Contextual Inference in Unseen Poetry

Assessment Objective 3 (AO3) requires you to demonstrate understanding of "the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received." In the set text sections of the exam, you can prepare contextual knowledge in advance. In the unseen poetry section, you cannot — and yet AO3 still applies. This creates a distinctive challenge: how do you write about context when you have no prior knowledge of the poem or its poet?

The answer is contextual inference — the skill of deducing contextual information from the poem itself.

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What Counts as "Context" in Unseen Poetry?

In the unseen section, context is not about knowing the poet's biography or the historical events surrounding the poem's composition. Instead, it encompasses: