With the Literary Perspectives essay can come mild confusion regarding its structure, extent (as well as form) of analysis and differentiability from your standard English text response - which is why I’m here to tell you that this confusion, while inevitable, is easily overcome! A text like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is rife with complexities in both its narrative features and literary devices, all prime for discussion in your own essay.‍

Consider the following prompt: “Discuss the proposition that ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ is a condemnation of 1950’s American society.”

Don’t let this prompt’s simple exterior fool you. What it leaves room for - and what the assessor will ultimately be looking for - is the development of your own complex ideas. It is this metamorphosis from the simple to complex that, when evident in your own writing, allows your essay to truly shine. This is obviously applicable to English as well, but where a clear fork in the road lies is in the act of grouping those complex ideas under the umbrella of a specific critical lens (or multiple!).  

For instance, this specific prompt is great in how a diverse range of literary perspectives can be applied to it due to its main subject being 1950s American society. These can include: feminist, psychoanalytical, queer, New Historicist, Marxist, and I’m sure many others!

When faced with a number of critical lenses you can choose from, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that focusing your essay on mainly two or three lenses will ensure it’s more streamlined and therefore easier to both write and read. I know incorporating more lenses as a means of adding variety within your essay is quite tempting, but this is sure to both hinder the depth of your analysis/discussion - which is where marks are ultimately rewarded - and run the risk of disrupting any form of cohesion in your writing. The lenses you choose will ultimately be dependent on the extent of their applicability to the prompt and how comfortable you are with using them (i.e don’t use a Marxist lens if you don’t know how to extensively discuss social classes). The combination of lenses you choose, coupled with your own interpretation, help to inform the development of your unique perspective of the text.

For this prompt, I personally chose to focus on using the critical lenses of New Historicism, psychoanalysis and queer theory. From here, I’m able to ask myself questions catered to each perspective such as “What specific cultural values are examined in COAHTR and how does Williams present them?” and, relating this to the prompt at hand by also asking: “Is this presentation condemnatory?”. The lenses you choose should be interlinked with your arguments and thus your analyses, enabling you to show the assessor you understand that this isn’t an English text response!‍

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Introduction

A frequently asked question regarding the intro of a literary perspectives essay is whether or not to state the critical lens/es you are using. The answer to this is that it’s ultimately up to you! Some important points to consider however are:

• Am I able to include this statement without it sounding janky and disruptive of flow?
  
• If I were not to include it, am I able to make it clear enough to the assessor from the get-go what perspective/s I am using?
  

Outside of that, a literary perspectives intro is pretty similar to that of any other essay.  One thing to remember however, especially with COAHTR, is to briefly explain certain significant concepts you choose to mention. A good example of this is the American Dream - demonstrating that you understand what it is at its core via a brief explanation in your intro is going to leave a far better impression on the assessor than not elaborating on it at all.

See mine below:

“Defined by its moral incongruity against socially upheld conservative values, Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof illuminates the debilitative effects of subscription to a belief system entrenched in immorality. By highlighting the ways in which values such as heteronormativity and the American Dream — deemed synonymous with “equal opportunity” — serve only as obstructions to genuine human connection, Williams underpins both his condemnation of such mores and, therefore, the eminent human struggle to attain true happiness."

As you can see, I personally chose not to explicitly state what critical lenses I was using in my essay. However, I did make sure to include certain words and phrases commonly associated with the critical lenses they represent.

For example:

• New Historicism: “socially upheld conservative values”, “belief system”, “values such as heteronormativity and the American Dream”
  
• Psychoanalytical: “moral incongruity”, “human connection/struggle to attain true happiness”
• Queer theory: “heteronormativity”
  

This allows me to inform the assessor of what lenses I'm using in spite of an absent explicit statement. It’s also far more efficient in this case than having to use the janky phrase “Under the critical lenses of New Historicism, psychoanalysis and queer theory…”.

Body paragraphs:

As I'm sure you already know by now, Literature grants you a lot more freedom than English in terms of structure - and this is especially applicable to the body of your essay! It's important however to find a balance between what structure you’re most comfortable writing with and what’s going to impress the assessor (as opposed to abusing this freedom and floundering about with zero cohesion).

