Page 89 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

88 How to write critical essays
Had the student looked in detail at the language of each
quotation, interesting complications might have been ex-posed.
The first extract may be about an affair which the audience
knows to be ‘not just a bodily function’, but these lines are not
the source of that knowledge. Lucio’s vocabulary does indeed
include ‘love’, but not as an abstract ideal. Here it is a concrete
noun identifying Claudio’s mistress. Similarly terms like
‘embraced’ and ‘womb’ can be used metaphorically, but here
Lucio’s statement insists upon their literal appli-cation. His
point is that the couple must have ‘embraced’ in a thoroughly
physical sense because Juliet is now pregnant.
The chosen terms for this fact all have agricultural, as well as
sexual, connotations. Thus ‘teeming’ can mean not only child-
bearing but also crop-producing; ‘tilth’ can suggest any kind of
productive labour (such as Claudio’s virile effort) or more
specifically the farmer’s tilling which makes soil produce a rich
harvest. In this context, the first two syllables of ‘husband[-]ry’ do
evoke heterosexual role-playing but the complete word still carries
its customary association of looking after farm animals. Juliet then
is cast in an implicitly earthy role. Her fertility is that of the
efficiently ploughed field and Claudio’s attitude to it here sounds
close to that of a cattle-breeder labouring to expand his herd.
Conversely, the second quotation credits the lecherously
undisciplined villain with an unpredictable degree of self-control.
Elsewhere the plot admittedly does suggest that Angelo is the
helpless slave of his own dictatorial lust. Here, however, desire
sounds less innately ‘overwhelming’ than the student claims. The
equestrian image may confess that the speaker’s sexual instinct is
no more sensitive than a horse’s; yet the masterful rider is
evidently Angelo himself. It is he who decides when to let his
libido have free rein and, by implication, how far it should be
allowed to gallop before once again being restrained.
Too many students make this curious mistake of failing to
read their own quotations. Here is another example taken from
an essay on Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. The writer begins with an
assertion about the hero’s enemies but then unhelpfully chooses
to quote a speech by Tamburlaine’s best friend:

Tamburlaine is described by his enemies as a squalid thief
and yet one whom they must fear. Techelles, his most
admiring follower, describes him dressed for war: