Notes on Multiple Choice Questions on "To His Coy Mistress"
Notes on Multiple Choice Questions on “To His Coy Mistress”
Anaphora: the repetition of a word at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences.
Example:
“I had never seen a zebra crossing before, never seen a tram, never seen an unsliced loaf of bread, never seen anyone wearing a beret who expected to be taken seriously, never seen people go into different shops to buy separate courses for their dinner....” from Bill Bryson’s NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.
The use of the anaphora heightens emotional impact, increases the importance, emphasizes the emotion or builds tension. It drives home the point of the writer.
Sedentary: not active; spending most of one’s time sitting
Confound: to destroy
Synethesia: the mixing up of the senses: to see music, to hear color, etc. Used in literature to suggest an intense heightened artistic/aesthetic sensibility and/or pathology.
Libidinous: sexual desire. The libido is sexual energy; libidinous is the adjective describing someone as having sexual desires. The concept of the id stems from the Freudian theory of personality and sexual development. The id is that part of the unconscious which controls sexual desire or instinct.
Slant rhyme: near rhymes in which either the consonants or the vowels rhyme. Examples might be: barn and yard. The words barn and yard are close but are not exact rhymes. These are examples of assonance in that the internal vowel sounds are the same, but the ending consonants are different.
Masculine rhymes: words of one syllable which rhyme; or words of multiple syllables where the rhyme occurs on the last syllable which is usually accented. Examples: Fly and sky or:
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
Feminine rhyme: words of two syllables, with both syllables rhyming. Examples: Billow and willow.
Another example of feminine rhyme is from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XX:
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
Enjambment: in poetry the continuation of a sentence over a line break. The following is an example from Shakespeare’s THE WINTER’S TALE:
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.
Ephemeral: of short duration; lasting but a short while
Assonance: the repetition of a similar vowel sound in poetry.
Lyric: a type of poetry which is highly expressive, musical and emotional. Shakespeare’s sonnets are also lyric poetry.
Panegyric: a highly formal poetic praise of another; a formal public tribute in poetic form
Ode: a highly emotional and expressive poem which praises or exults a person, a thing, or an event. The subject of the ode has inspired the poet or moved the poet to praise.
Sonnet: a fourteen line poem. The Elizabethan is divided into three quatrains and a final couplet, with the volta occurring around the eighth or ninth line. A question, a situation, or an observation is offered in the first eight lines and is either refuted or verified in the last four lines of sonnet. In the Elizabethan sonnet the rhyme scheme is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. In the Petrarchan sonnet the rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA and CDECDE or CDCDCD. The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts: the first eight lines which is called an octave and the final six lines which comprise the sestet.
Limerick: a short, witty five line poem which is usually witty and/or naughty. It usually goes: There once was a man from Nantucket..... There is also a city in Ireland called Limerick.
Internal Rhyme: two or more rhyming words found within the same line of poetry. This adds tone, depth and emotional intensity to the piece. The most famous example of internal rhyme is in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "
'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."
Anaphora: the repetition of a word at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences.
Example:
“I had never seen a zebra crossing before, never seen a tram, never seen an unsliced loaf of bread, never seen anyone wearing a beret who expected to be taken seriously, never seen people go into different shops to buy separate courses for their dinner....” from Bill Bryson’s NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.
The use of the anaphora heightens emotional impact, increases the importance, emphasizes the emotion or builds tension. It drives home the point of the writer.
Sedentary: not active; spending most of one’s time sitting
Confound: to destroy
Synethesia: the mixing up of the senses: to see music, to hear color, etc. Used in literature to suggest an intense heightened artistic/aesthetic sensibility and/or pathology.
Libidinous: sexual desire. The libido is sexual energy; libidinous is the adjective describing someone as having sexual desires. The concept of the id stems from the Freudian theory of personality and sexual development. The id is that part of the unconscious which controls sexual desire or instinct.
Slant rhyme: near rhymes in which either the consonants or the vowels rhyme. Examples might be: barn and yard. The words barn and yard are close but are not exact rhymes. These are examples of assonance in that the internal vowel sounds are the same, but the ending consonants are different.
Masculine rhymes: words of one syllable which rhyme; or words of multiple syllables where the rhyme occurs on the last syllable which is usually accented. Examples: Fly and sky or:
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
Feminine rhyme: words of two syllables, with both syllables rhyming. Examples: Billow and willow.
Another example of feminine rhyme is from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XX:
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
Enjambment: in poetry the continuation of a sentence over a line break. The following is an example from Shakespeare’s THE WINTER’S TALE:
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.
Ephemeral: of short duration; lasting but a short while
Assonance: the repetition of a similar vowel sound in poetry.
Lyric: a type of poetry which is highly expressive, musical and emotional. Shakespeare’s sonnets are also lyric poetry.
Panegyric: a highly formal poetic praise of another; a formal public tribute in poetic form
Ode: a highly emotional and expressive poem which praises or exults a person, a thing, or an event. The subject of the ode has inspired the poet or moved the poet to praise.
Sonnet: a fourteen line poem. The Elizabethan is divided into three quatrains and a final couplet, with the volta occurring around the eighth or ninth line. A question, a situation, or an observation is offered in the first eight lines and is either refuted or verified in the last four lines of sonnet. In the Elizabethan sonnet the rhyme scheme is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. In the Petrarchan sonnet the rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA and CDECDE or CDCDCD. The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts: the first eight lines which is called an octave and the final six lines which comprise the sestet.
Limerick: a short, witty five line poem which is usually witty and/or naughty. It usually goes: There once was a man from Nantucket..... There is also a city in Ireland called Limerick.
Internal Rhyme: two or more rhyming words found within the same line of poetry. This adds tone, depth and emotional intensity to the piece. The most famous example of internal rhyme is in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "
'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."
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