What I personally tend to be comfortable doing is loosely following a TEEL structure, while spicing it up a little by switching around the order here and there.  This is especially evident in my first body paragraph below for the aforementioned prompt, in which I begin with some passage analysis rather than your typical topic sentence:

“Positioning the audience within an American plantation home’s “bed-sitting-room”, Williams immediately envelops the play’s moral foreground in domesticity and the conservative mores of 1950s American society that serve to define such an atmosphere. It being the bedroom of heterosexual couple Brick and Maggie evinces the nature of their exchanges as demonstrative of the morally debilitating effects of the values upheld by the society in which they live — illuminating Williams’ intention to present social mores as obstructive of genuine human connection. Such an intention is foregrounded by the disparity that exists between the external and internal; that is, the socially upheld status of Brick and Maggie’s heterosexual relationship — exempt from subjection to social “disgust” — and the “mendacious” reality of their marriage in its failure to provide either individual with the same sense of primordial wholeness Brick finds in his “clean”, “pure” and “true” homosocial relationship with Skipper. From the outset of the play, heteronormative values are debased as Williams subverts the domestically epitomised dynamic between husband and wife into an embodiment of the inhumane. Maggie is likened to a “priest delivering a liturgical chant”, her lines interspersed with “wordless singing” — alluding to her overly performative nature that compromises the genuineness of human connection. Brick’s visual absence during the play’s opening and his “masked indifference”, too, further undermine the social perception of heterosexuality as the pinnacle of love as it is this reticence that exemplifies the absence of happiness found in their marriage. This sense of disconnection, wherein “living with someone you love can be lonelier — than living entirely alone”, forces Maggie to navigate their relationship through the reductive mode of a “game” wherein it is only by detecting “a sign of nerves in a player on the defensive” that she can attempt to derive genuine emotion from her husband. To reduce human connection to a set of manoeuvrable tactics punctuated only by “the click of mallets” is an act portrayed by Williams as propagative of immorality, vehemently contrasting the reconciliation of the divided self afforded to Brick by the “one, great true thing” in his life: friendship with Skipper. By making the audience privy to the inhumanity lying at the helm of 1950s American social mores, Williams thus presents his scathing critique of such a system, reflecting its capacity for obstructing human connection and therefore the futility of conforming to its standards.”

A key feature of this paragraph is the nature of my analysis - it is, essentially, very similar to what you’d find in a passage analysis essay. It’s important to note that the skills you’ve learnt for the latter can be easily implemented in a literary perspectives essay and is often what allows it to truly stand out! It also forces you to frequently reference the text with quotes in the same way you would in a passage analysis essay, which is glorious in any assessor’s eyes.

With “zooming in” on certain passages in the text (think analysing literary devices, setting, syntax, etc.) however must also follow “zooming out” and evaluating their overall meaning, especially in relation to their significance to the prompt.

A concise example of “zooming in and out” from the previous paragraph can be seen below:

“Maggie is likened to a “priest delivering a liturgical chant”, her lines interspersed with “wordless singing” — alluding to her overly performative nature that compromises the genuineness of human connection.”

Below is another example from a different body paragraph for the same essay:

“Hateful figures transformed into animalistic grotesques, the children of Mae and Gooper are depicted as “no-neck monsters” with “dawg’s names”, with the “fat old body” of Big Mama herself alternating in appearance from “an old bulldog” to a “charging rhino”. Here the moral degradation of a society so heavily reliant on the atomisation of its individuals is made most conspicuous, with Big Daddy’s semblance to a large animal who “pants and wheezes and sniffs” serving as a further testament to such a notion.”

Conclusion:

This is yet another portion of your essay granted freedom by the nature of VCE Literature, so whether or not you choose to intertwine it with your last body paragraph or separate it completely is entirely up to you. What you choose to emphasise in your conclusion is also very similar to that of any other essay as the main focus is to hammer home your interpretation of the text in relation to the prompt!

See my example below:

“Williams, by presenting 1950’s American society as both propagative of atomisation and obstructive of innate morality, ultimately highlights the futility that lies in assimilating to such a belief system as a means of attaining true happiness. The pressure to subscribe to morally reductive values wherein any remnants of the innate are wholly ignored only further shrouds the possibility of happiness at all, and it is here where Williams’ portrayal of the human struggle to attain this ideal is made most conspicuous.”

It’s getting closer to the Literature exam and you’re probably starting to get more serious about avoiding dropping too many SAC marks! Depending on which order your school does Literature SACs in, you may be currently facing the often feared ‘Creative Response’. Whether you feel beyond excited to finally bring some creative flair to Literature, or you’re totally scared at the thought of creating something new, I wanted to use this blog post to help you achieve at least ten of the marks in this section. That is through the reflective commentary, which you can totally score full marks on if you put in the effort.

The VCAA Literature Study Design determines that students must submit ‘a reflective commentary establishing connections with the original text’. This aspect of the assessment counts for 10 of the 60 marks available for the Creative Response outcome. The study design further denotes that students must

‘reflect critically upon their own responses as they relate to the text, and discuss the purpose context of their creations’.

This allows your schools and teachers to direct in a relatively broad way on how you should form your reflective commentary, and may mean your friends at other schools write theirs in a very different way. In this blog post I will leave you with a suggestion of how I best believe a reflective commentary could be structured to include all important aspects, as well as tips on how to include all of what the study design asks. As I said, these are ten marks that can easily be snatched with just a little bit of hard work and attention to detail, so why not snatch them?

