Analyzing and Interpreting Literature / Unit 19 AIL 1849 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Trap: Simple Language Read as Simple Meaning
Captions available
The idea
Yeats's poem about the cloths of heaven uses perhaps forty distinct words and is not a simple poem. Joyce's opening borrows a child's vocabulary to carry a sophisticated technique. Plainness of surface says nothing at all about the complexity beneath it.
In practice
Plain surface, complex construction.
Where people slip
Vocabulary size proves nothing.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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