In his article “What To Say About a Poem,” William Wimsatt says there are four broad categories for what teachers and critics can say about a poem.
- First, you can explain everything from the meaning of a word to a knotty form of syntax.
- Second, you can describe the external features of the poem (e.g., its genre) and the internal relations of the poem’s parts (e.g., rhyme scheme).
- Third, you can interpret the meaning raised by the poem’s content and form.
- Fourth, you can appreciate the affections the poem elicits by which we learn what the poem has to teach.
This list provides an excellent outline of what a literature course should do. I will keep it in mind as I continue to work on my Covenantal Shakespeare curriculum.
Experiments in Criticism 