The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

This is Unit Nineteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one worked Yeats, Joyce, McKay, Owen and Wilde and found the break with form real but not total. This part gives the expectations, the exam, the traps, and the line the course cannot cross. Part one's governing idea was that the moderns changed the shape, so form may be fixed or absent and measurement may return nothing. This part pays it off where the difficulty moves: sentences here are easier to parse than in any earlier band and harder to attribute, so unit two's parse is rarely needed and unit ten's attribution question is needed constantly. First the problem play, the band's Irish and American strands, and the copyright line, a limit on what this course may reproduce and not on what the exam may print. Then five expectations of a modern passage, the sharpest being that no shared frame of reference is assumed, and the exam's three types with a three-step procedure. Then five traps. Then continuity with the previous band, the two real discontinuities, the later end that cannot be quoted, and the anchor's coverage, with a check that corrected an earlier claim and is recorded rather than hidden. Last, three things to carry, the period bands complete, and the tradition bands ahead under decision D8. By the end you will be able to state the copyright line. To hold five expectations and run three steps. To defeat five traps. To record a check and a correction. And to carry three things into the tradition bands.

Six entries to start: the problem play, four Irish writers in one band, the American overlap, where the quotable material stops, why the limit is kept, and the practice of naming without quoting.

A social question, argued on stage.

AIL 1836 The Problem Play

A problem play puts a social question on stage and argues it through the characters. The glossary has no headword. Shaw's work is the standard English example, and the form is where unit twelve's rhetorical apparatus meets unit thirteen's dramatic one; two units' apparatus meet here.

Four Irish writers, one band.

AIL 1837 Irish Writing in This Band

Yeats, Joyce, Wilde and Shaw were all Irish, and all four sit in this band. That concentration is one of the period's plain facts, and unit twenty takes up what it means for the exam's British and postcolonial tradition band; unit twenty takes up what it means.

One passage, two bands.

AIL 1838 American Writing in This Band

The American band carries forty to fifty percent of the exam and overlaps this period heavily. Frost, Hughes and McKay all belong to both, and the anchor's poetry chapters supply all three. The overlap means one passage can answer two bands at once; the bands overlap, as always.

A limit on this course, not on the exam.

AIL 1839 Where the Quotable Material Stops

Decision D2 keeps every worked passage before nineteen thirty. That is not a limit on what the exam may print; it is a limit on what this course may reproduce. The exam can use anything, and the skills transfer regardless of date; the skills transfer regardless.

Name, describe, and do not quote.

AIL 1840 Why the Limit Is Kept

Work published after nineteen thirty is generally still in copyright, and reproducing it at length would need a licence this course does not have. Naming a writer, describing a technique and quoting nothing is the honest way to teach inside that constraint, which is legal and not editorial.

The practice is stated each time.

AIL 1841 Named and Not Quoted

Unit six named Bishop and Knight as the anchor's villanelle and haiku poets without quoting them. Unit twenty will name later writers the same way. The practice is consistent and it is stated each time rather than left for a reader to notice; units six and twenty do the same.

Six entries on expectations and the exam: five expectations of a modern passage, the lost common ground, word senses and syntax in the band, the three question types, and a three-step procedure.

Five expectations, one sharp break.

AIL 1842 What to Expect From a Passage

Plain diction, a small vocabulary used repeatedly, form that may be fixed or absent, prose that renders a mind rather than reporting events, and no assumption that the reader shares a frame of reference. Five expectations, and the last is the sharpest break; no shared frame is assumed.

The shared reference is gone.

AIL 1843 The Lost Common Ground

Earlier bands assumed readers knew scripture and classical story. Modern writers could not assume it, so allusions are either explained, absent, or deliberately obscure. A modern passage is less likely to reward hunting for a classical source, so hunt for sources less here.

Fewer shifted senses, more tone.

AIL 1844 Word Senses in This Band

Shifted senses are rarest here, because the language is closest to ours. Unit three's procedure still applies to any word the sentence resists, but a candidate should expect fewer traps of that kind and more of the kind that turn on tone; the trap moves rather than vanishing.

Easier to parse, harder to attribute.

AIL 1845 Syntax in This Band

Sentences are shorter and less inverted than in any earlier band, and some modern prose fragments them deliberately. Unit two's parse is rarely needed and unit ten's attribution question is needed constantly, which is a shift in where the difficulty sits; here the governing idea pays off.

Attribution, tone, device.

