How do I approach a 'close reading' of a text, using Form, Structure and Language?

One of the things which is great about English literature is there is a pretty high degree of subjectivity. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can write whatever you want and expect to get marks (unfortunately)! However, this does mean that your opinion matters. So, when we come to analysing a passage from a text, and practicing what is called ‘close reading’, the first thing to remember is that the way aspects of the text make you feel, the thoughts they put in your head, and how it affects your overall impression of the moment/chapter/text/author are all important! Even if someone reacts to, or ‘reads’, the text differently, that doesn’t mean what you’ve put is ‘wrong’. At the highest level of English literature, boffin-types still have very strong differences of opinion: one could even argue that the cornerstones of literary criticism are opinion and contention. The second thing to think about is easy to remember, as it is in the title. With close-reading you should be getting ‘up close and personal’ with a text. This means, quite simply, that you should pay great attention to detail. It can sometimes feel a bit pedantic, a bit silly even, but when an author chooses one word over another, or a comma over a semi-colon, they have made an artistic choice, and you – the consumer and critic of that art – should try to suggest why. Further, you should determine if it works to actually achieve what the author wants it to – i.e. is it successful? I often find it helpful to ask myself, ‘how would the meaning/quality of the text change if they had done x and y differently?’ I’ll move on to an example now by analysing a poem. Something your teacher has probably mentioned is the wonderful FSL, which stands for Form, Structure, and Language. In this brief close-reading I’ll be sure to highlight which of these things I’m doing. In my A-level exams I actually found it quite useful to do a little FSL checklist alongside my work, just to make absolutely sure I got them all in there and nailed that assessment criterion, you may find that helpful too! The following is ‘The Good Morrow’ by John Donne. If you’re doing the ‘Love Through the Ages’ module, you may be familiar with this piece already: I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die. I’ll start with structure. We have three stanzas each consisting of seven lines, which employ the regular rhyme scheme ABACCC. Now this is perfectly correct, but just saying what the structure is, is sadly not enough; we must say why it is like this, or explain what effect using this particular structure has. A good way to do this is to link the structural point to the subject matter of the poem. This is a poem about which apotheosises (idolises) the speaker’s lover. It is about an absolutely perfect love which transcends any romantic experience the speaker has previously had: ‘If ever any beauty I did see,/ Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.’ We might thus say that the form is regular, or ‘perfect’, because it is expressing an ideal, a perceived perfection. The triplet rhyme which closes each stanza is satisfying; mirroring the speaker’s sense of spiritual and physical gratification. That this is a love which is ‘mixed equally’ seems nicely encapsulated in a form where the rhymes are consistent, or ‘equal’ in each stanza. We might also notice the internal rhyme of ‘My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears’. The rhymes literally mirror each other, just as the speaker’s face is mirrored in his lover’s eyes. You get the picture – notice the aspect of structure, then suggest how this accentuates the subject matter. Simple. Let’s move on to form. This piece does not use an established form, like a sonnet or a sestina, but don’t panic – there is still lots to say here! A great way to get a formal point across is to think about the poem’s metre. It is our old familiar friend iambic pentameter, of course. I won’t harp on at you about how this works, (if you’re unsure I can go through it with you in another session), but it’s quite nice and clear in this poem, just think about the ‘de-dum de-dum de-dum’ quality of a line like ‘but this, all pleasures fancies be’. Again good point – but why? Well for a start iambic pentameter is a formal metre. It is often used in Shakespeare’s drama for his noble characters and is thus associated with status, which feels apt for a poem all about how magnificent the speaker’s lover is. They also feel like they have just woken up from a long slumber, and are saying ‘good-morrow’ to their new selves, or their ‘waking souls’. The lively ‘heart-beat’ quality of iambic pentameter thus works for a poem all about a new lease of life. If you’re feeling really sophisticated, you might also note moments where the metre changes slightly. In line two, Donne begins ‘Did, till we loved?’. Note how ‘did’ is stressed here (if it was perfect iambic metre it would be unstressed). What effect does this have? Well for a start we really pay attention to the word ‘did’ – all the more so because it is followed by a caesura (pause – the comma). It might seem like a pretty basic word, but Donne draws our attention to it to express the incredulity of his question, he is basically asking himself ‘what on earth have I been DOING all this time before I met you?’. It is also a word which emphasises action - we get the impression that, before he met this current lover, he pursued women for the sake of sexual acts, not for emotional feeling. Finally, we’ll look at some language. The line ‘makes one little room an everywhere’ is worth our attention. The metaphor basically expresses the feeling that when he is with his love, a tiny room feels like the entire universe, because everything he could possibly need is there. A fancy way of saying this is that he makes a microcosm out of his lover’s body. He continues the metaphor with ‘Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,/ Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown’. Now for a quick context point. In the 16th Century, and the Renaissance in general, the discovery of ‘new worlds’ was just about the most exciting thing. The casual idiom of that repeated ‘let’ expresses how disinterested our speaker is in such matters – he has far more exciting ‘worlds’ to discover in his lover’s mind, heart and body. When a metaphor is developed in this way (over several lines), we call it a conceit. A conceit is a pretty common technique amongst metaphysical poets, and Donne just so happens to have been one. If you made a point like this you would be mentioning form, context, and language all in one – that’s A* stuff! I’ll leave it there, but I hope this brief example has helped make scoring those FSL marks seem a bit easier. Remember it’s a two-step process. Spot something – whether it be metre, rhyme scheme or alliteration – then say how it links to the poem’s overall effect. Remember with the second part of this that it’s all subjective: two people could make the same structural point but interpret its effects in two different ways, and they would both be right. What’s really useful with close-reading or unseen texts is to be confident with your ideas, and make sure you support everything with textual evidence. Happy analysing!