Second Paper: Explication

English 1423.A2 – Winter 2020
Due: Feb. 10

The content matters this time, but that doesn’t mean the formatting is unimportant.
As with the first paper, this paper must:

• Use 12-point, Times New Roman font
• Have 1” or 2.5cm margins on all four sides
• Have a title block with Title, Name, and Date, single spaced
• The body of the paper should be double spaced
• Have an informative title

• New, additional formatting rules:
• There should be no extra paces between paragraphs
• Each paragraph after the first one should be indented
• Each page after the first one should have a page number in the top right corner
• You must have a list of Works Cited
• The items in your Works Cited list must be formatted in accordance with MLA style

You will be given a list of three sonnets from which you will choose one to explicate.

Note that the root of the word “explication” is the word “explicit.” Thus, to explicate a text is to make as much of the text as possible as explicit as possible. In turn, to make something explicit is to reveal anything about it that is implicit (implied), occult (i.e. hidden), or less than obvious. And remember, just because something is obvious to you doesn’t mean it will be obvious to others, so err on the side of over-explaining rather than holding your tongue (or your type, as may be the case).

Explications move through texts chronologically, from first to last, rather than logically. That is, they move from the start of the text, through the text, to the end of the text rather than following a given thought presented in the text to that thought’s logical conclusion. Typically, following the logic of something is more of an analysis than an explication.

We will explicate a couple of sonnets in class so everyone can see how it's done.

You'll be expected to provide an introduction that was written for your reader rather than for you, the writer. We all have to write some anticipation of where we’re going to get started going there, but that introduction doesn’t usually work for your reader. So you have to write a second introduction after you’ve finished writing the rest of your paper. This second introduction can be written explicitly for your reader. One of the best things writing a second paper will do for you is get rid of all the excess verbiage we tend to write as we warm to our task, before we know what’s going to happen in the rest of the paper.