Topic 1- 6 Round-up and Self Assessment > Analysing a whole poem > Task E comments

Analysing a whole poem

Our comments for task E:

The beginning of the poem is deviant in textual/structure/information terms. we expect the beginnings of poems to take the reader into account, supplying the information we need to understand easily what we are being told. But in this case we are told that it is 'afterwards' without knowing what went before. Later on we can infer from what is 'said' that love-making was the proir activity. But we don't know this at the beginning. This feeling that we have started the story 'in media res' (Latin for in 'the middle of things') helps us to establish that the poem is not directly addressed to the reader, but that, instead, we witness what goes on between the two 'characters' in the fictional world created by the poem.

We will look at this idea in greater detail when we look at Linguistic indicators of point of view.

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