Written Task Written Task 2 part 4 Wordsworth

[almostreadyforIB2014]

I am going to write a Written Task type 2 on part 4 of the Language and Literature IB. It is going to be about the lyrical ballads by William Wordsworth, with the following question:

How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

I am thinking about comparing the interpretation of a person in 2014 to someone in the industrial revolution. I just don't know if I have to pick one of the lyrical ballads, and then which one. And I also have difficulties creating a thesis for this question. I tried to find some other written tasks with the same question, but they don't seem to have a one sentence thesis...

Please help me

[IBNerd01]

I think for the written task, it would be wiser to pull from multiple ballads as long as it applies to what you are talking about, just make sure to cite the ballads properly. And you shouldn't have a one sentence thesis, a good thesis that is extensive and clearly illustrates what you are going to be talking about in your essay should be two-three sentences. But it is easier if you outline what your paragraphs are going to be, like their major topic and work backwards to get the thesis. The introduction is the hardest part of the essay easily.

[Blackcurrant]

About the "two different readers" : the most productive approach is to choose two established and verifiable categories of people. Comparing any joe, jane, jumbo..(.surely we are not all comparable?) from 2014 to any Joeblow from (which?) Industrial Revolution (where?) will not give you any critical /analytical purchase. You need to narrow your categories even further ---right down. To the bone.

Now, admittedly the categories are broad also for "feminist reader" and "Marxist reader" but not by half. The difference is that these are categories with verifiable and established habits of reading. Which is why they are good categories for this type of assignment. Look up any feminist reading and you soon observe the basic principles and habits of reading which inform this critical approach. It is verifiable. The same with Marxist critical approaches. These are principled readings. And verifiable.

Or here is another example: Blackwood's magazine readers of Joseph Conrad's Heart if Darkness serial (not a book yet) at the turn of the century and a modern black African academic like Chinua Achebe. Achebe's response of course is very well documented; and as for Conrad's contemporaries, you have a fair shake at establishing how the magazine's readers might have responded to Conrad's writing not only from historical records which describe this type of benevolent (and some less benign) imperialist but also from the text itself which was written with a particular reader in mind -- the "ideal reader". Close and careful reading of the text can tease this figure out. The intros to some versions of the book very helpfully give you some of this background already.

And here's another verifiable category (this time for Camus' Stranger) ... Algerian Arabs and French (white or pied noir) colonials both of them Camus' contemporaries. Of course, they are not a monolithic group, but you have a good basis in history for finding who these generally were, and how they are likely to have viewed themselves and each other at the time Camus wrote his book. Verifiable and documented in history. Not entirely made up and fictional.

So, getting to your poems. Establish first who Wordsworth's ideal reader of the poems was.... Then think of another category with easily verifiable reading patterns -- and perhaps at odds with the ideal reader. A "resistant reader". There is your other concept.

Wayne Booth, Robert Scholes or your English teacher will explain the "ideal reader" "resistant reader" concept. Or just check a reliable source on the internet. Not everything is well defined, though, so beware.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Blackcurrant