English Literature / Unit 2 ENL 0132 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Passage of Criticism for Its Claim
The idea
A critical excerpt is an argument, so read it as one. This is the course's method for the board's criticism questions. First, find the claim: the sentence that says what the critic thinks is true of the work, often near the start or the end. Second, find the reasons and evidence offered for it, such as quotations, comparisons or general principles. Third, find the turn, the "but," "however" or "yet" where the critic answers an objection or rejects a common view, because questions often target what is being rejected. Fourth, decide the critic's attitude: approving, disapproving or balanced, and toward what. Fifth, answer only from the passage, since the question asks what this critic argues, not what is true of the work. Wordsworth's Preface, a public-domain critical text unit twelve reads, claims that poetry should use the real language of men; its reasons and its rejection of poetic diction follow that pattern.
In practice
Claim, reasons, turn, attitude, passage only.
Where people slip
The commonest error is answering with your own view of the work. A choice can be true of the poem and still wrong, because it is not what the critic says.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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