AP & PACC Literature & Composition

Explication Help

When you are identifying meaning clusters, first look at how the poet is using punctuation. Usually a complete sentence, even if it is split across stanzas, makes a good meaning cluster. Look at Shakespeare's Sonnet 138. The sentences span four lines each. If you interpret the meaning of the four lines together, you will avoid error. If you need to divide a sentence into two meaning clusters, combine your interpretation of both clusters to get the meaning of the complete sentence.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor'd youth,

Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

An incorrect division of this four-line sentence might conclude that the first two lines mean that his lover lies, but he believes her and that the second two lines means that she thinks he is stupid. However, if you try to work these two interpretations back together to find the meaning of the sentence, you find that they do not fit together. However, if you interpret the four lines together as one sentence you (hopefully) realize that the ideas in the first two lines and the ideas in the second two lines are joined together by "that she." So, you could interpret these four lines together as "when my lover tells me that she never lies, I choose to believe her even though I know that she lies so that she will think that I am naive (gullible?) in the ways of deception."

Try this with the first stanza of Astrophil and Stella. Divide the stanza into meaning clusters based on sentences. Divide up each sentence to find the meaning of digestible sections, but then spin it back together to make sure it makes sense as a sentence.

posted by Jeffrey @ Monday, October 03, 2005