DiYanni Quiz #1: Voice: Speaker and Tone, Diction, Imagery

a literary expression of praise—“O Captain! My Captain” by Walt Whitman

• elegy

• ballad

• panegyric

• epigraph

• dramatic monologue

a lyric poem that laments the dead

• ekphrastic

• elegy

• sestina

• epic

• epigraph

a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning

• ekphrastic

• ballad

• villanelle

• sestina

• ode

a love lyric (poem) in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover

• ekphrastic

• elegy

• epigraph

• ballad

• aubade

Definition of tone?

• Details of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch

• Nonliteral ways of expressing one thing in terms of another

• Implied attitude toward the subject

• Pattern of accents we hear in the poem’s words, phrases, lines, and sentences

• Formal pattern of organization

Which of the following is NOT something that is generally useful to study carefully in a poem as a way to determine tone?

• Details of a poem’s language: the use of meter and rhyme (or lack of them)

• The number of lines in a poem

• The inclusion of certain kinds of details and the exclusion of other kinds

• Particular choices of words and sentence pattern

• Particular choices of imagery and figurative language

Definition of Denotation vs. Connotation?

• Denotation=Associations for a word vs. Connotation=Literal, dictionary definition of a word

• Denotation=Literal, dictionary definition of a word vs. Connotation=Associations for a word

What is generally the most important thing to a poet when considering a word to include in a poem?

• How the word fits into the rhyme scheme

• How the word fits into the meter

• If the word adds alliteration to the poem

• How much work the word can do--how its connotation suggests more than just its denotation

• How much work the word can do--how its meaning gives the poem more beauty

All of the following are true statements about imagery EXCEPT:

• an image is a concrete representation of a sense impression, feeling, or idea

• details of imagery trigger our memories, stimulate our feelings, and command our response

• imagery must always be literal since it’s designed to help the reader relate to the poem

• imagery often forms patterns of related details that convey an idea or feeling beyond what the images literally describe

• images of light are often indicative of knowledge or of life and images of darkness are suggestive of ignorance or death

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen

justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

The first three lines of the poem (in red) translate the Latin lines that precede the poem. These Latin lines are an example of:

• an epigraph

• an elegy

• a panegyric

• an ode

• a ballad