AIL 1846 What the Exam Asks of This Band

Attribution of a judgment, because free indirect discourse is everywhere in this band. Tone, because plain language carries its attitude subtly. Device identification, because the figures persist whatever the form. Three types again, and attribution is the one this band specialises in.

Measure, place the voice, attribute.

AIL 1847 A Procedure for a Modern Passage

Try unit eight's measurements and record what they return, including nothing. Establish the voice by unit ten's two questions. Then ask whose judgment each sentence carries. Three steps, and the second is the one that pays in this band; step two pays most here.

Five entries on the traps: free verse read as artless, simple language read as simple meaning, the modern assumed familiar, biography for the Irish writers, and the movement label.

Without metre is not without shape.

AIL 1848 Trap: Free Verse Read as Artless

Unit eight made the point and it belongs here too. A poem without metre is not a poem without organisation, and an option calling a free-verse poem shapeless is describing the reader's difficulty rather than the poem's construction, unit eight's warning restated.

Plain surface, complex construction.

AIL 1849 Trap: Simple Language Read as Simple Meaning

Yeats's poem about the cloths of heaven uses perhaps forty distinct words and is not a simple poem. Joyce's opening borrows a child's vocabulary to carry a sophisticated technique. Plainness of surface says nothing at all about the complexity beneath it; vocabulary size proves nothing.

Familiar surface, less checking.

AIL 1850 Trap: Assuming the Modern Is Familiar

A century-old passage can feel contemporary and still use words and references that have moved. Nineteen twenties slang is as opaque as Elizabethan usage to a reader who assumes it is current. Familiarity of surface invites less checking, and that is the risk; it is opaque in a different way.

Context is not evidence.

AIL 1851 Trap: Biography for Irish Writers

Yeats, Joyce, Wilde and Shaw have well-known lives, and options may offer facts from them. Unit five's rule holds: the question asks about the passage. National identity and biography are context, and neither is evidence about what a printed extract does; unit five's rule, again.

A label is not a description.

AIL 1852 Trap: The Movement Label

Calling a passage modernist explains nothing by itself, and options offering movement names are usually weaker than options describing what the words do. Unit seven made the point about device names and it holds for period labels too; describe what the words do.

Seven entries on continuity and the anchor: one argument across two centuries, two real discontinuities, the later end that cannot be quoted and why that costs nothing, the anchor's coverage, how it was checked, and what the check corrected.

Continuous, rather than opposed.

AIL 1853 Continuity With the Previous Band

The novel dominates both. Free indirect discourse begins in one and is perfected in the other. The argument for ordinary language starts in seventeen ninety-eight and arrives here. Treating the two modern bands as continuous is closer to the truth than treating them as opposed; one argument, two centuries.

Two real discontinuities.

AIL 1854 Where They Genuinely Differ

In the assumption of shared reference, and in whether form is inherited or invented. Those two are real discontinuities. Most of the rest is development rather than rupture, and the rupture language critics use is itself an interpretation; the rupture language is interpretation.

The technique has changed less.

AIL 1855 The Band's Later End

The band runs to the present, and everything published in the last century sits under copyright this course cannot reproduce. What can be taught is the technique, which has not changed as much as the material: voice, attribution, tone and figure all still apply; the later end cannot be quoted.

The same seven questions, any date.

AIL 1856 Whether the Gap Costs Anything

The board says the exam requires no familiarity with specific works, so a candidate is never asked about a text they have not been given. A course teaching procedure on older passages prepares a candidate for newer ones, because the questions are the same seven; the board's own statement covers this.

Strong on poetry, thin on drama.

AIL 1857 What the Anchor Gave This Band

The free-verse chapter, the blank-verse chapter, the anthology with its Harlem Renaissance headnote and its war poets, and two study guides for plays it does not carry. Good on poetry, thin on drama, and the thinness was found by checking rather than assumed.

Count before describing.

AIL 1858 Checking What a Source Contains

The Wilde and Shaw chapters were counted before being described, which is how the five hundred and fourteen hundred word figures in part one were arrived at. A claim about what a source holds is a factual claim and needs the same checking as any other; an absence claim needs evidence too.

Four claimed, two verified, corrected.

AIL 1859 What the Check Corrected

Unit thirteen originally stated the anchor carries four complete plays. It carries two. The entry was corrected when the word counts were taken, and the correction is recorded rather than quietly made, because a course that hides its errors teaches the wrong habit; the correction is recorded, not hidden.

