Literary Basics
The central message or underlying idea about life or human experience that a literary work communicates.
What is theme?
Direct comparison of unlike things.
What is METAPHOR?
In a metaphor, the thing actually being described is called the ___, while the image used to describe it is called the ___.
What are the tenor and vehicle?
In A Bird Came Down the Walk, Dickinson's use of “he” and “his” for the bird has this effect.
What is personification, making the bird and its actions more important?
Giving human qualities, emotions, or actions to a nonhuman thing is called this.
What is personification?
Language that goes beyond its literal meaning to create comparisons, associations, or deeper meaning.
What is figurative language?
Language that appeals to the five senses.
What is IMAGERY?
In Dickinson's lines:
“I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home—”
What are the tenor and vehicle?
The tenor is the bird's flying; the vehicle is rowing/sailing.
The feathers suggest sails, and the wings suggest oars.
At the end of A Bird Came Down the Walk, Dickinson compares the bird's movement to these two things.
What are a ship sailing and butterflies flying?
The comparisons communicate how smoothly and silently the bird flies away.
This device occurs when an apparent contradiction contains a meaningful truth.
What is paradox?
Repeating a word, phrase, sound, line, or idea to emphasize it or create an effect.
What is repetition?
Is the following an example of metonymy or synecdoche?
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us...”
Synecdoche. “Flesh” is part of a person, while Christ was more than flesh.
What type of comparison is illustrated by describing Billy as:
“a shrivelled little red corpse”?
What is a metaphor?
What is the central theme of Langston Hughes's Mother to Son?
What is although life can be difficult, you must not quit?
“All hands were needed on deck” uses this device because a part represents the whole.
What is synecdoche?
A metaphor developed throughout a poem, passage, or work is called this.
What is an EXTENDED METAPHOR?
In Twain's What Stumped the Bluejays, the narrator says a blue jay is:
“just as much a human as you be.”
Why is this statement important to Twain's use of personification?
It establishes the humorous premise that the birds behave like humans. Twain gives them language, personalities, moral characteristics, and human behaviors to create humor.
A metaphor that continues and develops throughout a poem or work is called this. Herbert's The Windows is an example.
What is an extended metaphor?
Conceit may also be accepted depending on the context.
Waller wrote The Soul's Dark Cottage when he was in his eighties. Why is his age significant to the poem?
What is Waller personally illustrates the truth of the poem?
Although his “cottage,” or body, is battered and decayed, he possesses and expresses accurate insight about the spiritual illumination that can come with age.
This device replaces something with something closely associated with it, as when “the crown” represents a king or monarchy.
What is metonymy?
This device uses a part to represent the whole or the whole to represent a part.
What is SYNECDOCHE?
An extended narrative in which characters, events, or objects represent abstract ideas.
What is Allegory?
In Cowper's The Nightingale and the Glowworm, the nightingale represents this traditional function of poetry.
What is beauty or delight?
In The Windows, George Herbert compares the Christian to this object.
What is a stained-glass window?
The Christian should allow Christ's truth to shine through him.
This technique directly addresses someone or something that is absent, dead, imaginary, or nonhuman.
What is apostrophe?