To induce the things needed to be included in the reflective commentary, we can look to the key knowledge and key skills points outlined in the study design:

Key knowledge:

- the point of view, context and form of the original text,

- the ways the central ideas of the original text are represented,

- the features of the original text including ideas, images characters and situations, and the language in which these are expressed,

- techniques used to create, recreate or adapt a text and how they represent particular concerns or attitudes.

Key skills:

- identify elements of construction, context, point of view and form particular to the text, and apply understanding of these in a creative response

- choose stylistically appropriate features including characterisation, setting, narrative, tone and style

- critically reflect on how language choices and literary features from the original text are used in the adaptation

What you’re really trying to do in your reflective commentary is prove to your teacher that you are hitting all these key knowledge and key skills points. As you write, ensure you are discussing how the author uses point of view, context, form, elements of construction and stylistic features in their text. It is than imperative that you describe how you have similarly used such device in your creative response. Ensure that you also discuss how you are involving the ideas and themes of the text in your creative piece, and how you are discussing them further, or exploring them in greater depth. Obviously only talk about those that are relevant to your creative response!

Sample reflective commentary

Having scored a 10/10 in my own reflective commentary, I will provide a structure that can be used to ensure you are including everything you need. I discussed my own reactions to the original text, and described how I wanted to rouse similar reactions in the reader of my creative response.

In your reflective commentary, it can be easier to put everything under subheadings. These are the ones that I used:

-Purpose

-Title

-Setting

-Characterisation

-Structure

-Narration

-Literary features (here I chose 7 particular literary features used in my text and discussed how I emulated them)

-Motifs

Under each of these paragraphs, I analysed how the author used such features to create and convey meaning, and discussed how I, in my own piece, drew on her use of them and expanded on her ideas. Here is an example of my ‘Purpose’ paragraph, which will hopefully give you an idea on how you might write your own commentary! My text was Cate Kennedy’s Dark Roots, in particular the short story ‘What Thou and I Did, Till we Loved’.

Purpose

In my piece, I ultimately attempted to lead the reader to a place of discomfort, faced with a situation that they wish never to be faced with. When I first read What Thou and I Did, Till we Loved (Dark Roots, Cate Kennedy), I simply wished never to be in Rebecca’s position, as I was sobered by the sadness of her demise as she watched her lover fade away. I sought to elicit the same response from the reader, as I aimed to convey the deterioration that both lovers suffer, as well as the loss of communication between them. I also attempted to allow the reader to question the humanity in keep people alive by machines and drugs, and whether it is fair to force people to live an unnatural life. I have sought to explore this even further than What Thou and I Did, Till we Loved bringing in the question of euthanasia and whether we have a right to die as Kyle begs of Max to “kill me” at the end of the piece, and Max concedes that “[he] would if [he] could”. The themes of my piece seeks to explore are the ways of coping with grief, guilt at causing the illness of a loved one, a life with a lack of substance, and the loss of communication due to illness.

Hopefully you’re feeling better about how you might go about completing your creative response, and getting that 10/10 on your reflective commentary!

Updated 23/09/2020.

‍One of the most prominent questions I receive from students is this: “do I need to write an introduction?”. This is usually followed with “how do I write an introduction?”.

Firstly, yes, I believe all students should be writing introductions as they are an excellent way to showcase your ability to provide an insight into your personal “reading” of the text, interpret the passages and allow you an avenue through which to begin your discussion of the material. In this guide, I will be explaining two of the key elements to be utilised to create a strong introduction.

When constructing introductions, it is important to note that the VCAA Literature Exam Criteria is as follows:

• understanding of the text demonstrated in a relevant and plausible interpretation
• ability to write expressively and coherently to present an interpretation
• understanding of how views and values may be suggested in the text
• analysis of how key passages and/or moments in the text contribute to an interpretation
• analysis of the features of a text and how they contribute to an interpretation
• analysis and close reading of textual details to support a coherent and detailed interpretation of the text

What you need to include in your Close Analysis introduction

Considering these points, your introduction should feature these 2 elements: your personal reading of the text and your interpretation of the passages.

Your personal reading is simply your perception of the text. Though the key facets of the text such as the plot and the characters are generally viewed by the majority in a similar fashion, each student will have their own opinions of the text. This can range from resonating with particular scenes or placing a greater emphasis on a certain concept or relationship.

Your interpretation of the passages is the way in which you view the excerpts given to you. Akin to your personal reading, the core aspects of the passages will likely be viewed similarly by most students, however your point of difference will come from how you perceive the passages suggest views and values and how features and moments contribute to an interpretation (factors coming from the criteria).

In terms of structure, try to begin with a sentence or two explaining your personal reading of the text. The key to doing so in a manner befitting Close Analysis however, is to utilise quotes from the passages to supplement your assertion.

