IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature – Analysing Prose, Poetry and Drama Study Guide

This study guide teaches the close-reading tools for the three main literary forms – prose, poetry and drama – in IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature. It follows the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021). The course has no numbered subtopics, so this unit maps to two of its three syllabus components: Readers, writers and texts and Time and space. Everything here applies at both SL and HL.

Use it with the revision notes and the practice questions. For the whole course, see the Language and Literature course hub and the printable checklist. The general method of linking a choice to its effect is in Readers, writers and texts, and context of production and reception is in Time and space. This guide adds the toolkit that is specific to each literary form.

What this unit covers

Form	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Prose fiction	Identify narrative voice and point of view, judge how reliable a narrator is, and explain how structure and pace control what the reader knows	Both
Poetry	Identify form, stanza, rhyme scheme and metre; explain the effect of line breaks, sound and imagery; tell the speaker apart from the poet	Both
Drama	Read a play as a script for performance: stage directions, dialogue, soliloquy and aside, dramatic irony, and what the audience sees	Both
Form and context	Explain how the conventions of a form belong to a time and place, and how that affects meaning	Both

Why form matters in this course

The subject brief asks you to know “features of particular text types and literary forms” and to analyse the “uses and effects of literary, stylistic, rhetorical, visual or theatrical techniques”. One of its aims is to “develop sensitivity to the formal and aesthetic qualities of texts”.

Where you use these tools, according to the brief:

• Paper 2 is a comparative essay “based on two literary works”, written in response to one of four questions. It lasts 1 hour 45 minutes at both levels and is worth 35% at SL and 25% at HL.
• The individual oral is a prepared response on how “one literary work and one non-literary body of work” approach a common global issue (30% at SL, 20% at HL).
• The HL essay (HL only, 20%) is a 1,200–1,500 word essay on one literary work or a non-literary body of work.

Paper 1 is set on unseen non-literary passages, so this unit mainly serves the other three. See exam preparation for the full assessment picture.

Prose fiction

Narrative voice and point of view

Ask first: who tells the story, and how much do they know?

Voice	Signal	Typical effect
First person	“I”, “we”	Closeness; we see only what the narrator sees and chooses to say
Third person limited	“she”, “he”, filtered through one character	Close to one mind, but with room for the narrator to add irony
Third person omniscient	Moves between minds, comments on events	Authority and overview; the narrator can judge characters

The narrator is not the author. Write “the narrator claims” or “Austen’s narrator implies”, not “Austen thinks”. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) opens with “It is a truth universally acknowledged” – a narrator who sounds certain, yet the grand claim that follows is ironic about the society that believes it.

Unreliable narrator. A narrator whose account we have reason to doubt. Signals include protesting too much, contradictions, gaps, and details that undercut the narrator’s own claims. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) the narrator demands “why will you say that I am mad?” while telling a story that proves the point.

Free indirect discourse. Third-person narration that slips into a character’s own words without “she thought”. Example (original text written for Marlbridge): She folded the letter. Well, and what of it? The question is the character’s voice, giving closeness with a trace of irony.

Structure and time

• Chronological order versus analepsis (flashback) and prolepsis (flash-forward).
• Frame narrative: a story inside another story. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) reaches us through Lockwood, who hears most of it from Nelly Dean: two narrators, two sets of bias.
• Pace: scene (moment by moment, often with dialogue) slows time; summary (“Three years passed”) speeds it up. Watch where a writer slows down – that is usually where the meaning sits.

Worked example: prose

Original text written for Marlbridge:

The train was late, which suited Marta. She had rehearsed the sentence nine times and it still sounded like an apology. On the platform a boy was selling oranges from a crate. Years ago her brother had done the same, on this platform, and she had pretended not to know him. The train came in. She did not buy an orange.

Step 1 – voice. Third person limited: we are inside Marta’s view (“suited Marta”, “it still sounded like an apology”).

Step 2 – structure. A one-sentence flashback (“Years ago…”) interrupts the present.

Step 3 – feature and evidence. The final sentence is short and states a refusal: “She did not buy an orange.”

Step 4 – effect. The flashback linked oranges to the brother she disowned, so the refusal reads as the same act repeated. Her guilt is never stated; the structure lets us infer it.

Step 5 – meaning. Old shame shapes present choices; the rehearsed apology may never be spoken.

Poetry

Form, stanza and line

Term	Meaning
Stanza	A group of lines: couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4)
Sonnet	14 lines. Petrarchan: octave (8) + sestet (6), turn at line 9. Shakespearean: three quatrains + a couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Volta	The turn in thought or feeling, usually where the form divides
Dramatic monologue	One speaker addresses a silent listener and reveals more than they intend
Free verse	No regular metre or rhyme; line breaks carry more weight
Blank verse	Unrhymed iambic pentameter

William Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” (1807) is a Petrarchan sonnet with its turn at line 9. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (1842) is a dramatic monologue: the Duke’s opening, “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall”, is polite on the surface, yet the reader slowly understands what he is hiding.

