A level literature unseen poem panic!

[Liesmorelies]

Can anyone reassure me/ds about this? He sat his unseen paper today and, having discussed it with his friends and then looked it up online, it seems he has interpreted the poem completely differently from everyone else and from the accepted interpretation online. Totally differently - themes and everything.

He is very able - predicted A star and did a practice paper this week and was given full marks. I say this to point out it will have been well-written and structured and he says he addressed the assessment objectives as normal, but what if his interpretation is just wrong?

The mark scheme says it's ok as long as 'valid', but what does that mean? I have just read the poem (did this A level years ago) and I don't agree with ds but can see where he got his ideas from. I think he's over-thought it rather than simply misunderstood.

Any ideas about how this might affect his mark would be much appreciated!

I don’t think there’s a right interpretation. I think it depends how well he has put this forward using examples from the poem and with reference to poetic devices?

Im sure someone will be along with more knowledge than me, but this should provide some pertinent amusement in the meantime….

The Unseen Poem, Brian Bilston

OK. Turn the page. Right, here goes …
The first line’s straightforward, I suppose.
At least I know what the words all mean.
It has an AA BB rhyming scheme.

What’s that French word for when one line
runs into the next? Jambon? Never mind.
Susan Jenkins is smiling, I bet she knows.
Oh great! Now the rhymes have disappeared

and the language is getting more obfuscatory
by the stanza. The voice keeps changing.
At first, it was confident. But now it’s confused
uncertain (?) and … hesitant?

and as for this bit
what was the poet even thinking?

(personally, i think
they must have been drinking)

Susan Jenkins needs more paper.
I hate her. There are ten minutes left.
What’s this poem all about anyway?
No idea. I shall just have to guess.

I’ll say it’s a metaphor for death.

@Liesmorelies my understanding (and Eng lit esp A level is not my subject) is that any valid interpretation is acceptable. That's certainly true for (for example) the book you analyse in MFL A level.

Think about Tissue, on the GCSE AQA spec (but will never be the given poem as it’s too hard) – there are many ways to analyse that poem and what it means.

Can you say what the poem was and what his interpretation was? There are some English teachers on this board who may help.

Love that Bilston one @CrispyK !

The more I read the poem the more worried I am. It's about unrequited love and he's interpreted the uninterested woman to be death - as if he took the poem above literally!

Nothing like this has happened to him before so it's a bit shocking.

What’s the poem?

If he's totally rooted his analysis in textual evidence (quotes), he should be OK. More than one perspective / POV should always be addressed but they don't have to be the standard mainstream interpretation. The rule is mark what's there, not what isn't.

Maybe La Belle Dame sans Merci, I can see how that would relate to death as well.

Well, which poem is it?

Yes, please tell us the poem

It's Sonnet 54 by Edmund Spencer.

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.

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

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.

Thanks everyone - hopefully it will be fine....

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!

It's not about death though is it? Aarrggh...I'm a bit frustrated with him, which is totally unfair...

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!

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.

I think that's where he went with it @ButteredRadishes

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

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...

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.

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!)

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.

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.)