34. Break Up Block Quotation

34. Break up a block quotation: many students find that the quotations they use in a paragraph are more than three sentences or three lines of poetry long, and they create block quotations for each body paragraph. While there is nothing wrong with creating a block quotation in an analysis paragraph, a five-page paper with four paragraphs with block quotations can become tedious too read. Moreover, writers who create all their body paragraphs around block quotations, often fail to stay close to the language of the quotation in analysis and fail to allow their voice to be heard along side the author’s voice.

So, learning how to “break up the block quotation” into manageable phrases and sentences will allow writers to:

- create paragraph variety,

- stay closer to the language of the quotation, and

- let their commentary have equal time with the author’s language.

Sample Block Quotation Paragraph:

The majority of Romantic poets, like William Wordsworth, write about this beauty in nature. One of the first poets to celebrate wild nature, Wordsworth articulates the notion that wilderness can evoke a sublime state of mind-a mind in awe. In his poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth discusses the final stage of the mind’s relationship with nature; he states:

--And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime…

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

…Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

(lines 89-111)

Up until this point in the poem, the speaker has recalled that he was in this landscape five years ago, he once believed nature just evoked passion in him, and then found that nature’s endurance reminded him of his brief life span. In this quotation, Wordsworth is developing a philosophy from his passion for nature. He claims that nature evokes the sublime in this mature state of his relationship whit it and he claims that this sublimity leads to his respect for nature, his senses, and his mind. While living among nature, observing its power, and viewing himself as selfless in this natural world, Wordsworth is able to feel a “sense sublime.” When he says, “of all the mighty world /Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, /And what perceive,” he means that nature is perceived differently through man’s mind; beauty is made by the eye and ear. Throughout the poem there is a strong sense of connection between man’s mind and nature. This is significant becauseWordsworth believes that man must live closer to nature to be able to see the sublimity within it.

Commentary: This analysis paragraph is fine as it is. The block quotation is long but the analysis contextualizes, condenses, and connects. But in order to achieve paragraph variety and allow the essay writer to stay close to the language of the quotation, he must break up the block quotation into shorter sections accompanied by analysis. Below is an example:

Sample Paragraph that breaks up the block quotation:

The majority of Romantic poets, like William Wordsworth, write about this beauty in nature. One of the first poets to celebrate wild nature, Wordsworth articulates the notion that wilderness can evoke a sublime state of mind-a mind in awe. In his poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth discusses the final stage of the mind’s relationship with nature; he states, “And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy /Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime…/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,…ocean, air, and in the mind of man” (lines 89-91). Up until this point in the poem, the speaker has recalled that he was in this landscape five years ago and he once believed nature just evoked passion in him. Then he found that nature’s endurance reminded him of his brief life span. In this quotation Wordsworth’s speaker is saying that “setting suns,” huge expanses of “ocean,” and large portions of “living air” can lead the mind of the perceiver of these vast landscapes to enlarge and participate with the sublimity outside of him. As a result, the speaker concludes with a philosophy about the value of nature to man, to the mind, to the heart, and to the soul. He concludes that he is “(a) lover of the meadows and the woods/ And mountains…Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, / And what perceive; …The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul (lines 108-111).In these lines the speaker claims that this sublimity evoked by nature leads to his respect for nature, his senses, and his mind. When he states, “of all the mighty world /Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, /And what perceive,” he means that nature is perceived differently through man’s mind; beauty is made by the eye and ear. Throughout the poem there is a strong sense of connection between man’s mind and nature. This is significant because Wordsworth believes that man must live closer to nature to be able to see the sublimity within it.

Commentary: The block quotation is less obtrusive in the paragraph because it is broken up into embedded quotations. The essay writer was able to analyze the embedded quotations more readily and completely, and the paragraph has a better flow than the block quotation paragraph. At the very least, this “breaking up of the block quotation” will create paragraph variety in your papers, and this make your papers more interesting to read.