GUIDELINE FOR TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

First step:  consider the title and see what expectation it creates about the possible content of the poem

Es. Just considering the title I expect the poem to be about something happening in spring, probably when spring has just started (“early spring”) 

Second step: read the poem at least twice in order to be sure to have understood what the poem is about.

                   Remember:   1-look for the new words

                                    2-you must be able to translate each line

           3-try to find some connection between the content of the poem and the title

Third step: write the denotative analysis of the poem (in your own words say what the poem is about)

Es. The poem consist of (is made up, is a regard in, is organized into, …) six quatrain (stanzas consisting of four lines each) where the poet at first provides with the description of pleasant spring landscape and, in the last part, invites the reader (him or her) to reflect  on the relationship between man and Nature. Therefore the poem is partly anticipated in the refrain of the second stanzas (“what man has made of man?”) 

Fourth step: write the structural analysis (describe the component parts of the text and say what the function of each part is)                  

Es. The poem consist of (is made up, is a regard in, is organized into, …) six quatrain (stanzas consisting of four lines each) where the poet at first provides with the description of pleasant spring landscape and, in the last part, invites the reader (him or her) to reflect  on the relationship between man and Nature. Therefore the poem is partly anticipated in the refrain of the second stanzas (“what man has made of man?”)

Fifth step: write the connotative analysis which consist in:

                            1- phonological level (all that concern sound devices: kind of vocal sound (open or close) and kind of consonants sound (guttural, nasal, … - soft or harsh sound), rhythm, assonance, consonance and alliteration, pauses and punctuation, run-on-lines or enjambments and onomatopoeia). Explain what is the effect that they produce and explain how the choices made add meaning to the text

                   2- semantic level (consider words choice (abstract, Latin or Anglo-Saxon words), semantic fields, metaphorical use of words, recurrent words and what verb tenses are used). Explain what is the effect that they produce and explain how the choices made add meaning to the text

                   3- syntactical level (have the poet used deviations (inversion, chiasmus, …) from the norm or he used the classical English word order)

   4- level of the figure of speech (not simply similes or metaphors [synedoch, metonymy, personification, oxymoron, paradox, hyperbole, … ]. Rhetorical use if verbs [es. “il mio cuore balla con I fiori” – “the child is father of the man”] ).

Sixth step: draw the conclusions on the bases of the text.