1qaSADJ

Special Focus:
Writing Persuasively
of Our House, July 18 th , 1666” (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem218.html)
readily lends itself to such analysis. Like Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” this poem’s
three-part argument becomes apparent when one explores the tone in each threestanza
segment. Bradstreet’s speaker moves through three stages: (1) shock tempered
by resignation, (2) genuine regret and longing, and (3) sincere acceptance of the notion
that in heaven she will be amply rewarded. The speaker first resorts to logic, then to
emotion, and finally to faith—a first-generation Puritan pilgrim’s “progress”—concluding
(quite unlike Marvell’s speaker!) that although all of her material possessions have been
destroyed, she can look forward to her heavenly reward: “The world no longer let me love;/
My hope and Treasure lies above.” Examining structure and tone is the stuff of rhetorical
analysis, of analysis of argument. Simply to use the word “argument” in connection with a
poem or other work of fiction is the first key step in teaching literature rhetorically.
Another Bradstreet poem was featured in a free-response question on the AP English
Literature Exam in 1996: “The Author to Her Book” (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/
rpo/display/poem208.html). This poem relies on extended metaphor—the focus of
the question on the AP English Literature Exam—but it also relies on argument. She
essentially offers five reasons for the public to disregard her book. Asking students to
identify those reasons, perhaps even to rank them from least to most convincing, would
constitute a rhetorical reading of this poem. So too would be a discussion of the ethos of
the speaker and, a corollary to that, the tone of the poem.
One of my favorite Bradstreet poems is “A Letter to Her Husband Absent upon Public
Employment” (http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/8478). Here, Bradstreet’s erudition
and passion truly manifest themselves. The poem’s title conveys its subject: Bradstreet’s
speaker is lonesome for her husband, who is away on a business trip. She is eager for his
return, so she voices all the reasons that he needs to hustle home. In a side of Puritanism
that students rarely experience, Bradstreet’s speaker is unabashedly hot for her guy:
I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black,
My Sun is gone so far in’s zodiac,
Whom whilst I ‘joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt,
His warmth such fridged colds did cause to melt.
Heat and chill, Cancer and Capricorn, summer and winter constitute the poem’s central
conceit—but from a rhetorical standpoint, the question is the nature of the arguments
that the speaker offers about her relationship with her husband as well as how convincing
they are. On what appeals does the speaker rely? Does she use ethos, logos, and pathos,
or does she privilege one of them? Students can track the types of arguments and judge
AP® English Language and Composition: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials 35