A level literature unseen poem panic!

As an aside -

Spenser, what an incel, eh?!

I did lit at A Level about 15 years ago and having read the poem today I'm not sure I'd have even cottoned on that it was about unrequited love.

I can definitely understand where your son is coming from. There's always a joke that if you're stuck you can relate anything to the theme of death but I don't think that's necessarily the case here, sounds less like your son was stuck and more that he just saw a different theme. Death personified is interesting and the examiner probably won't read 100 papers with the same points made by your son. We were taught to impress the examiner by throwing in something a bit different. Your son has gone allllll the way with different but as long as it swell written, grounded with quotes from the text, I think he'll be ok.

Please come back and update when he gets results though, I'll have all my digits crossed for him!

Maybe, but my recollection of the generic question and applying it to that text was very much, “errr, do we have the right exam paper?”, and I don’t think I’m especially stupid. I got a Top 5 mark for GCSE Eng Lit and a First at undergrad, so…

Err. I don't think it takes all that much interpretation to look at how Scout and Jem think of Boo as supernatural, but yeah, in general, the whole point of modern lit crit is that any interpretation can be valid if it's grounded in the text.

There’s no such thing as the “wrong interpretation” in Literature (I have a MA in it!). As long as he evidenced his argument for his interpretation, that’s fine.

I remember my frigging GCSE English Lit paper had a q on “supernatural” and our text was To Kill A Mockingbird. Like, JFC. Took a lot of liberal interpretation to make Atticus et al ‘supernatural’

not paying enough attention to the actual poem as you fly off with a left-field interpretation suggests more panic than analytic nous.

Arguably if you start with the last line and read it as a serious conclusion - rather than just some trope about how any woman who doesn't sleep with the man who fancies her must be a heartless b*tch - then you can read this as a poem about Death.

And then another convention of romantic poetry is that of being 'half in love with easeful Death.'

I wouldn't panic - with the provisio that someone needing a starred A to get a place to do English - might have taken rather a gamble her.

Edit: Realised this is A-levels, not GCSE

But you’d have to overlook the fact that the speaker identifies her as his ‘Love’ in the second line, and as a woman who’s hardened her heart against him at the end, to run with the ‘indifferent Creator-god’ reading.

It’s less that this response demonstrates a lack of awareness of the courtly love tradition, than that it suggests the student didn’t actually read the poem in front of them carefully enough.

I mean, I do agree that it would absolutely be possibly to grasp the courtly love trope and still write a dreadful analysis, and it’s perfectly possible the OP’s son located his reading reasonably convincingly in relation to the words on the page, but not paying enough attention to the actual poem as you fly off with a left-field interpretation suggests more panic than analytic nous.

Mind you, my clever godson claims to have written a deeply eccentric essay in response to a passage of unseen prose on his Leaving Cert paper, so I am likewise hoping he made sense.

I think if you don't know about the conventions of Courtly Love/the cruel beloved - also present in Shakespearian sonnets - alternative readings may come to mind in which this figure is 'not a woman'.

So the Spectator could be, for instance an indifferent Creator-God. And there is always this idea that the indifferent beloved is 'killing' the suitor/that we feel we want to die if our affections are not returned.

I think it would be quite possible for someone to get the 'right' idea that it's about unreciprocated love - but answer in a way that meant they got very poor marks.

Or you could do a variant reading and justify it with close reference to the text and get a high mark.

(Not an examiner. Just an Eng Lit graduate.)

I agree with @redcord — if he grasped the theatre as a metaphor for life, and the stony mistress as an ‘idle’ spectator watching the lover as an actor who fails to move her and laughs when he acts a tragedy, then he might get away with it, if it’s otherwise well-observed and -argued.

Otherwise I’d say he lost a whacking great wedge of marks for overlooking the obvious courtly love context etc of what is actually a fairly simple poem, once you get past the archaic orthography.

But equally try not to worry. DD did this in a GCSE. Interpreted a bird as the poet's lost love. When it was literally a bird (confirmed by the teacher afterwards - and all her mates! We were soooo worried, but she must have done enough to convince, or OK in her other work, because she got an A star (and was an A star student, so usually they can write to persuade!)

If he's backed up his interpretation with reference to the text I think it'll probably do better rather than worse. I have a lit degree and read through a decade's worth of examiners' reports before I sat my finals; they frankly loved anything that woke them out of their seen-it-a-million-times coma.

As long as he's shown his understanding of how poems are constructed, themes, allegories etc it doesn't really matter how he interprets it, surely? It's art, therefore can mean anything you want it to.

I mean it could all be about the Faerie Queen! It could be about a play...

I think that interpretation works ok actually, having looked at the poem. (I’m an experienced English teacher.)

Did he mention anything about the setting (eg the stage) Because the trope of the theatre being life (all the world's a stage etc) could fit with how we play out our own lives, but despite how we act, or the things that befall us (tragedy/comedy etc) death - immovable - is inevitable.....that would fly maybe? I think the key thing then would be if he equated Theatre as a metaphor for life.

I always told ds to make the examiner laugh and have a conversation with them. I doubt he took my advice given that he was doing Maths, but maybe. It could go either way, he'll either get an A* for his genuinely original thinking or he won't, but either way the original thinking is still there. What a superstar. Is he going to write a novel? Cant wait to read it.

hmm, the woman being death is an odd interpretation for sure.

You could say death is the spectator- watching us .. ever looming and not interested in how funny or clever you are, it "she" comes to us all. Not even money can stop death...
a mask you wear to hide our feelings about it ...
we're pretend we're happy ... the author is frustrated with her - e.g. can't stop her, can't avoid this inevitable doom ...

He might have got away with it!

If he can justify his interpretation then it’s not wrong and he may even do better than them no? Unique interpretations with evidence and justification are good. That’s what literary studies are!

I read English at Durham and have form for giving a new twist on everything and was always marked highly for it! If it’s structured and well thought out he will be fine. I used to come out of exams and everyone would be saying what they had written and it would cause me major anxiety then I’d end up doing well.

So long as he backed up his reasoning he’ll be fine

If he’s a bright kid, I think he’ll get away with it because he’ll have made sensible links to the text and it will read nicely as an answer. I wouldn’t worry. If he doesn’t get the grade he hopes for, definitely challenge it but my instinct is that he’ll be okay if this is a subject he’s good at.