Ballad of Reading Gaol-Analysis

[Higginz]

Hello all,

I'm a linguist and I teach English as a second language (ESL) to a class of Chinese immigrant students.  Anyway, I assigned Reading Gaol this past week to the class because the students wanted something different from the regular textbook. 

My expertise, however, is in the science of linguistics, not English literature, and I need to assign some kind of comprehension and analysis questions on the poem.  Are there any English lit. types who might be willing to offer some suggestions for critical analysis questions on The Ballad of Reading Gaol?

Thanks,
 

[theladyofshalott]

This poem is indeed a monstrous poem; large and heavy in metaphor. I am impressed that you would tackle utilizing it to help better the understanding of the English language, as it is full of grammatical and structural components to it.
First off, I am not sure what kind of questions you have to ask, multiple answer/essay, but I would think it would be a fantastic piece to use on getting a nice essay on their interpretation of the metaphors, for instance, just using the first bit- how would they interpret not "wearing the scarlet jacket" but "wine and blood are on his hands"- what kind of metaphor is it? This poem, in my opinion, is a great way to understand a personal relationship, love and hate, depth of love vs. lust, self denial of what it is he yearns, and what not... etc... etc... This poem is a great way to show English-speaking culture's ideals of love as well as metaphor, and it is chock full of dynamics like assonance and consonance, rhyme... I would make your questions less specific of the exact "meaning" and illicit their own theories on what is really going on in the poem. The great part of poetry is that it can mean so many different things from person to person, and in my humble opinion, if you are going to use a poem like this for the purpose of teaching English, they need to find their own meanings in the words and present them to you, and that would be the best way to see if they are retaining and understanding of our language.