Subject: American Literature

Do this analysis over three different poems here are the poems and the description of what we have to do. Please cal me at 512-227-5773 or 512-221-2764 with any questions. I can try to send more infomation later if needed.

1. Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H.Auden
2. The Tyger by William Blake
3. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

1. Discuss the author’s primary theme in each poem and explain how he develops that theme in the poem. Give examples to support your answer. (?Theme? refers to a general statement of the author’s purpose in the poem; it?s related to the short fiction notion of ? central idea?).

2. Discuss at least three literary devices (for example: metaphor, simile, allusion. alliteration, personification, imagery, symbol) in the poem. How does each enhance the poem?s meaning? Use quotes and examples in your discussion. Discuss each in separate paragraphs (100 words minimum each paragraph).

3. Discuss the tone of the poem and how it is developed (see discussion of tone in the Norton for more information on this). Give specific examples of how the author develops tone. What language devices does the author employ to create tone? Imagery? Diction (word choice)? (100 words minimum).

4. Discuss the use of sound (examples: alliteration, euphony, cacophony, rhythm, rhyme, dissonance, assonance, repetition) in each poem. Give examples and describe the effect of each example. Discuss ways in which sound and meaning work together in each poem. Choose two sound devices and discuss each one in separate paragraphs (150 words minimum each paragraph).

There are two ways to approach/analyze a poem: thematically and formally. I’m looking for both approaches in your essays. ‘Thematically’ of course refers to the poem’s central idea/theme – what’s the meaning of the poem? Any decent poem will yield a range of interpretations. Then there’s the formal analysis – what sort of poem is it? Metrical? Free verse? What sort of devices did the poet use to convey his meaning? Ideally, in a good poem ‘sound and sense’ are linked together in a meaningful way. 

A thorough analysis of a poem will contain two parts: formal analysis (the
form and structure of a poem, etc.), and interpretation (what does it mean?).

Formal
considerations have to do with prosody – a fancy word for the sounds, rhythm, and rhyme
of a poem. Rhetorical devices such as assonance, consonance,
alliteration, onomatopoeia, metonymy, synecdoche, etc. fall under the
heading of ‘formal’ considerations, as do things like meter (does the
poem have a regular metrical pattern – iambic pentameter, for example? What about structure: Is it a sonnet? A villanelle?)
and rhyme (perhaps a poem has a rhyme scheme of abba, meaning that the
first and fourth lines rhyme, as do the second and third). Maybe the
poem has no fixed rhythm or rhyme scheme at all, in which case it would
be free verse.

Interpretation is the ‘what does the poem mean?’
part. It’s your reading of the poem’s central idea/theme. Formal considerations are
specific – they can be analyzed with some assurance and clarity; either a poem is a Petrarchan sonnet or it isn’t.
Interpretive questions are more open-ended. Does this mean that
anything goes? No. As with short fiction, there must be evidence
within the text, however tentative it might be, to support your interpretation of theme.

A
good reading of a poem will cover both formal and interpretive
approaches; a thorough analysis will show how one works to
support the other. 

I realized the other day that our textbook doesn’t cover ‘consonance,’ so I’ll rectify that omission right now. Consonance in poetry means two related things –
Thing 1: the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds in
words that are close together whose vowel sounds are different
(consonant sounds may appear anywhere in neighboring words) . Thing 2:
It’s also often used at the end of lines to create what’s called a
‘near-rhyme’ or ‘slant rhyme’ (‘hack/hark,’ for example, or
‘held/walled’).

Here’s a pretty good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_consonance
Consonance is a cousin to alliteration, which is the repetition of consonants
at the beginning of words, but consonance can appear anywhere in the
word (see above). It can be confusing as some of these terms tend to
bleed together (alliteration and consonance, certainly).
When you cite poems in your essays, please follow MLA guidelines for poetry citation…
Basically, line numbers go in the parenthetical doc; page numbers in
the Works Cited page. Don’t forget to indicate line breaks with a slash
(/) mark, and if you quote more than a couple of lines, block-quote it