Topic 1- 6 Round-up and Self Assessment > Analysing a whole poem > Task B comments

Analysing a whole poem

Our comments for Task B:

We think that this poem represents the post-coital thoughts of a man in bed with a younger, sexually inexperienced woman. He is thinking about the feelings of guilt she will have when she wakes up in the morning, and he appears to have a rather ironic attitude towards her naivety in having such feelings of guilt. Indeed, the attitude of the man towards the woman seems patronising, almost cruel, and we feel that we are probably meant to be critical of his patronising attitude.

The above account begs some questions that will need to be answered before it is accepted. We will begin to answer them with a few comments below. Notice, when we do that, how we are bringing knowledge to bear that readers bring along to the poem. Stylistic analysis involves not just analysing the language of the text concerned, but also tries to account for how readers interact with that structure, by bringing along relevant assumptions and information which the text triggers from our store of knowledge (this is something we have not covered in detail in the poetry section of the course - we explore it in a bit more detail when we look at schematic knowledge in the topic related to point of view in the 'mainly prose' section of the course).

Questions

1. How do we know that the addresser is a man and that the addressee is a woman?
2. How do we know that the man is thinking not talking? After all, he appears to be addressing the young woman directly.
3. How do we know that the man's attitude is patronising?

(You can access our discussion of each of the above by clicking on the individual questions)

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