Close Analysis Practise/Workshopping Thread! - Exam 2013

[Holmes]

Slightly off-topic, I love the confusion of Eliot. It's a nice break. Just stop giving a fuck about the poem and feel the words and it's great.

Edit: fun piece of information, when poets put together words that are like "wtf does that mean?" but it's still grammatical, it's called a selection-violation.

eg. He ate a slice of boredom.
The pianist then played a red hat topped with geraniums and wisdom.

Wow! I love your examples of selection-violation. And yes, Eliot is so unique compared to the other texts I've studied, I'm sometimes awed by the extraordinary way in which he occasionally uses language. It just seems that even though he is all about language, when it comes to analysing it in a lit passage analysis kind of way, it just seems pointless to do, and I start seeing faults in the whole design of the passage analysis.

But yeah, I tried to do something here. I hope I'm not waffling or anything in my analysis, and actually saying something of value. But sometimes some lines are not conducive to proper analysis.

The surrealism of the scene is indicative of the change that Eliot’s primary character is undergoing, as we see the poetic personality “borrow at every changing shape” in an attempt to neutralise the failures of his encounter with the Lady. The “dancing bear” and chattering ape instil a sense of surrealism, as we see the very essence of the character being altered in a bid to galvanise his socially awkward relationship. However, the opposite of this is achieved, for the processes of taking "air" in a “tobacco trance” initially present an irony in the paradoxical nature of their execution, but ultimately serve to sever his dependency on the Lady. In fact, the very act of considering “if she should die some afternoon” changes the character to the autonomously functioning unit we meet in Passage Two – thereby creating a consciousness that is able to comment on the social milieu without being perturbed by the trivialities of self.

Also, this paragraph (is a paragraph allowed to be like two sentences?) kind of acts as a springboard to link the passages and explain away the poem, but I notice that I haven't put in my interpretation at all. So would writing this kind of thing still be valid in the passage analysis for the exam? Grrr, I dislike pandering to the examiners' criteria.

EDIT: I won't change my original writing Never mind, I changed it.

[availn]

I find that paragraph to also invoke disgust in the reader, as the speaker is so degenerate that he cannot find a means of expressing himself throughout the whole poem, until he has to repulsively mimic animals.

[charmanderp]

Slightly off-topic, I love the confusion of Eliot. It's a nice break. Just stop giving a fuck about the poem and feel the words and it's great.

This is so insanely true. With Eliot the only thing that's prevented me from taking a running leap into a wall is realising that he didn't intend for his work to be understood in a conventional sense - it's all very dynamic, in that the purpose isn't where you're going, but rather how you're going there.

[Holmes]

This is so insanely true. With Eliot the only thing that's prevented me from taking a running leap into a wall is realising that he didn't intend for his work to be understood in a conventional sense - it's all very dynamic, in that the purpose isn't where you're going, but rather how you're going there.

The trouble is, can any of this be expressed in a passage analysis, in which one of the faults I see is that there is consistently a need to pick up on the language and link it to an interpretation of meaning - ie, what Eliot is saying about the nature of being, or stuff like that. But Eliot isn't always doing that. He is just writing poetry in, like you said, a different sense. He doesn't have a plot, or a traditional sense of character development, and without going out of the text it is too difficult to comment on the development of Eliot himself as a poet. It's why passage analyses sometimes seem absolutely pointless and are flawed, as they require us to do pointless things. Unfortunately, I have to learn how to do pander to the marking of the examiner's (who are, I'm sorry, wankers). The rules seem different when writing about Eliot.

[achre]

Jeez, where'd this thread come from? 

The trouble is, can any of this be expressed in a passage analysis, in which one of the faults I see is that there is consistently a need to pick up on the language and link it to an interpretation of meaning - ie, what Eliot is saying about the nature of being, or stuff like that. But Eliot isn't always doing that. He is just writing poetry in, like you said, a different sense. He doesn't have a plot, or a traditional sense of character development, and without going out of the text it is too difficult to comment on the development of Eliot himself as a poet. It's why passage analyses sometimes seem absolutely pointless and are flawed, as they require us to do pointless things. Unfortunately, I have to learn how to do pander to the marking of the examiner's (who are, I'm sorry, wankers). The rules seem different when writing about Eliot.