Here is a sample written about George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”:

George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” contrasts the absence of morality in the titled upper class of 19th century England who dehumanise common citizens as “pebbles on the beach” and the under privileged but morally conscious lower class, “intimidated” by the socio-economic chasm, but living with “middle class morality”.

This highlights my personal reading of Pygmalion as a whole, supported by quotes from the passages I was provided.

To build on this, proceed by writing a sentence or two that demonstrates your interpretation of the passages and how they discuss views and values and create meaning.

Though Shaw implies that one can ascend the ranks through Doolittle’s “lecturing them blue in the face” and Eliza’s gradual self-actualisation, ultimately Shaw quashes any prospect of one permanently invading the upper class by deploying the repetitive “I will” catchphrase throughout Eliza’s ventures. The indefatigable delivery ironically conveys the notion that in spite of Eliza’s effort, she “won’t” achieve.

In these sentences I have commented briefly on the events within the passages and utilised them to exemplify how they are utilised to delve into views and values and create meaning in the overall context of the text. These factors encompass my interpretation of the passages.

Introductions which contain these two key features will score well as they directly target numerous parts of the assessment criteria. This allows students to explicitly outline their overall reading of the text in a style which will efficiently show off your writing skills. Here's the introduction altogether:

Sample A+ Introduction

George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” contrasts the absence of morality in the titled upper class of 19th century England who dehumanise common citizens as “pebbles on the beach” and the under privileged but morally conscious lower class, “intimidated” by the socio-economic chasm, but living with “middle class morality”. Though Shaw implies that one can ascend the ranks through Doolittle’s “lecturing them blue in the face” and Eliza’s gradual self-actualisation, ultimately Shaw quashes any prospect of one permanently invading the upper class by deploying the repetitive “I will” catchphrase throughout Eliza’s ventures. The indefatigable delivery ironically conveys the notion that in spite of Eliza’s effort, she “won’t” achieve.

For an overview of the Literature Study Design as a whole, be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Literature. 

What’s Changing?

The largest change is that the Literary Perspectives area of study has been removed and replaced with an area of study called ‘Developing Interpretations’. Literary Perspectives introduced you to literary theories like marxism, feminism and post-structuralism. These might still be relevant if your teacher decides to use them, but for the most part, they have been cut. 

Developing Interpretations (Unit 3.2) is about differing opinions of texts. You are being asked to develop an interpretation of your text and to use the evidence available to you to support that understanding of the text. This process is difficult, and TBH is something that teachers, tutors and scholars of literature (and humanities) take for granted. It requires understanding the text, its form, its context, the author, the views and values, the aspects of texts and (if that isn’t enough) to be able to understand how they all connect together, before writing an essay that makes your understanding of all of that stuff coherent.

This new AoS also asks you to take your interpretation and consider it alongside another interpretation, because you get to read a supplementary text! This supplementary text is heavily implied to be a piece of academia. The supplementary reading is supposed to offer an interpretation of the text, and you need to consider how that changes your interpretation. Does it? Was an idea fundamental to your interpretation debunked? Was there something you overlooked? Does the addition of a theoretical framework (like post-colonialism or feminism) impact your understanding?

What Do I Need To Do?

According to the study design, Developing Interpretations involves ‘develop[ing] interpretations of a set text informed by the ideas, views and values of the set text and a supplementary reading’. This means there are two key sections, first is the development of an interpretation, and second is the reconsideration of that initial interpretation. Let’s look at each section in turn:

Developing an Interpretation

2008’s Ironman, directed by John Favreau, is the story of a billionaire weapons dealer who, after a life-altering event, dismantles his weapons-manufacturing business in order to use his genius-level intellect to construct a suit of armour and become a superhero.

Ironman demonstrates the evils of the American war machine whilst showing that moral individuals are capable of redirecting resources and energy into genuine ways of improving people's lives.

Let’s not pretend that Ironman is the pinnacle of modern storytelling. But what we can see in the statement above is an example of an interpretation. We can offer an opposing interpretation that’s a bit more critical:

Ironman demonstrates, falsely, that the altruism of one ‘good guy with a gun’ can compensate for a systemic ravaging of the Middle East by the American colonial war machine.

Both of these interpretations deal with the same text and the same aspects of that text. They both comment on Ironman’s exploration of weapons-dealing, and the protagonist’s response to that issue. The first interpretation is - arguably - the message the screenwriters, Fergus, Ostby, and Marcum intended for us to take away from the story. The second interpretation is considering the efficacy of that take-home message: Is Ironman actually the good guy, or is there a larger systemic issue at play, beyond the morals of one man?

To come up with an interpretation, you must consider views and values, aspects of texts and the context the text was created in. Aspects of texts like genre and characterisation demonstrate how the author views a certain issue or idea, and these issues or ideas are usually aspects of the author’s context. At this stage of developing an interpretation, VCAA wants you to focus on close analysis of the text, so ask questions about how a certain motif might reveal something about the author’s views and values. Or, how does a minor character relate to a historical figure that is contextually relevant to the text? For an excellent example of such an analysis and interpretation, I highly recommend the Coraline Bug Theory by Karsten Runquist (YouTube). 

