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Module B: Critical Study of Literature
Quick questions on Perspectives and critical readings in HSC English Advanced Module B
15short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is engaging critical readings without name-dropping?Show answer
A response that drops three names ("As Bradley says...", "Eagleton notes...", "Greenblatt argues...") without doing analytical work with the citations has not engaged the dot point.
What is engaging readings in a paragraph?Show answer
The Module B paragraph that engages other perspectives has a recognisable shape.
What is reading multiple perspectives together?Show answer
The strongest Module B responses hold more than one critical reading in view. The text is not exhausted by one lens; the meeting of two lenses on a single passage often reveals more than either alone.
What are lens-based readings?Show answer
Readings that approach the text through a particular theoretical framework: feminist, postcolonial, Marxist, psychoanalytic, materialist, formalist. The lens is a way of asking the same kinds of question of any text.
What are historical readings?Show answer
Readings that situate the text in its context of composition or reception and argue meaning through that situation. New historicist readings, for example, draw the text together with other documents of its moment.
What is characterise the reading, then use it?Show answer
"A feminist reading of the play focuses on what the text grants the female speakers and what it withholds" is a usable characterisation. The reading is now a tool you can apply to the text.
What is apply the reading to a specific passage?Show answer
A reading that does not change how you hear a passage is a reading that is not doing work in your response. Quote the passage and argue what the reading discloses.
What is argue against the reading where you can?Show answer
A reading you can name and then complicate is a reading you have engaged. A response that uses readings as authorities without testing them looks credulous.
What is topic sentence?Show answer
A claim about the text that the paragraph will argue.
What is critical reading characterised?Show answer
A sentence that names the kind of reading and what it foregrounds.
What is application to passage?Show answer
Quoted textual evidence with the reading brought to bear.
What is personal position?Show answer
A sentence that names the response's own position in relation to the reading.
What is one lens, applied flatly?Show answer
Picking up a single theoretical lens and applying it without complication. A response that finds patriarchy or imperialism everywhere has stopped reading.
What is critical readings without text?Show answer
A paragraph that talks about how critics read the text without quoting the text. The text has to be on the page.
What is q1?Show answer
Summarise ONE critical reading of your prescribed text in your own words, and identify a passage that supports it. [5 marks]