Authorial Intent: Analytical verbs and conscious constructs

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Mock season is upon us once more. What could be a joyous time, a celebration of all the progress made, can also be a time of sheer panic. Exams are only a matter of months away and there will be some students who still don’t understand a particular text or concept.

Having recently marked my set of mocks, that panic set in. Students had done everything I asked of them. They were including and analysing quotations well and they knew the events they wanted to reference, yet one thing was lacking: awareness of a text as a conscious construct. Whilst my top end answers were exploring authorial intent, those who I was hoping would achieve a 5 or 6 were not; instead they discussed the characters as real people and demonstrated a distinct lack of understanding that everything in a text has been created and explored for a reason. It seems authorial intent was ignored in these exam answers at the expense of throwing in as many quotations attached to pointless subject terminology as possible.

Authorial intent is so important to consider. Understanding and identifying it makes a text a living, breathing thing. I want my students to appreciate that the words they are reading exist because someone once had something important to say. Instead of remaining quiet, they wanted to teach and educate others in their society. They saw it as their duty to criticise and raise awareness of what they deemed wrong with their world. They aimed to warn their readers, expose injustices and celebrate life’s wonders. Texts are tools which are used to build better people. At the same time, they can be weapons, used to strike the heart of complex issues. In other words, a text is the voice of a writer. They may be using that voice to speak personally or for those who do not have a voice. Either way, a text is a conscious construct, something which my students, in their mocks, were still not appreciating.

Analytical Verbs

I initially came across this idea when it was presented at the Knowledge Symposium at the Jane Austen College by Lia Martin last year. The task seems deceptively simple, yet really asks students to manipulate their knowledge of a text by completing the beginning of a sentence in different ways. For example, one could provide their students with the following sentence to help them consider authorial intent.

Shakespeare may have written ‘Macbeth’:
-         to criticise
-         to teach
-         to warn
-         to reveal the importance of
-         to celebrate

My students initially scoffed at the idea. After modelling analytical paragraph after analytical paragraph and asking them to produce the same, here I was asking them to write five sentences. They had a go and I was impressed with the results. Sometimes less is more. Like anything, they found some of these verbs harder to complete than others. ‘Macbeth’ is a tragedy and ‘celebrate’ has positive connotations. The two, surely, should not go together. And yet after some discussion, they found that actually celebration does occur in the play. It could be argued, for example, that the play is a celebration of the divine right of kings; Macbeth has not been chosen by God and so suffers a downfall spurred by his ambition. When paired with the fact that many see ‘Macbeth’ as an example of pro-royalist propaganda, it is clear to see that Shakespeare could be celebrating true kingship, true royalty and warning anyone who seeks to overthrow those chosen by divinity that they will not, under any circumstances, succeed; fate will always catch up with them.

It was an interesting task and one which helped students begin to appreciate that texts are a conscious construct, something they need to understand if they are to access the higher bands of the mark scheme. The example above is just one way of opening a sentence using analytical verbs. Ideally, students should open their sentence in a way that will allow them to hone in on specific details.These are just some of the examples I considered for ‘A Christmas Carol’:

-         Dickens uses the Cratchit family to criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.
-        Scrooge is placed by Dickens in desolate places with the Ghost of Christmas Present to criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.
-  Dickens personifies the qualities of Ignorance and Want to criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.

The more I presented students with these analytical verbs, the more competent they became with using them. And yet something was missing. The class never seemed to seamlessly integrate these ideas into their essays. Their sentence on authorial intent remained just one sentence and they would always ‘bolt it on’ to the end of a paragraph full of language analysis as an afterthought.

So I went back to the drawing board. 

When asking students to review their mocks, I gave them back the question they had completed. This was from the AQA Summer 2019 paper, which gave students the Captain's speech from Act I, scene ii and asked them how far Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a violent character. I then gave them the following task:


Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play:

-         to criticise
-         to teach
-         to warn
-         to reveal the importance of
-         to celebrate

Students completed the analytical verbs, we discussed them and made some slight adjustments based on what they had said. Here are two examples of what one student wrote:

Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play to teach that he is very much capable of committing brutal acts.

Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play to celebrate his success with using violence, which in contrast, fuels his desire for power and leads to his demise.

None of those answers are incorrect, but they don’t go deep enough and they lack clarity. I know what the second example is trying to say but it is not as clear as it could be.

Because/but/so

After discussion, I asked the class to check what they had written made sense before instructing them to extend their sentences using the connectives ‘because’, ‘but’ or ‘so’. This is a really simple idea from ‘The Writing Revolution’ and I am a big fan of it. I asked students to pick three of their previous sentences, write them out again and pick one connective from the three to expand on their ideas. Here is how that student developed their original sentences:

Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play to teach audiences that he is very much capable of committing brutal acts because they are something which will eventually lead to the destruction of his loyalty and his character’s downfall.

Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play to celebrate primarily, his success as a violent yet loyal soldier to Duncan, something which fuels his ambition but eventually leads to his character’s demise, revealing that ambition and violence are both dangerous qualities for one to possess.

Extending responses

As you can see, there is still work to be done here. The answers aren’t perfect and not as clear as they could be but development is beginning to occur. One sentence, however, still isn’t enough. After review, I asked my students to extend their ideas yet again, using their first analytical verb to lead in to a second analytical verb. For example, if a student had said ‘Shakespeare is criticising…’ they would, having finished discussing that idea, say something like, ‘Through this criticism of… Shakespeare may also be teaching audiences…’ Notice the use of tentative language too, something I have really stressed with my students to use if they can. Here is an example of what the same student produced:


Shakespeare initially presents Macbeth as violent, but this is presented in a positive light. His actions are examined by the Captain who informs Duncan Macbeth ‘fixed’ his enemy’s ‘head upon our battlements.’ The certainty of the action ‘fixed’ implies that Macbeth is comfortable with violence and is very much capable of carrying out such brutal deeds. A head on a battlement acts as a warning. This could be Shakespeare teaching the audience that violence and strength, admired qualities, could eventually mutate into toxicity and brutality if given the chance. Through this lesson, he reinforces that ambition can result in tragedy, as is the case with Macbeth and no amount of violence can free him from this vicious cycle.

Compared to previous attempts, the answer above is really pleasing and shows progress. Whilst there is still work to be done on the clarity of the answer, there is a clear and sustained awareness of authorial intent, something which was missing first time round. I also like the way this student has changed a verb to ‘reinforces’. They have removed the ‘because’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ but have extended their ideas in other ways as their answer develops.

I’ll keep working on this method with students to improve their answers because once a student truly understands the idea of a conscious construct, they are more likely to look at the bigger picture and consider major ideas. Why has this text been written the way it has with these characters and ideas? What is the author trying to say?

I think it is also important to note that there is more to authorial intent than a set of analytical verbs. This is not a simple solution to a complex issue and should not be treated as such. This method is just one way in to exploring a text as a conscious construct that I found particularly helpful so I thought I would share.

Analytical verb resources can be found here.

Stuart
@SPryke2