Understanding Explication

Understanding What Explication Is The word explication comes from the Latin ex (out or out from) and plicare (to fold)--literally, to fold out. When you explicate, you unfold the layers of meaning that lie beneath the surface of the literal text. 
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Understanding the Purpose 
of Explication
The purpose of explication (as far as we're concerned) is to reveal meaning to enhance our reading of texts. Thus, in a very real sense, your position papers and your explication essays are revelations of texts. 

We explicate in service to textual, not personal, revelation. Explicating in service to textual revelation draws meaning out of the text (exegesis); explicating in service to personal revelation reads meaning into the text (eisegesis). 

Explication, in other words, is not a free-association game whereby you reveal your own private prejudices or impulses using the words of the text (e.g.. "I think Donne's poem 'The Flea' is really about puppy love because when I think of fleas I think of dogs . . ."); rather, explication bases its reading of a text on plausible inferences drawn from metaphors, paradoxes, syntactical structures, etc. to which all readers have access. 
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Understanding Claims You Can Make Using Explication The Harbrace College Handbook defines a claim as "a conclusion that a writer expects his or her readers to accept [that should] be supported by source material that is accurate and representative" (G-15). Thus, to make claims about the literal level of a literary text is a waste of time because such claims do not enhance our reading of the text. 

For example, to claim that the persona of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 thinks that lust is a sin doesn't reveal significant meaning because every reader of the work gets this idea from the literal level of the poem. On the other hand, to claim that the persona uses monetary metaphors to show that lust is a system of exchange not only requires explication but also focuses your writing on just those words and lines ("expense of spirit in a waste of shame" [1]) that support your claim. 

 

Understanding What to Look for When You Explicate Explication requires concentration on the language of the text, or  "close reading." 

You can break down the rather daunting concept of language into categories by using Aristotle's paradigm of language: logic, rhetoric, and grammar. Examining a text's imagery and metaphor can also help you explicate. 
 

Using Your Understanding of Logic to Explicate
Logic is "the study of the principles of reasoning, especially the structures of propositions as distinguished from their content" (Morris 767b). In other words, when you examine logic, look for systems of thought, for contradictions, for paradoxes, etc. 

For example, the peculiar logic that the persona of "The Flea" uses reveals something about him because it reveals the way (not necessarily what) he thinks. 

For another example, the prevalence of paradox in Donne's Holy Sonnet 14 may reflect the difficulty the persona experiences in her relationship to God and could explain why she thinks "Reason . . . is captived." 
 

Using Your Understanding of Rhetoric to Explicate
Rhetoric uses language to get somebody to do something. You might be able to see here that the persona of "The Flea" uses a rhetoric of logic to persuade the beloved to have sexual relations with him; he presents each view of the flea as an object of investigation, as an eminently reasonable argument for going to bed with him. What this rhetoric further reveals is not only the persona's motives but also what kind of discourse he believes will persuade the beloved, further revealing the beloved as someone who values the logic of a well-made argument. 

Using Your Understanding of Grammar to Explicate
Using what you know about the different parts of speech and how they work, you can quickly identify grammatical patterns that reveal significant meaning in a text. 

My advice is go to the verbs first because verbs are the most revealing words in any language; consequently, VERBS RULE! 

When you examine verbs, look at all their facets (tense, voice [active/passive], mood [indicative, imperative, subjunctive]). Also consider whether they denote actions or states of being or if they are verba sentiendi--that is, verbs that denote feeling, thought, or perception, primary signals of subjective points of view. 

Look, for example, the verbs in Holy Sonnet 14. A significant number denote violent action and are delivered in the imperative mood. These two facts suggest the persona's desperate desire for something to happen which he cannot achieve himself. 

For another example,  you might note the predominance of verba sentiendi in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 ("behold" [twice], "seest," "percievest") and conclude that the persona is trying to delineate a certain state of mind of the second person. 

After you have exhausted the possibilities of the verbs, consider looking at coordination and subordination. Coordination sets things on an equal basis; subordination sets up hierarchies of importance. 

A splendid example of coordination as a grammatical means by which a writer can set up disparate elements on an equal basis comes from "The Flea": "This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed, and marriage a temple is." In these lines the persona is able to elevate a diminutive insect to the status of an institution ("marriage") by coordinating the two with the conjunction "and." (Please note that only the second "and" in the lines coordinates; the other two are additive particles. The coordinating conjunctions are and, but, so, yet, for, or, nor.) 

Subordination, on the other hand, sets up a hierarchy between the contents of the subordinate and main clauses, the main clause always having the privilege value. 

For example, the last two lines of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" ("though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run") reveals that what the persona and his lover "cannot" do is secondary (subordinate) to what they can ("will") do. 
 

Using Your Understanding of Imagery to Explicate
Imagery uses words or phrases to describe sensory experience. Examining imagery is a particularly productive method of revealing subjectivity through its phenomenological experience of the world. 

For example, in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, the persona uses images of "bare ruin'd choirs," "Sunset fadeth," "ashes of youth," etc. to create an atmosphere of decay (a rhetoric of decay, perhaps?) to set up the psychological truth in the final couplet. 
 

Using Your Understanding of Metaphor to Explicate
Metaphor states one thing in terms of another. You can use the term tenor for the thing the text speaks of and the term vehicle for the thing the text uses to characterize the tenor. Examing metaphor is a particularly productive method of charting how an author moves from one idea to another and accounts for relationships between ideas. 

For example, Hopkins' "Carrion Comfort" employs two metaphors in the first line: "No, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee." 

The tenor of the first metaphor is the abstract emotion despair; its vehicle, a dead carcass. The tenor of the second metaphor is "I," the speaker; its vehicle, a bird of prey that feeds on carrion. Hopkins combines the two metaphors to suggest that the persona of the poem is struggling to prevent himself from destructively feeding on despair as a bird of prey feeds on carrion.