Literary Analysis: Hospitality and Friendship in Verse

Where the poem puts you

You already know how to construe a verse line, and you know the technique names from the prose analysis you have done. This module is about the question that comes before either: where does the poem put you? Look at what this component actually pairs. On one side there is a narrative, in which you are told about people you have never met and watch what happens to them. On the other there is a poem addressed to a named friend, in which somebody is speaking directly to a person and expecting an answer. Those two put a reader in completely different positions. In the first you are an audience, watching from outside, and the poet can move you precisely because you cannot intervene. In the second you are the person being spoken to, and a joke works only because it is aimed at you rather than reported to you. Almost everything an examiner wants you to notice about these texts follows from that difference, and it is worth settling before you go looking for techniques.

Before any Latin appears

Read this before you go on. Every line of Latin in this module was written for practice. None of it is your set text, and none of it is by Ovid or Catullus. That is deliberate: printing an approximation of lines you are revising for a closed-book paper would do you real harm, because you would learn the approximation. Your prescribed passages are in your own printed edition and that is the only place you should meet them. What this module gives you instead is a way of reading, drilled on Latin you have never seen, so that when you go back to the real text you know what question to ask of it first.

Watching, or being spoken to

The two halves of this component ask different things of a reader. Setting them beside each other is the fastest way to see why the same kind of detail can do opposite work in each.

Match the person to the word

Which line speaks to you

Two practice lines differ by a single word. One is comes ille domum venit and the other is comes tuus domum venit. Which of these is true?

• The second addresses a reader directly, because tuus means your and assumes somebody being spoken to
• The first addresses a reader directly, because ille points at a person
• They do the same thing, because both are about a companion coming home
• Neither, because a single pronoun cannot change how a poem reads

The word that moves you inside

Four practice lines. Select the ONE that speaks to a reader rather than about somebody.

• comes ille domum venit
• iuvenis infelix domum venit
• comes tuus domum venit
• miles validus domum venit

Words for judging a poem

Five terms for what a poem is doing to a reader. None of these is a technique name; they describe effects and positions rather than devices.

What direct address does

Select the TWO things that follow from a poem addressing somebody directly rather than describing them.

• The reader is placed inside the exchange rather than watching it
• A shared understanding is assumed between the speaker and the person addressed
• The reader is given distance from which to feel sympathy for a stranger
• The events described become more likely to have really happened

The reader position in a sentence

A narrative puts you _____ the poem, watching people you are told about in the _____ person. That distance is what allows _____ to build. A poem of direct address puts you _____ it, spoken to in the second person, and that closeness is what allows humour to work. So the same small domestic detail can be moving in one and _____ in the other.

Working out where you stand

Put these into the order you would use on an extract you have never seen. This is a way of reading, not a plan for writing an answer.

• Look for second-person words and see whether anyone is being addressed
• Decide whether you are watching people or being spoken to
• Ask what that position makes possible: sympathy at a distance, or a shared joke
• Find one detail in the extract and ask what it does from that position
• Only now name any technique, and say what it does for that effect

A judgement, worked

A question asks how the two halves of this component differ in their treatment of hospitality. Here is a paragraph that would score well, with no quotation in it so that the argument is visible. The two texts treat hospitality in ways that are opposite in more than subject matter, because they stand a reader in different places. The narrative describes a household from outside, so a reader watches an act of welcome without being part of it, and the distance is what allows the modesty of the household to become moving rather than merely small. The invitation poem does the reverse: it speaks to a named friend, and the reader is put in the position of the person being invited, so the same modesty becomes the joke rather than the pathos. It can be argued that the second is only funny because the first kind of poem exists to be played against, since a mock invitation depends on the reader knowing what a real one would sound like. Notice four things. Each claim is about what the poem does to a reader rather than about what device it uses. Nothing is quoted. The judgement is offered as something that can be argued rather than announced. And the word speaker would have served better than poet anywhere I have been vague, because the voice of a poem and the person who wrote it are not automatically the same.

The same detail, twice

A poem mentions that a household has very little to offer a guest. In which situation does that detail become comic rather than moving?

• When the poem is addressed to the guest, who is being told to bring dinner themselves
• When the poem describes the household from outside in the third person
• When the guests turn out to be more important than they appeared
• It cannot become comic, because poverty is not a subject for humour

Judging an extract

You are given a verse extract you have not seen and asked to write about its effect. Take the decisions in order.

• What is the first thing to establish about it?
• You find second-person words throughout. What does that make available to the poem?
• You want to attribute a view about the speaker. How do you phrase it?
• You have room for one more sentence. What is worth most?

Compare what the two ask of you

Open your own printed copy of both halves of this component. Write a comparison of what each asks of a reader. Quote only from your own edition, if at all.

• Say, for each text, whether a reader watches people or is spoken to, and how you can tell
• Explain what distance makes possible in the narrative half
• Explain what closeness makes possible in the addressed half
• Take one kind of detail that appears in both and explain how its effect differs
• Use the word speaker rather than poet at least once, and say why that is safer
• Finish with a judgement phrased as something that can be argued rather than as a fact