Analyzing and Interpreting Literature / Unit 3 AIL 0213 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Want" Means Lack
Captions available
The idea
Sonnet thirty-eight opens "How can my Muse want subject to invent, While thou dost breathe". The poet is not desiring a subject. He is asking how he could lack one. Want as lack is the single most frequent shifted sense in the period this exam weights most heavily.
In practice
Want is absence, not desire.
Where people slip
The modern sense reverses this line.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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