Edson, W;t
Vivian describes the hospital greeting as “feigned solicitude.” Identify the technique operating in the adjective feigned.
What is irony?
Shylock asks “Hath not a Jew eyes?” Identify the technique.
What is a rhetorical question?
The narrator introduces Emma as “handsome, clever, and rich.” Identify the structural technique.
What is a tricolon?
What is accumulation/listing?
Le’s narration moves from the present-day visit of his father in Iowa into memories of discovering his father’s past: “When I was fourteen, I discovered that he had been involved in a massacre.”
What is non-linear narrative structure?
What is analepsis?
Hustvedt encounters “my ghost double” in the mirror. Identify the technique.
What is metaphor?
What is gothic imagory?
What is motif?
Vivian tells the audience: “I think I die in the end.” Identify the dramatic technique.
What is metatheatre/metadrama?
What is breaking the fourth wall?
Portia declares that “mercy is not strained.” Identify the technique used to conceptualise mercy.
What is personification/metaphor?
Emma observes that “One half … the other.” What structural technique shapes her generalisation about human experience?
What is antithesis?
What is balanced construction?
A writing instructor declares “Ethnic literature’s hot.” Identify the technique in hot.
What is metaphor?
What is colloquialism?
The corset has “catapulted me” into another historical experience. Identify the technique.
What is metaphor?
E. M. Ashford describes death through the image “a breath—a comma.” Identify the technique.
What is metaphor?
What is symbolism?
The casket scroll declares “All that glisters is not gold.” Identify the form of expression.
What is an aphorism?
What is a proverbial statement?
What is a maxim?
Knightley warns of “Vanity working on a weak head.” Identify the technique.
What is personification?
The narrator describes writing as “traffic in words.” Identify the technique.
What is metaphor?
Hustvedt abruptly announces: “Suddenly, I had new breasts.” Identify the syntactical technique that gives this observation comic force.
What is bathos?
What is irony?
Reflecting on her former academic identity, Vivian says she was a scholar “when I had shoes, when I had eyebrows.” What language technique is created through the repetition of this syntactical pattern?
What is parallelism?
What is anaphora?
Portia warns Bassanio about the doctor who received her ring: “I’ll not deny him anything I have, / No, not my body, nor my husband’s bed.” What element of comic form is used?
What is dramatic irony?
What is comic transvestism?
What is the motif of disguise?
Miss Bates is described as being in “the very worst predicament in the world.” Identify the technique contributing to Austen's comic narratorial voice.
What is hyperbole?
What is irony?
The narrator interrupts his recollection: “Maybe I’m filling in the gaps.” Identify the narrative technique.
What is metafiction?
What is self-reflexive narration?
What is unreliable narration?
Hustvedt writes of cultural constructions: “We make them and live them and are them.” Identify the structural technique.
What is polysyndeton?
What is parallelism?
What is tricolon?
Near the end Vivian reduces academic practice to “Erudition. Interpretation. Complication.” Identify the principal syntactical technique.
What is tricolon?
What is parataxis?
What is fragmentation?
Antonio describes the world as “A stage … play a part.” Identify the sophisticated dramatic technique operating here.
What is an extended theatrical metaphor / metatheatrical imagery?
What is Theatrum Mundi?
Emma finally describes herself as “doomed to blindness.” Identify the technique and recurring figurative idea.
What is metaphor / the motif of blindness and sight?
Nam’s friend invokes Faulkner’s “old verities” — “Love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” Identify the technique.
What is intertextuality?
What is appropriation?
Hustvedt begins with “Several summers ago, I worked as an extra…” What aspect of discursive form does this use?
What is anecdote/anecdotal digression?
What is associative structure?