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[merce]

Does anyone know of any sample papers of the explication-de-texte method I could get my hands on?


I am asking my students to do an explication-de-texte (sometimes called close reading) and I have a handout and I've taught it a number of times now but I used to have a sample paper or two I would offer to students to give them an idea of the final product.  After a number of moves I've lost my copy (I've been teaching this since pre-PDFs I guess).

I'm too lazy to write one up myself at the moment. 
Are there any good examples that could serve as a model for students?

[marigolds]

What about Ian Watt's explication of the first paragraph of The Ambassadors, from Essays in Criticism?

[mountainguy]

I have a list of guiding questions that can be used to perform a descriptive analysis of a rhetorical artifact, but it works better with speeches than literary texts. Plus, the questions don't explain how to write up the findings in essay format. But if you're desperate, I'm willing to share.

[mountainguy]

Here's a link I just found online by an instructor who uses the same list of questions that I do (it's derived from Karyln Kohrs Campbell's book The Rhetorical Act): Elements of Descriptive Analysis.

I hope this helps!

[pendragon]

I've found this quite helpful to begin preparing students for explication papers http://users.etown.edu/m/martinlf/explication.html.