For an in-depth look at how to combine views and values, textual features, and context, check out LSG’s A Killer Literature Study Guide.

The Supplementary Reading 

So, you’ve developed a unique and plausible interpretation of your text using the evidence available to you, the context, and the author’s views and values. At this stage, you might have a SAC where you defend your interpretation. No matter how the SAC is done, after developing the interpretation, you will be given a supplementary reading. This can take multiple forms, being a piece written by your teacher, an ‘explication of a literary theory’ or an academic article. The ‘explication of a literary theory’ basically means a work explaining a literary theory, like Marxism, feminism or post-modernism.

After you have read and considered the supplementary reading in class, you will have to see how your initial interpretation holds up, and either adapt or defend your interpretation in light of the new information. If you’re struggling to rethink your ideas, try these steps:

1) Free your mind, dude. Be open to the possibility that you were wrong. Be willing to abandon ideas that you thought were really interesting. They probably were really interesting and different, but unfortunately, they just might not hold up in light of the new piece.

2) Rebut the article. If your ideas are being completely dunked on by the article, can you dunk on the article? Don’t be egregious, but there may be things where you feel that your argument is stronger, why? What has the author missed about a character or event that actually helps to better support your argument?

3) Make room for nuance. You might have an article that mostly agrees with you but helps you to see where you might have been too absolutist. Sure, the text’s views and values are pretty homophobic, and your supplementary reading agrees, but maybe the text is showing that homophobia in a way you hadn’t initially realised.

Pro Tips for Reading Academic Articles

One of the options for the supplementary reading is academic articles (also known as critical readings/articles/essays). These are the kinds of essays that incredibly well-educated and fancy university people with monocles write, and as such, they can be quite difficult to read, especially if they are new to you. Because academia is likely new to you in Years 11 and 12, we want to give you some pro tips for reading and understanding these articles, which will help you all the way into university!

When you’re first given your supplementary reading, it can be really daunting. The most important thing to remember here is to take it slow. You will not understand it immediately, and no one is expecting you to. Here are some cheat codes to be able to understand academic articles faster.

1) Read the Whole Thing

Front to back. Including and especially the abstract, introduction and conclusion. You will not understand a word, but maybe some things will jump out; nice phrases or sentences that kinda feel like something. It might be as simple as a statement like: ‘Mina Harker not only escapes the fate of the other women: she is also largely responsible for the capture and ultimate destruction of Dracula.’ (Senf 1982, p. 34). This statement isn’t Senf’s entire point in the article, but it does help me to interpret Mina’s character in Dracula.

While you’re reading, look up words you don’t understand and write their meaning in the margin. Whilst some might suggest doing this on a second read, it really makes no difference, so you might as well get it out of the way here.

2) Re-read the Introduction and Conclusions

And read them closely. Where is the author commenting on previous peoples’ work, and when are they making their own argument? The introduction usually does a few things:

1) Introduces the text

2) Does a literature review wherein the author looks at previous works of academia and considers their merits

3) Introduces their main argument and their supporting arguments

The conclusion does what your conclusions should be doing! It restates the core arguments and supporting arguments, connecting them in a way that leads to a clear interpretation.

Reading the intro and conclusion helps you understand the whole piece because it’s the same arguments without all the extraneous wordiness and verboseness of the actual body paragraphs. It lacks some nuance and the logic behind the arguments, but it signposts what the author is actually saying.

3) Try to Summarise the Author’s Interpretation

After reading the article a couple of times and focusing heavily on the intro and conclusion, discuss with your classmates what they got from the piece. Try to state or write down the core argument of the author and the ways they defend that contention. This is a practice that you will do all the way to university, so it’s worth getting some practice in! Most articles use the same structure you do at school, which is an introduction, three arguments and a conclusion. It’s just that those three arguments are a lot more complex and long-winded. If you’re lucky, the author has used subheadings to separate the arguments.

4) Read More Academic Articles

This is a little bit of a cheat, and definitely more effort, but trust me: it pays off. The best Literature students are well-read. Reading fiction (especially the classics) allows you to see how your text fits into the wider literary world. Things like genres, literary movements, historical ideas and pop culture references can only be gleaned from a text if you have the knowledge of other texts: It’s really hard to watch the later Avengers movies without having seen Ironman! Same goes for Literature. Academic authors do the same thing - How does Dracula compare to Edgar Allen Poe? How does Alias Grace fit into a wider feminist discourse in the late 90s?

Reading more academic articles gives you a way to practice engaging with academia and to repeatedly expose yourself to the language, forms and ways of thinking that are common in academics. If the best Literature students read loads of fiction, imagine what reading loads of university-level academia could do!

