asks of This Band

Word in context, because the diction has shifted. Paraphrase and restatement, because the syntax is inverted. Device identification, because the figures are dense. Three of the seven types cluster here, and all three are mechanical rather than interpretive, all three mechanical.

Four of ten, on one sonnet.

AIL 1632 The Board's Own Renaissance Item

Four of the ten published sample questions work on Sonnet forty-four. The board's own sample devotes forty percent of its visible questions to one Renaissance poem, which is the strongest available evidence for how the band is weighted in practice, the strongest evidence available.

Verb, old words, figure, argument.

AIL 1633 A Procedure for a Renaissance Passage

Find the main verb and its subject. Mark any word that looks familiar and old. Identify the governing figure. Then ask what the passage is arguing. Four steps, in that order, and the first prevents most of the errors the band produces; the first step prevents the most.

Five entries on the traps: reading devotion into diction, the conceit read as decoration, the modern sense at its densest, expecting every sonnet to turn, and Milton read at speed.

Judge from the argument, not the words.

AIL 1634 Trap: Reading Devotion Into Diction

Religious vocabulary was ordinary, so a love poem using it is not necessarily pious and a play using it is not necessarily doctrinal. Judge the attitude from the argument, which is unit four's rule that tone comes from handling rather than from subject, unit four's rule in period form.

The image is a step in a proof.

AIL 1635 Trap: The Conceit Read as Decoration

A metaphysical conceit is doing a step of a proof, not ornamenting a feeling. Unit seven established that Donne's compasses argue for constancy. An option calling such an image merely decorative has misread what the period used images for; it is argument, not ornament.

The readable error survives testing.

AIL 1636 Trap: The Modern Sense Again

The Renaissance is where unit three's trap is densest, and where a wrong sense most often leaves a readable sentence. Unit three's entry on still made the point: an error that breaks nothing survives the substitution test and takes the mark, the densest trap on the paper.

Check for a turn; do not assume.

AIL 1637 Trap: Expecting Every Sonnet to Turn

Unit nine showed Sonnet seventy-three accumulating rather than turning. The convention of a volta at line nine is a Petrarchan inheritance that English poets used freely. Check for a turn; do not assume one, and Sonnet seventy-three is the case to remember.

Parse it; do not skim it.

AIL 1638 Trap: Milton Read at Speed

His sentences are long enough that a reader can reach the end of a passage without having located a main verb. The sense then assembles from fragments and is usually wrong. Slow down and parse, which costs less time than answering from a misreading; skimming assembles a wrong sense.

Five entries on what to hold and what to expect: no dates or histories, five facts that each change a first reading, why the sonnet recurs, the dramatic extract as the best-prepared item, and Renaissance prose.

No dates, no histories.

AIL 1639 What You Do Not Need

No dates of composition, no theatre histories, no account of the Reformation. Orientation means expectations that change how a first sentence is read, and nothing on that list does. Unit fifteen set the standard and it holds here, the standard from unit fifteen.

Five facts, each changing a first reading.

AIL 1640 What Is Worth Holding

That the poems argue, that the figures are strained on purpose, that the diction shifted, that the syntax inverts, and that religious language was ordinary. Five facts, each of which changes how a first sentence is read, which is the test unit sixteen set; they meet that test.

The band and the form reinforce.

AIL 1641 Why the Sonnet Recurs

Unit fifteen gave the reason: short enough to print whole, dense enough that most lines carry a device, structured enough to ask about movement. The Renaissance produced them in quantity, so the band and the form reinforce each other on this exam; unit fifteen supplied the reason.

The best-prepared item in the course.

AIL 1642 The Dramatic Extract

A speech or short exchange from a play of the period is the second likely shape. Units thirteen and fourteen built the procedure and unit fifteen consolidated it. A Renaissance drama extract is the most thoroughly prepared item in this course, with three units built for it.

Prose here is suspended too.

AIL 1643 Renaissance Prose

The band produced essays, sermons and translations, and a prose passage from it will show the same long suspended sentences as its verse. Unit twelve's rhetorical apparatus applies, and unit two's parse is needed as much as it is in the poetry; the same parse is required.

Seven entries on the century's range: its later half, where the band stops, blank verse giving way to the couplet, form as a weak marker, no new terms needed, the anchor's strength here, and decision D6 applied to an age.

The band spans a century.

AIL 1644 The Seventeenth Century's Later Half

The band runs past Shakespeare's death to Milton's. Donne's later work, Milton's epic and a changing theatre all belong to it. Treating the band as one moment misses that it spans roughly a century of considerable change, not one moment but a range.

The next age prefers balance.

AIL 1645 Where This Band Stops

The next band begins in the eighteenth century with a changed taste: order, balance, the couplet, and satire aimed at society. Pope and Swift belong there, and unit twelve already read Swift. The change is visible in the first sentence of anything from it, immediately visible.

Blank verse gave way to the couplet.

AIL 1646 From Blank Verse to the Couplet

Milton wrote his epic in blank verse and argued against rhyme. Within fifty years Pope was translating Homer into rhyming couplets. Unit sixteen met those couplets and unit eight defined them. The formal preference reversed inside two generations, and the reversal took two generations.

