You will have one of the following texts (or a passage from one of the following texts) for your oral commentary (practice or otherwise).

I HIGHLY recommend reviewing these texts over the next few weeks.

• Solidify your understanding of which themes are most important and, for you, most provable in each text.
• Know the author’s judgment.
• Be familiar enough with these texts to know which techniques you should absolutely talk about.

Texts for the Oral Commentary

The Taming of the Shrew

The Handmaid’s Tale

Virginia Woolf’s essays

• “The Death of the Moth”
• “Life Itself”
• “John Skinner”
• “Old Mrs. Grey”
• “Professions for Women”

Sylvia Plath's poems

• “Edge”
• “Two Sisters of Persephone”
• “In Plaster”
• “Stillborn”
• “Mirror”
• “Poppies in July”
• “Burning the Letters”
• “Words, heard by accident, over the phone”
• “Cut”

Dionne Brand's poems

• “October 19th, 1983”
• “Return I”
• “Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater”