Describes six inadequate approaches used in teaching, analyzing, and interpreting poetry, and suggests a useful key" for the interpretation of poems. (SW)

Proposes an alternative interpretation to John Keats'"Ode To A Nightingale," which illustrates a greater interplay of conflict and tension and offers a potentially more varied performance. (MH)

Defines interpretation as the act and art of becoming, and correlates this concept with studies in the humanities which have as their concern the refining, civilizing and freeing of the human spirit. (MH)

Choral reading can be used by teachers to enhance children's appreciation for poetry and to develop their personal, social, psychological, cognitive/affective, and language values. It is useful for teachers to begin by creating an awareness in children of the basic elements of choral reading: tempo, rhythm, pitch, stress, and juncture. Then an…

The ability to think of poetry rhetorically is a valuable instrument for interpreting poetry. The poet is the speaker "of" the poem, the persona the speaker "in" the poem. The communicative circle is complete when it includes the reader who combines an analysis of the text (the words of the persona) with an analysis of the…

WRITTEN FOR BOTH THE "GENERAL" STUDENT INTERESTED IN CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE AND THE ORAL INTERPRETATION STUDENT WHO NEEDS A VARIETY OF CRITICAL ANALYSES TO COMBINE WITH ORAL PERFORMANCE IN HIS STUDY OF LITERATURE, THIS BOOK PROVIDES FIVE EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE AND ITS ORAL INTERPRETATION. PART 1, "THE…

This journal issue deals with the ways in which elements of a literary text specify the manner in which an oral interpreter will present the text to an audience. After an introductory statement, four poems by a contemporary poet are presented as sample texts. Four commentators discuss the ways these poems might be interpreted to an audience, and…

Defninig rhetorical analysis as a means of studying writer/audience relationships allowing both intrinsic and extrinsic analysis, the author discusses the three sections of Levertov's poem, "From a Notebook: October '68--May '69." Section 1 is the speaker's personal comparison of her associations with life and death, comparison of…

Ideally, the act of performance involves the whole body of the performer. The solo performer of any poem (defined broadly to include all types of literature) becomes the poem; the poem takes flesh in the form of the reader. In this situation, the reader gives the audience a close-up, in which small gestures and minimal movements assume massive…

The four articles in this journal explore various aspects of empathy and its application to oral interpretation of literature. The first article examines the concept of empathy, discusses measures of it, and includes an "accurate empathy exercise" and an empathy scale. The second article discusses the way in which the writings of Dylan…

The teacher can stimulate an appreciation of poetry in his students by selecting, reading aloud, and discussing only those poems to which he himself responds strongly. He can also develop students' enjoyment of poetry by encouraging them to bring in their own poetic discoveries and by alerting them to the many possible interpretations of a poem.…

This volume of the Michigan Speech Association curriculum guide presents a seven-unit course in oral interpretation as the technique of communicating the contents of a printed page with such skill as to "create in the listeners the illusion that an experience is being enacted in their imaginations." Each unit is outlined in terms of…