The SAC

The SAC for Developing Interpretations is a little bit weird. It’s worth 50% of Unit 3, but is split into two parts:

• Part A: An initial interpretation of the text’s views and values within its historical, social and cultural context.
• Part B: A written response that compares/interweaves and analyses an initial interpretation with a subsequent interpretation, using a key moment from the text.

Your teacher might do the two parts together, or separately. In any case, Part B will include the use of a passage from the set text that you must engage with. How does the passage help you to interpret the text, and how does that interpretation agree or disagree with the interpretation presented in the supplementary reading? Here are some of the possible ways that your teacher may decide to design the SAC:

1) Part A and Part B are assessed in separate tasks

Part A is assessed after sustained study of the set text. Students are invited to explore a key idea or value in the text and consider how the text has presented and represented that concern or value. They could, for example, explore the ways a text has presented and represented isolation or power or marriage.

Part B is assessed after students consider the supplementary reading. Students revisit the key concern or value through a passage from the set text and provide an enhanced interpretation informed by the supplementary reading.

2) Part A and Part B are assessed as one task

Students are provided with a passage from the set text and a specific question that relates to one of the text’s key ideas. Students engage with a close reading of the passage based on the key idea, offering an interpretation drawn from the language of the text and from the views and values of the text. They then build on that initial interpretation by engaging with the ideas and/or position they have considered through the supplementary reading.

The most difficult part of the SAC for this new AoS is balancing your interpretation, the textual evidence and the alternative interpretation of the supplementary reading. It is vital that if you are doing Literature this year, that you know your 3.2 text like the back of your hand, and that you practice writing loads and loads. It is also worth trying to make your interpretation incredibly specific so that you can go in-depth into one idea, rather than simply skimming over 3 or 4 big ideas. 

Check out our Developing Interpretations SAC Guide: Interpreting Alias Grace blog post for more. Even if you're not studying Alias Grace, this blog post will further clarify what to expect from the Developing Interpretation SAC.  

Going Forward

I highly recommend that you begin engaging in interpretative and analytical exercises that you can apply to your everyday life. As a Literature student, there is an assumption that you’re interested in Literature (obviously!), film and visual media, history, current affairs and even visual arts. In the wonderful age of the internet there are unlimited free resources that can support your engagement with these fields in interesting ways. I like to say to my Llit students that analysis should be something you can’t turn off - you should be watching TV and disassembling the ways in which Love Island manufactures drama and keeps you engaged. Why does this advertisement make me want to eat KFC? How has this author made me cry after this character’s death? To develop strong interpretations of literature, you need to be cognizant of the history, construction and theories of literature, and so engaging with as many texts as possible supports your ability to recognise things like genre, historical literary and artistic movements and emotionally manipulative language. 

These resources should help you see how skilled literary and media critics analyse fictional worlds.

Literature

Death of the Author by Lindsay Ellis (YouTube). Discusses authorial intent and whether we can view ‘the art without the artist’. Ellis also has fantastic interpretations of film and TV.

Nerdwriter (YouTube). Likely one of the best examples of closely analysing text. Check out his video on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and on how Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders answer questions.

literarydevices.net. Literally my favourite website. A database of every imaginable literary device, how they function, and popular examples. Invaluable for the lit student.

Databases. Go to your school library and ask your librarian what Arts and Humanities databases your school has access to. JSTOR, ProQuest and AusLit, are all databases that host the kinds of articles you should be exposing yourself to. If you are tutoring with Lisa’s Study Guides, then your tutor may be able to help you gather resources from some databases.

Film and Television

Pop Culture Detective (YouTube) especially his videos on the Marvel Universe and the status quo, and misogyny in the Big Bang Theory (CW: discusses sexual assault).

Super Position by David Grueber (Article). Referenced in Pop Culture Detective’s MCU episode and interprets the narrative form of the superhero genre.

The Coraline Bug Theory by Karsten Runquist (YouTube). An excellent example of developing an interpretation of a text and using a minor textual element to explore that interpretation.

CineFix (YouTube) especially their “What’s the Difference” and “Top 10” series. Although presenting film ‘for the masses’, their Top 10 lists constantly consider how an idea (like family or cars) contribute to the messaging of the film.  

Ever since literary perspectives have been introduced into the VCE Literature study design in 2017, there’s been a hell of a lot of confusion surrounding what they actually are, and what students are supposed to do with them. Due to the incredibly subjective nature of English, and especially Literature, as a subject, there is no single correct answer as to how to go about it. However, I hope to shed some light for you on how to go about this elusive component of VCE Literature.

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So, what are they?

Firstly, what actually are perspectives? Well, they can be compared to a lens which you use to colour or filter your analysis of the text. You use the ideas and schools of thought that are specific to each perspective to shape, influence and guide your writing. There are a whole bunch of these perspectives, including psychoanalytical, Marxist, feminist and postcolonial. For your SAC during the year, you are going to need to use two different perspectives in your essay, whilst you will only use one in the end of year exam. Personally, while studying Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’, I used Marxist and feminist in my SAC and narrowed it down to Marxist for the exam.

