GUIDELINES FOR TEXTUAL ANALYIS

1st step. Consider the title and see what expectation it creates about the possible content of the poem.
Ex. Just considering the title I expect the poem to be about something happening in spring "early spring".

2nd step. Read the poem at least twice in order to be sure to have understood what it is about:
- look for the new words;
- be able to translate each line;
- try to find some connections between the content of the poem and the title.

3rd step. Write the denotative level, analysis of the poem (in your own words say what the poem is about).
Ex. The poem is expressed by a speaking voice in the first person, who says he or she heard the notes of Nature while he was sitting in a grove. The speaking voice was in a good mood, thinking of something pleasant when suddenly his or her mind was crossed by some sad thoughts.

4th step. Structural analysis (you describe the component parts of the poem and say what the function of each part is).
Ex. The poem consists on (is made up on, is arranged into, is organized into) six quatrains (stanza made up of four lines each), where the poet at first provides the reader with the descriptions of a pleasant spring landscape and in the last part invites him or her to reflect on the relationship between man and Nature. There for the poem is partly descriptive and partly reflective.
The reflection invited is anticipated in the refrain of the second stanza "what man has made of man".

5th step. Connotative analysis which consists in:
A) Phonological level ( all that concerns sound devices:
- kind of vowels and consonants;
- rhyme scheme;
- assonance and consonance;                                   Explain what is the effect they produce and EXPLAIN HOW THE

- pauses and punctuations;                                       CHOICES MADE HAD MEANING TO THE TEXT.
- run-on-lines;
- end-stopped lines).

B) Semantic levels (consider:
- word choices;                                                          Explain what is the effect they produce and EXPLAIN HOW

- Latinate or Anglo-Saxon words;                              THE CHOICES MADE HAD MEANING TO THE TEXT.
- semantic field;
- metaphorical use of words;
- hard words recurrent;
- what verb tenses are used).

C) Syntactical level (word order:
- deviation from the norm;
- punctuation;
- pauses).

D) Level of the figure of speech. Not simply similies, metaphors [synedock, metonym, personification, oxymoron, paradox, hyperbole, rhetorical use of the verb].

6th step. Draw your conclusions ON THE BASIS OF THE TEXT.