You may use one of the prompts below or create your own narrow thesis. Make sure that you understand the question, formulate a thesis, develop parts to the thesis, and provide specific evidence from the text to support your argument. This short essay is expected to be well organized with a minimum of grammatical and usage problems.

1. Using explication for small parts of a work, interpret a particular aspect of one of the long poems or romances we have read (theme, imagery, character, structure, etc.) and put it into the context of the overall meaning of the work. You may use critical sources to support your thesis. If you use outside sources, your short essay must contain a bibliography.

Explicating means looking at a poem (or at most 15-18 lines of a longer work, including a long poem) line-by-line and explaining each line, leading ultimately to an explanation of the theme of the piece. In examining the piece, first pick out and look up words with which you are unfamiliar or familiar words that do not make sense in the context of the piece. Then ask yourself questions such as: Who is the speaker? Who is being addressed? What is the literal situation? What are the major images and what do they mean? After answering these questions for yourself, possibly by freewriting, write a rough introduction and begin examining the piece.