I have to disagree, Eliot was very conscious of the zeitgeist of modernism and his perspectives on this social period are deeply embedded in, really, almost all his poetry. I actually can hardly think of a better writer to do close analysis on - after all, he was one of the central figures in the development of the new critics literary theory, which is essentially just a more refined and academic version of passage analysis.
By the way, you're totally within your rights to refer to the context surrounding both the poetry and the author at the time of their writing it, the top essay on Eliot from last year did exactly that.

[charmanderp]

The trouble is, can any of this be expressed in a passage analysis, in which one of the faults I see is that there is consistently a need to pick up on the language and link it to an interpretation of meaning - ie, what Eliot is saying about the nature of being, or stuff like that. But Eliot isn't always doing that. He is just writing poetry in, like you said, a different sense. He doesn't have a plot, or a traditional sense of character development, and without going out of the text it is too difficult to comment on the development of Eliot himself as a poet. It's why passage analyses sometimes seem absolutely pointless and are flawed, as they require us to do pointless things. Unfortunately, I have to learn how to do pander to the marking of the examiner's (who are, I'm sorry, wankers). The rules seem different when writing about Eliot.

Haha nah it can definitely be done with Eliot, trust me. It's probably a case of a work where it's genuinely necessary to comment on the passage as a fragment of the entire piece itself. As an English Lit major I'm biased but I don't think the passage analysis is useless; you're commenting critically on form and style as a microcosm of an author's larger aims. It's a difficult task, but a valuable one.

[mishamigo]

Yay. Thoughts on the text?

Soooo intense the first time reading it, thought I'd fail miserably haha. After a few weeks on it though, i found it fairly straightforward and now enjoy it

[brenden]

Lol, just get on your knees and thank whatever you believe in that they don't make you do The Waste Land in VCE.

(Actually, come to think of it, it would be a lot more suited to VCE than uni)

[achre]

Lol, just get on your knees and thank whatever you believe in that they don't make you do The Waste Land in VCE.

(Actually, come to think of it, it would be a lot more suited to VCE than uni)

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[brenden]

Page 10
 

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! 

[Holmes]

Lol, just get on your knees and thank whatever you believe in that they don't make you do The Waste Land in VCE.

(Actually, come to think of it, it would be a lot more suited to VCE than uni)

I believe in you Brendan! Make me a pro with the Waste Land please. Haha, I'm doing Eliot, and I suspect an excerpt from the Waste Land will be on the exam. I haven't been able to form any 'unique' interpretations on it, do you have some gold?

Also, @ achre, are you doing Eliot's poetry?

[achre]

Yep, Eliot and Jane Eyre!

[Holmes]

Yep, Eliot and Jane Eyre!

Wanna do some close analysis of small excerpts from The Waste Land on here? Actually, Eliot often writes of memory, have you noticed that? Even in the beginning of Waste Land:

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing   
Memory and desire, stirring   
Dull roots with spring rain.   

How's this? Just came up with it.

The memory has earlier been described in Eliot's 'Rhapsody...' as a dissolving aspect of the psyche, its repeated use in this poem immediately establishes the concept of "desire" as a dissolving and disintegrating emotion, driven to it's [grammar?] basest form in a land barren of social integrity.

[Christian1996]

This is great, I'm planning on doing jack Davis' No Sugar, and Love in The time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[brenden]

The memory has earlier been described in Eliot's 'Rhapsody...' as a dissolving aspect of the psyche, its repeated use in this poem immediately establishes the concept of "desire" as a dissolving and disintegrating emotion, driven to it's [grammar?] basest form in a land barren of social integrity.

This is nice. Semantically, if something is repeated, it happens more than once, obviously. If something that is repeated establishes something, then it must be established in stages. Immediately means... well, 'immediate', or in an instant. "Rapidly" might work better here as a replacement for immediately. Where you've written [grammar], the 'its' should have no apostrophe (I'm assuming you're referring to 'desire' by 'its' - which means that it is possessive, which means you definitely don't use an apostrophe with its - the same as you don't with yours, hers, ours - the possession is already in the word). Reads well and doesn't have any word-salad-tendency