How do I begin?

The best place to start, after having read the text of course, is to read up on what other people have to say about the book. Perspectives are closely intertwined with literary criticisms; that is, other people’s analysis and interpretation of the texts. For Literature, this needs to go into a bit more depth than someone telling you whether or not they liked the text. Some people like to include excerpts of other critics’ writing in their perspectives essays. Whilst this is not wrong, it isn’t the only way to go about it either. My class simply used these critics as a way of finding inspiration for our own ideas.

I was fortunate enough to be given a whole bunch of scholarly readings and critiques of ‘North and South’ by my teacher; however, if you aren’t as lucky, scholar.google.com and the State Library of Victoria’s online database are both amazing sources for such information. You can simply search up the title of your text, and maybe the author’s name to narrow down results, and you’re provided with scores of articles. I’d recommend reading as many of these as possible, and maybe even jotting down some key points or ideas that stand out to you as important or useful as you go along.

How do I choose which perspective to use?

With all those different perspectives out there, it can become difficult to narrow all the options down to two, and then one. Whilst some texts definitely lend themselves to certain perspectives more than others, the idea is that you can use whichever perspective you want for whichever text if you try hard enough. Sure, it may be hard to find evidence to support them all, but it is expected that, as a Literature student, you are able to read deep enough into the texts that you could find what you need to write on any of them.

My advice is to choose the perspective that initially jumps out at you. When you read the text for the first, second and even third time, there will be certain plot points and themes that present themselves to you. By analysing these, you’ll be able to see what connects them, and most likely be able to relate them to a particular perspective.

How do I write a perspectives essay?
As I mentioned earlier, there is no stock standard formula that all perspectives essays must follow. But there are a few basic guidelines that can help you get the ball rolling.

Perspectives essays have the same basic structure as a normal English essay, but differ in the sense that they are more focused on a particular school of thought.  

Be sure to build up an inventory of useful words or phrases unique to your chosen perspective that will help clue the examiner in to what approach you’re taking. For example, when I was exploring a Marxist perspective, I would include phrases like “bourgeoisie”, “interclass relations” and “social hierarchy”. That being said, there is no need to explicitly state, “From a Marxist perspective…” in your essay. By including those subtle, little expressions unique to your chosen perspective, you should be able to signpost to the examiner what your perspective is without making your essay seem basic. As you spend more time exploring your chosen perspective, you will become more familiar and comfortable with a range of these specific expressions.

Help! I can’t decide which perspective to choose! What do I do?

If you find yourself, like I did, stuck when choosing which perspective you want to use, there are a couple of different things to can do to try and get yourself out of this funk.

To start off, Literature is an extremely collaborative subject. It naturally opens itself to a discussion between you and your classmates. In fact, this is a great way to build more ideas and strengthen the ones you already have for all parts of the Literature study design, not only this one. I’d recommend you have a chat with the other people in your class and talk through all your options and the evidence that you could use to support them. I find that by talking in this way, my jumbled ideas tend to become a bit clearer in my head, and I’m often exposed to new ideas as well.

Secondly, your Literature teacher is, of course, another port of call. You literally pay them to teach you Literature and make sure you walk into your SAC and exam as prepared as possible, so why wouldn’t you take full advantage of their expertise? Explain to them your problem and your thoughts up until this point, and I’m sure they’ll be able to, if not provide you with, point you in the right direction towards finding some clarification.

Lastly, you need to remember that you are ultimately the one who needs to make the decision. As cheesy and cliché as it sounds, just listen to what your gut tells you. Your first thoughts are usually the best ones, so just go with your instinct and see where it tells you to go!

The idea of critical lenses in literary perspective essays can often be tough to fully grasp. Is sticking to just one ok? Are there enough examples in the text to support a purely feminist viewpoint? Or a Marxist one? What about post-colonialism? Sometimes it’s difficult to find a clear through line, especially when the concepts you’re attempting to discuss are so complex.

Luckily when it comes to Shakespearean texts, Twelfth Night in particular, a lot of people throughout history have already studied these ideas and critical lenses, and there are many more resources out there for you to utilize than you might think.

Thus, we are faced with the extremely helpful nature of published critical readings. These critical essays are pieces often published by university professors or scholars which offer an in-depth analysis and examination of a given text. While much of the language is complicated and a bit overwrought at times, the content within the essays can give you helpful ideas and can help you gather a repertoire of vocabulary and evidence for your own literary perspectives essay. In fact, if you type in “Twelfth Night critical readings” into your google search tab, there will be pages of valuable content at your disposal.

Literary perspectives

For instance, the critical essay Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night by Nancy Lindhiem, gives insight into both the Marxist and the queer lens.

