Period: the world a text comes from
The period (or historical context) is the time and place in which a text was written: major events, beliefs, customs, technology, how people lived and spoke. A poem written in a famine year reads differently from one written in a time of plenty.
Ask: What was happening then? What did people believe? Which words or customs would a reader of that time understand at once that we may miss? Use the context to explain specific lines, not as a general background story.
Author: use biography with care
An author's life, education, home and ideas can help us understand why a text takes a certain view. But the narrator or speaker is not always the author. A writer can create a villain or a child narrator without being one.
Good practice: first read the text closely. Then use one or two facts about the author to support what the words already show. Never use biography to replace evidence from the text.
Intertextual links: texts that talk to texts
No text stands alone. Intertextuality means a text is connected to other texts. Common kinds:
- Source / influence: the writer built on an older story or idea.
- Allusion: a short reference to a well-known work or person ("a real Scrooge" for a miser).
- Retelling or adaptation: the same story told again in a new form or time, or turned from a book into a film.
- Parody: a funny imitation that makes fun of the original.
- Reply: a later work that argues with or answers an earlier one.
Links go backward (to earlier works) and forward (to later works).
Using links and background in your own analysis
Follow these steps: (1) read the text; (2) find one clear background fact; (3) connect it to a specific line; (4) compare with a linked text (what stays the same? what changes?); (5) say how this deepens the meaning.
Example: Many tellings of an old epic exist in different countries. Each keeps the main plot but changes the hero's values to suit its own time. Comparing them shows what each age cared about.
Try it
Pick a story you know, such as a fable. Find one retelling, cartoon or film of it. List two things that stay the same and two that changed. Then, in the 3D, pick each book and see which links it has.
Key formulas and definitions
- Reading a text = text + period + author + links
- Link back = source, allusion, echo
- Link forward = retelling, adaptation, parody, reply
- Biography supports the reading; it never replaces the text
- Compare linked texts: same / changed / why?
Worked examples
1. Why does knowing the period help us read a poem about a famine?
It tells us that words about hunger, empty granaries or leaving a village were real daily worries, not just poetic images. This makes the poem more serious and explains its sad tone.
2. A poem is written in the first person by a soldier's voice. The poet was never a soldier. Is the speaker the poet?
No. The speaker is a voice the poet created. We should not assume the poet's own life from the speaker. We use the text itself as the main evidence.
3. A modern comic retells the fable of the tortoise and the hare, but the hare is a phone-addicted student. Name the link and the effect.
It is a retelling (and a light parody) of an older fable. The link shows that the old lesson about steady effort still applies, and the change makes it funny and fresh for today's readers.
4. A newspaper writes "He turned out to be a real Scrooge about the bonus." Explain the intertextual link.
It is an allusion to Scrooge, the miser in Dickens's story A Christmas Carol. The reader who knows the story understands at once that the person is mean with money.
5. Many tellings of one epic exist in different languages. What can comparing them show?
It shows which values each age and place stressed. The core story stays similar, but characters, endings or morals change to suit the time.
6. Write a one-sentence analysis combining period and author for a poem about a rainless year written by a farmer-poet.
The poem's dry images and anxious tone fit the drought years in which the farmer-poet lived, so the worry in the lines is lived experience, not just decoration.
Common mistakes
- Assuming the narrator is always the author.
- Using background as a long history lesson instead of tying it to a line in the text.
- Thinking intertextuality means copying. It is a conversation between texts.
- Forgetting that links also go forward: later works can answer or retell the text.