IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature – Analysing Prose, Poetry and Drama Revision Notes

For full explanations and worked examples, start with the study guide to analysing prose, poetry and drama.

These notes cover close reading of literary forms in IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature. They follow the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021). The course has no numbered subtopics; this unit maps to the syllabus components Readers, writers and texts and Time and space, and applies equally at SL and HL.

Links: practice questions · course hub · printable checklist · Readers, writers and texts notes · Time and space notes · assessment revision notes.

Where these skills are assessed (from the brief)

Component	What the brief says	Weighting
Paper 2	Comparative essay based on two literary works; one of four questions; 1.75 hours	35% SL, 25% HL
Individual oral	One literary work and one non-literary body of work, linked by a global issue	30% SL, 20% HL
HL essay	1,200–1,500 words on one literary work or non-literary body of work	20% (HL only)
Paper 1	Unseen non-literary passages, so literary form is not its focus	35% SL and HL

Key terms: prose

Term	Definition
Narrator	The voice telling the story; not the same as the author
First person	Narrator is a character (“I”); limited to what they know and admit
Third person limited	“She/he”, filtered through one character’s view
Omniscient	Knows all minds and events; may comment and judge
Unreliable narrator	One whose account the reader has reason to doubt
Free indirect discourse	Third-person narration carrying a character’s own words and thoughts
Focalisation	Whose eyes we see through (can differ from who narrates)
Analepsis / prolepsis	Flashback / flash-forward
Frame narrative	A story told inside another story
Scene / summary	Slow, moment-by-moment time / fast, compressed time

Key terms: poetry

Term	Definition
Speaker	The voice of the poem; not automatically the poet
Stanza	Couplet (2 lines), tercet (3), quatrain (4), sestet (6), octave (8)
Petrarchan sonnet	Octave + sestet; turn (volta) at line 9
Shakespearean sonnet	Three quatrains + couplet; ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Metre	Regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
Iambic pentameter	Five iambs (x /), ten syllables
Blank verse	Unrhymed iambic pentameter
Free verse	No regular metre or rhyme
Enjambment	Sense runs on past the line end
Caesura	Strong pause inside a line
Half-rhyme	Near rhyme, e.g. heart/hurt
Dramatic monologue	One speaker, a silent listener, unintended self-revelation

Key terms: drama

Term	Definition
Stage directions	Instructions for setting, movement, tone, props, lighting
Soliloquy	Character alone on stage speaks thoughts to the audience
Aside	Short remark heard by the audience, not by other characters
Monologue	Long speech by one character to others on stage
Dramatic irony	The audience knows what a character does not
Stichomythia	Rapid alternation of single short lines
Exposition	Early information the audience needs
Climax	Point of highest tension

Method in steps

Close-reading any literary extract

1. Form first. Prose, poetry or drama? Which sub-form (sonnet, frame narrative, soliloquy)?
2. Voice. Who speaks or narrates, to whom, and how much do they know?
3. Structure. Where does it turn, jump in time, speed up or slow down?
4. Language. Imagery, sound, sentence length, register.
5. Effect and meaning. For every feature: what does it make the reader or audience feel, notice or believe?

Scanning a line of verse

1. Count the syllables.
2. Mark the natural stresses as you would say the words (/ stressed, x unstressed).
3. Group into feet and name the most common foot.
4. Count the feet: tetrameter (4), pentameter (5).
5. Check two or three more lines before naming the metre.
6. Look for the line that breaks the pattern; that is usually the one to write about.

Worked reminder (original line written for Marlbridge):

x    /     x    /     x    /     x     /    x    /
The  rain  had  kept  its  prom- ise  all  the  day

Ten syllables, five iambs: iambic pentameter. Now try “The rain kept every promise it had made”. If you say every as two syllables (EV-ry), the line has ten; as three, eleven. Count as you would naturally say the line, and state your reading if it is ambiguous.

Reading a stage direction

1. What does it show that the dialogue does not say?
2. Does it agree with or contradict the words?
3. What does the audience see or hear at this moment, and who on stage does not?