Order expectations; settle nothing.

AIL 1647 Form as a Period Marker, Held Lightly

Blank verse or a sonnet sequence suggests this band; heroic couplets suggest the next. Unit eight warned that the clue is weak, because poets write in older forms deliberately. Use it to order expectations, never to settle an answer; unit eight's warning, restated.

No new terms were needed.

AIL 1648 What the Glossary Left Out Here

This unit supplied no new terms, because the ones it needed were supplied in units two, six, seven, eight, nine, thirteen and fourteen. That is what an orientation unit should look like once the craft units have done their work; the craft units had supplied them.

Two plays and the sonnet schemes.

AIL 1649 The Anchor's Strength in This Band

Two complete Shakespeare plays with study guides, the conceit entry naming the metaphysical poets, and the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet schemes. For this band the anchor is well supplied, which is not true of every band this course has met; better supplied here than elsewhere.

Habits to notice, not rules obeyed.

AIL 1650 The Age Is Not One Thing

Characterising a century is an interpretation, and decision D6 applies to periods as much as to poems. Writers of the same decade disagree with each other. The expectations in this unit are offered as habits to notice, not as rules the writers obeyed; decision D6 applies to periods too.

Ten entries to close: one check for an unplaceable passage, what its absence proves, four writers in one age, three things to carry, satire crossing into the next band, the weightings ahead, what stays live, and the reminder that orientation is not knowledge.

Look for thou and the endings.

AIL 1651 On Meeting an Unplaceable Old Passage

Look for thou and the st and th verb endings. If they are present the passage is likely this band or earlier. That single check costs a second and sets every expectation given earlier in this lecture, which is orientation working as intended; one check sets five expectations.

Absence proves nothing.

AIL 1652 When the Markers Are Absent

Modernised editions remove thou and regularise the verb endings, so their absence proves nothing at all about a passage's age. Fall back on the other markers instead: inverted syntax, dense figures, and an argued structure. Never conclude a date from a single feature; modernising removes the markers.

A shared manner, separate positions.

AIL 1653 Four Writers, One Age

Marlowe's overreacher, Shakespeare's range, Donne's argued images, Milton's epic ambition. They share a syntax, a vocabulary and a taste for elaboration, and they disagree about almost everything else. That combination is what this band actually is; they agree on style, not on substance.

Five expectations, four steps, one check.

AIL 1654 What to Carry Forward

The five expectations, the four-step procedure and the single check given in this lecture. Three things, and the craft units supply everything they call on. Nothing here requires a fact about a writer's life, and no biography is required to use any of the three.

Satire crosses the boundary.

AIL 1655 What Carries Into the Next Band

Satire begins here and dominates the next. Marlowe and Shakespeare mock as well as elevate, and unit four's Horatian and Juvenalian distinction was drawn on Swift and Fielding, who are the next band's writers. The tone lexicon spans both, and the lexicon spans both bands.

The heaviest bands are still ahead.

AIL 1656 Where the Orientation Units Are Going

Two period units remain after this one, covering the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and then the twentieth and twenty-first, each worth thirty to forty percent. Then the tradition bands, then the capstone. The heaviest weightings are still ahead, thirty to forty percent each.

Do not spend equal time on each.

AIL 1657 Why the Weightings Shape Preparation

Three to seven percent for the classical band and thirty to forty for each modern one means a candidate should not spend equal time on each. Unit one printed the figures; this is the unit where acting on them becomes possible, and unit one printed the figures.

Sonnet, extract, word sense.

AIL 1658 What Stays Live From This Band

The sonnet, the dramatic extract, and the word-in-context question. Those three account for most of what this band contributes, and every one of them has had a craft unit and now an orientation unit pointed at it; three things carry the band.

The answers still come from the passage.

AIL 1659 Orientation Is Not Knowledge

Nothing in this unit answers a question by itself. Every expectation here exists to make a first reading faster and a wrong reading less likely. The answers still come from the passage, which is the principle the whole course was built on; here the governing idea pays off.

Next: two centuries, eight writers.

AIL 1660 What the Next Unit Does

The next unit takes the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, worth thirty to forty percent. Pope, Swift, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Austen and Dickens carry it, and every one of them has been read already in a craft unit; all eight are already familiar.

That is the exam's questions, the procedure, five traps, what to hold, the century's range, the checks and the carry, with the governing idea paid off in answers that still come from the passage. You can name word sense, restatement and device as the types that cluster here, cite four of ten on one sonnet, and run verb, old words, figure, argument. You can judge attitude from the argument not the diction, read a conceit as a step in a proof, distrust the readable modern sense, check for a turn without assuming one, and parse Milton rather than skim him. You can drop dates and histories, hold five facts, and expect the sonnet, the dramatic extract and suspended prose. You can treat the band as a century ending in a taste for balance, see blank verse give way to the couplet, use form lightly, know no new terms were needed, credit the anchor here, and attribute any characterisation of an age. And you can check for thou in a second, fall back when it is absent, carry five expectations, four steps and one check, and remember the answers still come from the passage. Unit eighteen takes two centuries.