Explicate yourself - Bill Kirton
I used to lecture and give tutorials on French literature, so I know how to do what they call ‘explication de texte’. Explicating isn’t the same as explaining. Recently, the rather loose connotation of the word 'explain' caused some fuss when an exam question asked schoolkids to 'Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews'. The fuss was understandable because the instruction could be taken to invite some sort of justification of anti-Semitism. IN a literary context, ‘explication’ in French and English has no such ambivalence. It goes further and deeper than ‘explanation’. It's also fun. You see things that weren’t obvious at first – links, connections, rhythms, meanings. But … … it’s not so easy to do it when you’re giving talks about your own writing. Because if you start claiming things about your intentions, the ‘meanings’ of your symbols, images, etc., the significance of particular themes, or any of the normal stuff that crops ...