Writing Instructions: Choose one of the quotations/passages listed below (in the section called "Quotations/Passages for Explication") and prepare a thorough explication essay of at least 600 words (minimum).

For your exam, write the explication as a well-organized essay that is clearly written with well-polished prose, grammar, and mechanics.

You must incorporate a minimum of three quotes from the essay you are explicating (not including or in addition to the quote I provide in the prompt). Essays that don't reflect these guidelines will be marked down.

Specific instructions for this essay format have been reviewed extensively in your Class Lectures. Failure to follow directions and meet the requirements for this exam will lead to a grade of no credit, so please do make sure to follow these instructions, which include the following 3 requirements:

1. Explain the claim the critic makes in the passage (this will be the first paragraph and the shortest section of your explication)

2. Explain what the claim contributes to other elements of the essay (this will be the second paragraph of your explication and a bit longer than the section you write for item #1 above, but it will also be a shorter section.

Make sure you keep focus on the essay as an example of Traditional Historicist Criticism-don't just summarize without keeping to this focus).3. Explain how the claim is typical or characteristic of Traditional Historicist Criticism (this will be the third and fourth paragraphs of your essay and the longest and most important section of your explication essay.

This is the section where you demonstrate to me your mastery of the course material, and what you write here will be what the majority of your grade is based on. Therefore, be sure to keep your focus on the assigned passage, use vocabulary from the unit, and explain how the passage (not the entire essay) specifically reflects the characteristics of the critical methodology.

For your explication essay, don't simply relate the passage generally to the characteristics of the particular critical methodology it represents. You need to keep focused on the text that the passage is taken from. Your response should demonstrate both your mastery of the general ideas that the particular theoretical approach engages and an excellent understanding of how the passage is an example of the critical methodology.

Quotations/Passages for Explication Choose one of the following quotations and write a 600-word (minimum) explication following the specific Instructions above and in your Unit Overview Lecture:1. "Is there not an obvious distinction between what a text might mean and what it does mean? According to accepted linguistic theory, it is far more accurate to say that a written composition is not a mere locus of verbal possibilities, but, rather, a record (made possible by the invention of writing) of a verbal actuality."

(E.D. Hirsch, "Objective Criticism")2. "Just as Adam in Paradise Lost (VIII, 452-490) awoke from a dream of Eve and found her real, man will awake in eternity to find that imagination is prophetic. Keats more zealously embraces this belief because he has more confidence in intuition that in ‘consequitive' reasoning, although he concedes that a philosopher, after ‘putting aside numerous objections,' may discover the truth." (Allen Austin, "Toward Resolving Keats's Grecian Urn Ode")