Example Critical Essay notes
Let's look at an example...
Imagine that your class had been studying William Shakespeare’s famous poem ‘Sonnet 18’ as a National 5 Critical Essay text.
Here it is below:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Watch this video for a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
A video of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
Example Critical Essay Notes: ‘Sonnet 18’ by William Shakespeare
During the block of learning on this text, your class made the following jotter notes:
Notes
Summary
- Shakespeare considers the overwhelming beauty of his beloved
- Speaker concludes that the object of his affections is much more beautiful than a summer’s day
- On a deeper level, text considers if poetry can adequately represent such beauty in words
- Theme: Romantic love
| Poetic form | Rhyme scheme | Rhythm | Key poetic techniques |
| Sonnet. 14 lines. Divided into three quatrains (sections of four lines). Concluding couplet (2 lines). Form associated with love | abab cdcdb efef gg | Iambic pentameter. 5 sets of unstressed and stressed syllables per line | Anaphora, aporia, couplet, extended metaphor, juxtaposition, personification, rhetorical question, volta |
| Poetic form | Sonnet. 14 lines. Divided into three quatrains (sections of four lines). Concluding couplet (2 lines). Form associated with love |
|---|---|
| Rhyme scheme | abab cdcdb efef gg |
| Rhythm | Iambic pentameter. 5 sets of unstressed and stressed syllables per line |
| Key poetic techniques | Anaphora, aporia, couplet, extended metaphor, juxtaposition, personification, rhetorical question, volta |
Extract from Analysis Notes (focus on lines 1-2)
| Quotation | Analysis | Effect |
| Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? (line 3) | Rhetorical question seems to show speaker’s uncertainty about how to describe this person. However, comparison of unnamed person and summer’s day draws attention to loveliness of person being addressed | Establishes theme of romantic love, introduces a speaker struggling to describe his subject. We feel how overwhelming being in love can be |
| Thou art more lovely and more temperate (line 2) | Speaker thinks more about comparison but immediately concludes that it doesn’t work. Repetition of adverb ‘more’ stresses that the person being described is actually better or greater than perfection of Summer’s day. Shakespeare uses technique of aporia to show uselessness/redundant nature of the opening comparison | We see that ordinary metaphors are inadequate to show the beauty of his beloved. Introduces reader to idea that good poetry (particularly sonnets) CAN do justice to this beauty |
| Quotation | Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? (line 3) |
|---|---|
| Analysis | Rhetorical question seems to show speaker’s uncertainty about how to describe this person. However, comparison of unnamed person and summer’s day draws attention to loveliness of person being addressed |
| Effect | Establishes theme of romantic love, introduces a speaker struggling to describe his subject. We feel how overwhelming being in love can be |
| Quotation | Thou art more lovely and more temperate (line 2) |
|---|---|
| Analysis | Speaker thinks more about comparison but immediately concludes that it doesn’t work. Repetition of adverb ‘more’ stresses that the person being described is actually better or greater than perfection of Summer’s day. Shakespeare uses technique of aporia to show uselessness/redundant nature of the opening comparison |
| Effect | We see that ordinary metaphors are inadequate to show the beauty of his beloved. Introduces reader to idea that good poetry (particularly sonnets) CAN do justice to this beauty |
Example question
Using the notes above, imagine you studied this poem in-depth and you were given the following National 5 essay question to try:
Poetry
Answer to questions in this part should refer to the text and to such relevant features as word choice, tone, imagery, structure, content, rhythm, rhyme, theme, sound ideas...
1. Choose a poem which explores an important theme. By referring to appropriate techniques, explain how this important theme is explored.
Question
Stop and think:
- What was the theme of the text studied?
- What techniques were mentioned in the notes?
- Would this question be suitable for that text, above?
This question lends itself well to a poem about love.
If you had studied this text in class you could write in detail about:
- rhyme
- rhythm
- imagery
- structure
- word choice
Choose the right question
Choosing the right question from the relevant section in the exam paper is the first step to success!
- If you have studied a poem choose a question from the Poetry section
- If you have studied a play choose a question from the Drama section
- If you have studied a film choose a question from the Film and TV section
- If you have studied a novel choose a question from the Prose section
- If you have studied a non-fiction text choose a question from the Prose section
Choosing the wrong question, from the wrong section, is called a genre infringement.