Must-know distinctions

• Narrator vs author: “the narrator claims”, not “Poe believes”.
• Speaker vs poet: the “I” of a poem is a constructed voice.
• Enjambment vs caesura: enjambment runs over the line end; caesura pauses inside the line.
• Metre vs rhythm: metre is the pattern; rhythm is how the line actually sounds, including variations.
• Soliloquy vs aside vs monologue: alone and long / brief and unheard by others / long and heard by others.
• Dramatic irony vs verbal irony: the audience knows more than a character / a speaker says the opposite of what they mean.
• First person vs third person limited: “I” is a character in the story; limited third stays close to one mind but is not that character.
• Petrarchan vs Shakespearean sonnet: 8 + 6 with a turn at line 9 / 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 with the couplet often turning or summing up.
• Summary vs analysis: what happens vs how the form makes it matter.

Worked reminders

Rhyme scheme. Give each new end sound the next letter. Original quatrain written for Marlbridge:

The lamps went out along the pier, the boats lay silent in the bay; I told myself I felt no fear, and then I turned and walked away.

pier/fear = A, bay/away = B, so ABAB. Each line has eight syllables in four iambs: iambic tetrameter. The semicolon marks the shift from the scene to the speaker; “I told myself” hints that the fear was real.

Unreliable voice. Original text written for Marlbridge: “I have never been jealous. I simply noticed, every time, who she spoke to first.” The denial is undercut by “every time”: the narrator’s own detail proves the jealousy.

Form and context. A 19th-century omniscient narrator who judges characters directly (“she was foolish”) may have read as trustworthy guidance then; a reader today may hear it as intrusive. Name the convention, then say how its effect has shifted.

Quick self-test

1. How many lines does a sonnet have, and what is the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet?
2. Name the foot in the word below.
3. How many syllables and stresses does a regular line of iambic pentameter have?
4. Original text: “I swear I never touched the money. Ask anyone.” What kind of narrator might this suggest, and why?
5. What is the difference between a soliloquy and an aside?
6. Original lines: The wind / came back without her. Name the technique at the line break and give its effect.
7. What is analepsis?
8. In which type of sonnet does the turn usually fall at line 9?
9. What is the metre of Blake’s “Tyger Tyger, burning bright” (1794)?
10. Define dramatic irony.
11. What is the eight-line opening section of a Petrarchan sonnet called?
12. A narrator says “she thought” in one sentence and, in the next, “How dull the party was!” with no tag. What technique is the second sentence?

Answers

1. Fourteen lines; ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
2. Iamb: unstressed then stressed (be-LOW).
3. Ten syllables, five stresses.
4. First person, possibly unreliable: the swearing and the appeal to others protest too much, which invites doubt.
5. A soliloquy is spoken by a character alone on stage; an aside is a brief remark to the audience that other characters present do not hear.
6. Enjambment. The break after “wind” makes us expect the wind itself; “came back without her” then arrives as a delayed shock, so the absence is felt at the moment it is read.
7. A flashback: the narrative moves to an earlier time.
8. The Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet.
9. Trochaic tetrameter with the last unstressed syllable dropped: seven syllables, stressed first (TY-ger TY-ger BURN-ing BRIGHT).
10. The audience knows something that a character on stage does not.
11. The octave.
12. Free indirect discourse: the character’s own thought in the narrator’s third-person voice.

Where marks are usually lost

• Naming a feature (“there is caesura”) without saying what it does in this line.
• Writing “the poet says” when the poem has a clearly constructed speaker.
• Calling a metre from one line, or miscounting syllables in words such as every, heaven or afternoon.
• Labelling any 14-line poem a Shakespearean sonnet without checking the rhyme scheme.
• Treating a first-person narrator’s claims as facts.
• Discussing only dialogue in drama and ignoring stage directions and what the audience sees.
• Quoting whole sentences instead of embedding the two or three words that carry the effect.
• Retelling plot instead of analysing structure (flashback, pace, where the text turns).
• Discussing context as background, not as something that changes how a convention works.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: language and literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019). This unit maps to the syllabus components Readers, writers and texts, and Time and space.