Let’s start with a definition:  to explicate originally meant to unfold; to expand; to lay open.  However, no one really uses it literally anymore.  The meaning has become strictly metaphorical, and so the word now means to unfold the meaning or sense of, to explain; to clear of difficulties or obscurity; to interpret.  That is your task in this essay.

Why, then, do I not just call it an “interpretive” essay?  That is what we are doing in this class, after all:  learning to interpret difficult works of literature.  However, the problem with “interpretation” is that it is an inherently reductive process; interpretation sums up a work, and in so doing always reduces its overall meaning and complexity.  Interpretation concentrates on and thus emphasizes some aspects of a work and shortchanges others.  In fact, the only perfect interpretation of a great literary work is the work itself.  One author, when asked what the meaning of his book was, answered that the meaning was the entire book, all of its words in the order in which he had arranged them, no more no less, and that if he could have gotten his message across in fewer words (which was obviously what the interviewer was asking him to do), he would have done so in the first place and saved a lot of time and effort for all concerned.  The reason this matters to you is that if you go into this essay trying simply to interpret a poem, you will not do well.  One problem is that you will have a hard time fulfilling the length requirement, because again interpretation is reductive.

Instead, I want you to explicate the poem:  to unfold its meaning, explain how it is constructed, clear up its obscurities, and only then to interpret, i.e. to draw some conclusions.  You will do that by examining the poem in a painstaking manner, performing what literary critics call a “close reading.”  That means you go through the poem step by step:  sometimes line by line, sometimes sentence by sentence (remember those are different things), sometimes phrase by phrase, sometimes image by image, sometimes even word by word.  You are writing a kind of guide to the poem, like a guide book to a city for travelers.  Your goal is to lead your readers through the poem, making sure they understand what they are looking at, do not get lost or miss any of the important sights, and end up at the destination you have in mind.  In the process, you construct a persuasive argument not only about the poem’s meaning but about how the poet conveys that meaning and accomplishes the poem’s effects.

In order to get started on the process of this essay, you will submit a tentative thesis and two proposed quotations with explanations of how you plan to use them before the actual essay is due. This will allow you to receive feedback from me prior to submitting your work for a grade.

You should assume your reader has read the poem several times. You should also assume he or she has a college-level vocabulary and has made proper use of a dictionary; thus, you should not bother to define words, unless the meaning the poet intends is not the usual one.

The essay may be either open- or closed-form; however, the emphasis on explication lends itself to an open-form approach, so this is a good time to try it.  Either way, you should have an introduction in which you establish either the issue you are exploring (open-form) or your thesis (closed-form).  You should not quote the poem in your first paragraph.

The body of the essay should be made up of your close reading.  Here is where you need to quote and analyze — in great detail — the poem, using quotations from the poem for support just as you did in the Text Quotation and Comment Exercise for Hamlet.  Cite the quotations by line number only.

Once again, after you have identified the best lines to use, you need both to set them up and comment on them so that they support the thesis. Always set up the point you are making, quote, then comment on the quotation.  Remember:  the quotations cannot make your argument for you; you need to comment on everything you quote.

Do not automatically quote only whole lines of the poem.  Sometimes starting or ending your quotation in the middle of a line is necessary in order for the quotation to make sense.  Make sure that your quotations make sense out of context, or that you set them up in a way that makes their meaning clear.

Your comments should address several aspects of the poem.  Your basic goal should be to discuss the message or theme of the poem, but to do that you need to consider elements such as imagery, figurative language such as metaphors and similes, and formal elements such as rhyme and meter.  Note, however, that merely pointing out that any of these things exists in the poem is not by itself interesting; what makes it interesting is how they contribute to the theme.

The conclusion of your essay either states the thesis (open-form) or summarizes your argument and re-connects it to the thesis (closed-form).  Just as you should not quote in your first paragraph, you should probably also not be quoting and analyzing the poem in your conclusion.

You may not use any outside sources for this assignment.  The one exception is that you may use your notes from class, but you do not need to cite those.  (What I tell you in class or on the web-pages I have created for the poems is free for your own use.)  I will consider evidence of using any other outside source, whether text or electronic, a violation of the honor code.

You need a work cited entry for the poem.  Cite the web-page according to MLA guidelines.  Failing to include a Work Cited entry will result in a .1 penalty to the Style and Format portion of the grade.

The essay must have an appropriate title. Review the titling guidelines on the Conventions for Papers in the Humanities page.   

By 4:00 p.m.the day marked on the Class Calendar, send me a Word document (doc or docx) including

1) a tentative thesis statement (not just a topic but an actual thesis)
2) two properly formatted and cited quotations that you plan to use in your essay (though of course in the essay itself you should have many more quotations); these may be any length, but each quotation must help you support one specific point
3) one sentence for each of the quotations explaining what specific point you believe that quotation will help you support; obviously, this point must have some connection to the essay’s thesis.  Although I only expect one sentence for each quotation at this point, your actual essay should consider the quotations at substantially greater length.

Until now, you have had a chance to revise every writing assignment for this course after receiving my comments.  You will not have that opportunity this time.  However, that does not mean you should not revise — quite the reverse:  because you only get one shot at this essay, you need to revise it carefully before you turn it in.  Indeed, you should never submit a first draft in response to any sophisticated college essay assignment.  I suggest strongly that you plan to finish a draft of this essay at least three days before it is due.  Then you need to put it aside for at least twenty-four hours before revising it.  And note:  “revising” refers to substantive revision, not merely proofreading for grammatical errors and running a spell-check.  Read your essay critically.  Examine the logic of your argument.  Reconsider whether the quotations are sufficient or conversely could be shortened.  Check your conclusion against your introduction — did you thesis or even your focus change over the course of the essay?  I will be considering these issues as I grade your essay; doesn’t it make sense to ask them yourself first?  

The due date varies according to the poem chosen as shown above.  Please send your essay by 4:00 p.m. the day it is due.

A minimum of 1000 words of your own work.  Note that the word count does not include quotations, the Works Cited entry, the title and the header, nor any other means of artificially extending the essay’s apparent length.  The essay will be longer than 1000 words overall due to all the quotations, which need to be plentiful.  Use the Word Count function and put the count with and without quotations (but please leave out the header and Work Cited) at the end of the essay.  

The quality of your understanding of and insights into the work, your use of quotations to support your ideas, your organization, and your overall persuasiveness will determine your Content score.  I will multiply that score by a Style and Format score that will be determined by the quality of your writing, including  your grammar, style, concision, and adherence to the rules of citation and format.  The Content Score (presuming the essay is of the proper length and responds to the assignment) can range from F (55) to A+ (100).  The Style and Format Score can range from .5 (unacceptable work) to 1.1 (exceptional work). Thus your final score for this essay can be as high as 110% of full credit.  Failing to submit your Preparatory Work will result in a 20% deduction from the points available for the essay.  

Here, in both doc and docx formats, is a sample essay explicating a poem that we are reading this semester, Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier.”  Note that you may not use this poem for your essay; use it as a model of approach and style only.

Consult the guidelines on Thesis Statements, Form, Introductions, Conclusions, The Inexcusable Error List, Format Rules, Some Stylistic Conventions for Papers in the Humanities, Quotation and Citation Guidelines, and Advice on Cutting Words for guidelines on style, parenthetical citation, and works cited entries.