Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 13.1
Unit 13 Intertextuality and allusion
Section 3 Attributing meaning

This activity looks at another sonnet by Edna St Vincent Millay:

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;

Well, such you are, - but well enough we know

How thick about us root, how rankly grow

Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

That flourish through neglect, and soon must send

Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow

Our steady senses; how such matters go

We are aware, and how such matters end.

Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;

With lovers such as we forevermore

Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere

Receives the Table’s ruin through her door,

Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,

Lets fall the colored book upon the floor.

As with many sonnets, this sonnet is divided into an octave (first eight lines) and a sestet (last six lines); this division or volta (turn) is marked by the rhyme scheme and by the word ’Yet’ at the beginning of the ninth line.

1 Read the first eight lines carefully and try to identify: (a) the speech situation (who is speaking to whom); (b) what the speaker is saying to the person spoken to (the addressee); and (c) how the use of metaphor indicates a particular attitude towards, or representation of, what the speaker is talking about.

2 Read the last six lines carefully and underline or highlight all potential allusions.

2.1 Using the Internet and/or appropriate reference books, do a search on the key words of each potential allusion in order to confirm whether or not it is an allusion.

2.2 For each allusion that you discover: (a) take notes about what the Internet source or reference book says about the source of the allusion; (b) where possible, try to read the original text or texts that Millay’s poem is alluding to; and (c) work out the relevant similarities between the source text and Millay’s poem.

2.3 What is the overall function or effect of the allusions in the sestet of Millay’s sonnet?

3 What is the relationship between the sestet and the octave in Millay’s sonnet?

4 How does Millay’s sonnet relate to the general conventions of the sonnet genre?

5 How does Millay’s sonnet relate to the general conventions of love poetry?

Reading

Barthes, R. (1968) ’The Death of the Author’ and (1971) ’From Work to Text’, in Vincent B. Leitch (ed.) (2001) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York and London: Norton.

Bate, J. (1970) The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, London: Chatto & Windus.

Bloom, H. (1973) The Anxiety of Influence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eliot, T.S. (1919) ’Tradition and the Individual Talent’, in Vincent B. Leitch (ed.) (2001)

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York and London: Norton.

Gilbert, S. and Gubar, S. (1979) The Madwoman in the Attic, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hutchinson, P. (1983) Games Authors Play, London: Methuen.

Renza, L.A. (1990) ’Influence’, in F. Lentricchia and T. McLaughlin (eds) Critical Terms for Literary Study, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, pp. 186-202.