SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The line is from Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'A Defence of Poetry'. It claims that poets, and creative imagination broadly, shape a society's values, moral sensibilities and laws long before formal legislators codify them, yet receive no credit. The examiner expects an essay on the power of literature and art to change minds and institutions.
ThesisPoets and artists shape the moral imagination from which laws and social change later emerge, which is why free expression is a foundation of good governance.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Nationalism: songs and poems gave colonised peoples an identity and a language of freedom before any constitution existed
- 2Social reform: devotional and protest poetry challenged caste and ritual, influencing ideas of equality later written into law
- 3Ethics: literature trains empathy by letting readers inhabit other lives, which underpins support for rights and justice
- 4Power: authoritarian regimes censor and jail poets precisely because they recognise poetry's power to unsettle legitimacy
- 5Today: song lyrics, slam poetry and social media verse continue to shape public debate on gender, climate and identity
Counter-view
- Plato famously wanted poets banished from his ideal republic because they stir emotions rather than reason. The essay should acknowledge that poetry can also inflame hatred or propaganda, and argue that this proves its legislative power, which is why it needs freedom balanced by responsibility
Open and close
- Open: Open with Constituent Assembly members rising on 24 January 1950 to adopt a poem by Tagore as the national anthem, a poet quite literally present in the making of a republic
- Close: Conclude that a society should acknowledge its poets by protecting their freedom, because tomorrow's laws are often written first in today's verses
Where marks usually go
- Reading 'legislators' literally and writing about poets who became politicians
- Limiting the essay to poetry and ignoring the wider meaning of creative artists, writers and filmmakers
- Failing to address the dark side, such as propaganda verse, which weakens the balance of the essay
Examples that fit
- HistoryRabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate in Literature (1913), wrote 'Jana Gana Mana', adopted as India's national anthem in 1950.Nobel Prize in Literature 1913, nobelprize.org; Constituent Assembly Debates, 24 January 1950
- HistoryBankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's 'Vande Mataram', from the novel Anandamath (1882), became a rallying cry of the freedom movement long before independence.Anandamath, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1882)
- ThinkerPlato's Republic argues that poets imitate appearances and arouse passions, and so should be kept out of the ideal state.The Republic, Plato, Book X
- LiteratureKabir's dohas mocked caste pride and empty ritual in the language of ordinary people, anticipating the constitutional ideal of equality by centuries.Songs of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore (1915)
- LiteratureSubramania Bharati's Tamil poems called for women's freedom and the end of caste, shaping social reform thought in the Tamil region.Collected poems of Subramania Bharati; Sahitya Akademi publications