Eleven entries to close: three things to carry, the period bands complete, the tradition bands and why they come last, decision D8 and whether it holds, what it cannot do, the band's likely extracts, a practice habit, what orientation did, and the handoff.

Five expectations, three steps.

AIL 1860 What to Carry Forward

The five expectations and the three-step procedure given earlier in this lecture, and the warning that plain language is not the same as plain meaning. Three things to carry, and the craft units already supply everything those three call on; the craft units supply the rest.

Four units, four period bands.

AIL 1861 The Period Bands Complete

Four units have covered them: classical and pre-Renaissance, the Renaissance and seventeenth century, the eighteenth and nineteenth, and now the twentieth and twenty-first. Every period weighting on the board's outline has an orientation unit behind it, and every weighting is covered.

Tradition bands cut across periods.

AIL 1862 What the Tradition Bands Are

The exam also weights by tradition rather than period: British and postcolonial at forty to fifty percent, American at forty to fifty, and works in translation at three to ten. Those cut across the period bands and the next unit takes them; three more weightings to cover.

The writers come before the grouping.

AIL 1863 Why Tradition Comes Last

Because a tradition band collects writers already met in period units. Yeats and Joyce belong to the Irish strand, Equiano and McKay to another, Dante and Ibsen to translation. Taking traditions last means the writers are familiar before the grouping is explained, the same order as the craft units.

Technique on ancestors, later names only.

AIL 1864 The Constraint on the Next Unit

Decision D8 governs it. The postcolonial writers the band is named for are almost all still in copyright, so unit twenty teaches the technique on public-domain ancestors and names later writers without quoting them, exactly as this unit did for Wilde and Shaw; decision D8 governs the next unit.

The method held for this band.

AIL 1865 Whether That Approach Holds

This unit is the test case and it held. Yeats, Joyce, McKay, Hughes, Frost and Owen supplied a band worth thirty to forty percent, entirely from pre-nineteen-thirty text. The same method should carry unit twenty, and the intake's Finding F1 predicted it would; six writers, all pre-nineteen-thirty.

Describing is not reading.

AIL 1866 What the Approach Cannot Do

It cannot show a student the specific later writers the exam's outline names, and it cannot pretend that describing a text is the same as reading it. Those limits are real and are stated rather than argued away, and the limits are stated, not argued away.

A poem, a paragraph, an exchange.

AIL 1867 What This Band Will Supply

A short modern poem printed whole, a paragraph of close third-person narration, or a passage of dramatic dialogue. All three are shapes earlier units prepared, and the first two are the commonest on any paper drawing from this period; all three are already prepared.

Measure a poem, attribute a paragraph.

AIL 1868 Practising This Band

Take a short modern poem and try unit eight's measurements, recording what they return. Then take a paragraph of close third-person prose and ask whose judgment each sentence carries. Twenty minutes covers both, and both habits transfer to any date.

Expectations, not facts to recall.

AIL 1869 What the Orientation Units Did

They supplied expectations, not facts to recall. Each period unit ended with a short list whose test was whether it changes a first reading, and nothing in any of the four requires a date, a biography or a plot to be remembered; the test was unit sixteen's.

Next: the tradition bands.

AIL 1870 What the Next Unit Does

The next unit takes the three tradition bands: British and postcolonial, American, and works in translation. Decision D8 governs it, Dante and Ibsen and Chekhov and Tagore supply the translation strand, and Equiano and McKay anchor the other; decision D8 governs it.

That is the problem play and the copyright line, five expectations and the exam, five traps, continuity and the anchor's check, and the bands ahead, with the governing idea paid off where the difficulty moved. You can supply the problem play, note four Irish writers and the American overlap, and state decision D2 as a limit on the course, kept for a legal reason and stated each time a writer is named without quotation. You can hold five expectations with the lost common ground as the sharpest, expect fewer shifted senses and more tone, know the difficulty has moved from parsing to attribution, name attribution, tone and device, and run measure, place the voice, attribute. You can refuse free verse as artless, plain surface as simple, the modern as familiar, biography as evidence, and a movement label as a description. You can treat the two modern bands as continuous with two real discontinuities, know the later end cannot be quoted and costs nothing because the questions are the same seven, and record that the anchor's plays were counted, four claimed and two verified, with the correction kept in the open. And you can carry three things, count the period bands complete, and enter the tradition bands under decision D8 knowing what it can and cannot do. Unit twenty takes the traditions.