Here is an extract from Lindhiem’s reading in which she discusses the idea of “androgyny” and sexuality (noted specifically in the bolded words):

“While Viola is barely male except in attire, the dual aspect of Sebastian’s androgyny is carefully explored. The Elizabethan audience’s first, external, impression – he looks like his sister! – is reinforced ‘internally’ in his conversation with Antonio. His exquisite sensitivity to the quality of his friend’s feelings and the obligation it lays upon him might well be seen as a woman’s trait.”

After reading Lindhiem’s discussion of the “androgynous” twins within the play and how this displays a disparity between gender identity, this student then decided to expand on in a similar idea in a part of their paragraph below (queer lens). In the first part of the sentence, the student outlines the idea of androgyny (shown in bold) specific to the character of Viola. Later on, the student also explores the idea of different behaviours contributing to certain gender traits much like Lindhiem’s notation of it in the above paragraph (shown in bold in the last sentence), however concludes on a broader outline of sexuality as a whole, rather than focussing on just female traits.

Viola’s mediatory role between Olivia and Orsino’s households, coupled with her androgynous performance as a woman playing a man (adding further confusion to the Elizabethan stage convention of a male actors playing women on stage) evokes a form of genderbending and identity perplexity that pervades the play’s dramatic trajectory and opens up what is possible, if not overtly permissible, on a spectrum of sexuality.

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Vocabulary

Another way of making use of these critical readings is to draw from some of their sophisticated vocabulary. The following is an example of how a student was able to adjust and expand her vocabulary specific to their chosen lens by reading critical essays.

After studying a couple of feminist and queer critical essays to Twelfth Night, the student highlighted some repetitive language and terms used within the essays, and was able to use them within their own essay.

Casey Charles’ Theatre Journal exert Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night uses the phrasing

“the phenomenon of love itself operates as a mechanism that destabilizes gender binarism and its concomitant hierarchies”.

The student went on to use the term gender binarism in one of her essay’s sentences:

In all, Twelfth Night delineates the true fluidity within gender binarisms as well as the way in which societal structures are enforced and reiterated…

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Alternatively, the critical essay Gender Ambiguity and Desire in Twelfth Night by Maria Del Rosario Arias Doblas makes use of the terms “homoerotic” and “heterosexual” throughout its text - “homoeroticism residing in theatrical transvestitism… and homosexual allusions and so on pervade the play to create the “most highly intricate misunderstandings”’ - thus outlining the type of high-level language specific to a queer reading of the play that the student was able to implement in their own work:

In fact, Shakespeare oscillates between reinforcing patriarchal ideology and heterosexual language, and the deconstruction of such romantic ideals, simultaneously closeting and disclosing the queer possibilities typical to conservative societies that use violence to repress homosociality and police the safe expression of homosexual exploration within heterosexual norms.

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As you can see, the student’s language is now specified to the type of lens they are using in their literary perspectives essay, and is also of a high register.

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External or Contextual references

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Another benefit of going through critical readings is the external or contextual references they make. An example of this is in Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night by Nancy Lindhiem, where the author makes reference to Narcissus, a character from Metamorphoses – a Latin narrative poem from 8 AD:

“For all the likelihood that both Olivia and Sebastian are seduced by a visual perception, we probably feel that Olivia succumbs mainly to Cesario’s way with words.9 Several critics have commented on the allusion to Ovid’s Echo in Cesario’s ‘babbling gossip of the air’ (1.5.277)”

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Noticing this reference as a motif in many other critical readings too, this student decided to insert it into their own essay here:

These central relationships therefore reapply the idea of self-reflexivity while blurring the structured boundaries of identity stability, central to the Narcissus myth of which Echo from Ovid’s Metamorphosis forms a part; “a very echo to the seat/ where love is throned” invokes a doubling motif, as well as the troubling foundation of representation over reality.

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See how the student was able to discuss it in their own way? Referencing external texts in your literary perspectives essay can prove very useful if done once or twice, as it demonstrates that you are able to apply the values within the chosen text to wider elements of society and culture.

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Getting started

One of the most efficient ways of going through these sorts of essays (which are often quite elaborate and at times difficult to understand fully) is to print them out, grab a highlighter and pen and skim through as much as possible. Highlight words, terms or phrases which spark your intrigue, or ones you feel you may be able to manipulate as evidence to support your own essay.

Overall, reading as many of these expert-written critical essays as possible can be extremely beneficial in developing a greater understanding of the critical lenses, the ideals and context of the Elizabethan theatre, and the way both dialogue and staging can be used as evidence in your own essays.

The more you know about the play, the more you’ll be able to write about it. So, get reading!

Links to the readings:

Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night, Nancy Lindheim

Gender Ambiguity and Desire in Twelfth Night, Maria Del Rosario Arias Doblas‍

Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night, Casey Charles