POETRY EXPLICATION WORKSHEET (Graves)
The following poem is concerned with language and the unique connotations associated with certain, seemingly synonymous words. Read the poem carefully and complete the explication prompts that follow. Then respond to the following prompt in your LRJ:
Write an essay in which you analyze the author's use of diction, particularly connotative and denotative diction, as well as other literary devices, to offer social and cultural commentary to the audience.
To the Naked and the Nude
By Robert Graves
NAME: < type your response here>
Explication worksheet Mr. Rose 2
For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart 5
As love from lies, or truth from art.
Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy; 10
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.
The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick 15
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.
The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat; 20
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!
PROMPTS
1. Literal content. Before you try to explain and interpret, you must understand what is literally happening. Ask yourself these questions:
Who is the speaker (narrator) or what kind of person is the speaker?
type your response here
What is the occasion or context of the poem? (For what reason was the poem written?)
type your response here
2. Summarize. Once you have...