Metre and rhythm

Metre is the regular pattern of stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. One unit is a foot.

Foot	Pattern	Example word
Iamb	x /	again
Trochee	/ x	garden
Anapest	x x /	understand
Dactyl	/ x x	happily
Spondee	/ /	heartbreak (often)

Count the feet per line: tetrameter (4), pentameter (5). Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (1609) opens “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” – ten syllables in five iambs:

x   /    x      /    x    /     x   /    x   /
My  mis- tress' eyes are  noth- ing like the sun

William Blake’s “The Tyger” (1794) opens “Tyger Tyger, burning bright”: stressed syllables first, a falling trochaic beat that sounds like a chant. Rhythm matters when it changes: a stress where the metre does not expect one, or a line that runs short, draws attention.

Line breaks, sound and imagery

• Enjambment: a sentence runs over the end of a line. It can create suspense, surprise or a double meaning at the line end.
• End-stopped line: the sense ends with the line. It sounds firm or final.
• Caesura: a strong pause inside a line, often marked by a full stop or dash.
• Sound: alliteration (repeated opening consonants), assonance (repeated vowel sounds), sibilance (repeated s sounds). Say what the sound does.
• Imagery: simile, metaphor, personification, symbol. A pattern of images is stronger evidence than one image.
• Speaker: the voice of the poem. As with the narrator, do not assume it is the poet.

Worked example: poetry

Original text written for Marlbridge:

The gate I used to paint each spring is flaking now. I let it go. The hinges have begun to sing a note I did not want to know.

Form: one quatrain, rhymed ABAB (spring/sing, go/know), in iambic tetrameter (“the GATE i USED to PAINT each SPRING”).

Feature and evidence: a caesura in line 2 after “now”, and personification in “The hinges have begun to sing”.

Effect: the full stop halts the line just as the speaker gives up (“I let it go”), so the rhythm enacts the surrender. “Sing” usually suggests joy, but here it names the creak of neglect. The enjambment into line 4 delays the object of the singing, so “a note I did not want to know” lands as a hidden admission: the speaker hears decline, perhaps their own, and resists it.

Drama

A script is for performance

Read a play as instructions for an audience’s experience.

• Stage directions: setting, movement, tone (“quietly”), props, lighting. They can show what a character hides.
• Dialogue: who speaks most, who interrupts, who changes the subject. Short, fast exchanges (often called stichomythia) build tension.
• Soliloquy: a character alone speaks thoughts aloud to the audience.
• Aside: a brief remark to the audience that other characters on stage do not hear.
• Dramatic irony: the audience knows something a character does not. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth (first printed 1623), Duncan arrives at the castle where he will be murdered and says “This castle hath a pleasant seat”. We know the plan; he does not.
• Props and set: objects can carry meaning. In Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), the women notice small domestic objects that the men dismiss, and those objects reveal the truth.
• Structure: acts and scenes, exposition, climax, resolution, and where the curtain falls.

Worked example: drama

Original text written for Marlbridge:

(A hospital corridor. EVA sits holding a coat that is not hers. TOM enters.) TOM: Any news? EVA: Nothing yet. (She folds the coat and puts it behind her.) TOM: Is that Dad’s? EVA: It’s mine.

Feature: the stage direction contradicts the dialogue. The audience sees Eva hide the coat, and we have already been told it “is not hers”.

Effect: dramatic irony. We know she is lying; Tom does not. Her short replies (“Nothing yet”, “It’s mine”) suggest she is shielding him, or herself, from bad news. On stage the coat holds our attention while the words steer away from it.

Form and context

Forms and their conventions belong to their time and place, which links this unit to Time and space.

• Shakespeare’s plays mix blank verse with prose; a shift between them can mark a change of status or mood. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) uses prose throughout, closer to everyday speech, which suited a drama set in a middle-class home.
• The sonnet was long associated with love poetry. Using it for grief, politics or work creates a tension between form and subject, and that tension is worth analysing.
• A convention the first readers took for granted (a narrator’s confident moral judgements) may now stand out. Say what it did then and does now.

A paragraph pattern for any form

1. Claim about meaning, linked to the question.
2. Feature of the form, named precisely.
3. Evidence: a short quotation embedded in your sentence.
4. Effect on the reader or audience.
5. Link back to the claim or to the context.

Common errors

• Naming a device without its effect (“there is enjambment in line 3”).
• Treating the narrator or speaker as the author.
• Calling any 14-line poem a Shakespearean sonnet without checking the rhyme scheme.
• Stating a metre from one line; check several lines first.
• Analysing a play only as dialogue and ignoring stage directions and what the audience sees.
• Retelling the plot instead of explaining how the form shapes what the reader knows and when.

Where to go next

Test recall with the revision notes, then try the practice questions. Course overview: syllabus guide and subject guide.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: language and literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019). The areas covered here are the syllabus components Readers, writers and texts, and Time and space.