Reading for Meaning: Figure, Tone, Style, Drama and Narrative

Unit one taught how a poem is built. This unit turns to what a passage means, and its governing idea is that meaning is built by choices you can point to: a comparison, a tone word, a habit of style, a kind of play. Questions that sound like matters of taste are answered from those choices on the page. This first part moves in three steps: the figures of speech, from metaphor to the pun, with a procedure for following a pattern of imagery; then tone and style, with a procedure for reading tone from diction; and then the kinds, satire and mock-heroic, pastoral, and the stage forms of tragedy and comedy.

We begin with figures of speech, the comparisons and turns of language that do most of the work in a poem.

First, the two halves of every comparison.

ENL 0101 Simile and Metaphor: Tenor and Vehicle

A metaphor compares two things to clarify or intensify one of them; a simile makes the comparison explicit with "like" or "as." The thing described is the tenor and the image borrowed is the vehicle. In Sonnet seventy-three the speaker's age is the tenor and autumn's bare boughs the vehicle. Tenor described, vehicle borrowed. Name the tenor before judging the comparison.

Some comparisons are worked out at length.

ENL 0102 The Conceit and the Metaphysical Conceit

A conceit is an unusually ingenious or elaborate metaphor, often extended at length with many points of contact between tenor and vehicle. It is common in the metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, who compares two parted lovers to "stiff twin compasses," one foot fixed, one moving. One comparison, worked out at length. The surprise of the comparison is the point.

Things can be given life, or addressed directly.

ENL 0103 Personification and Apostrophe

Personification gives human qualities to something non-human. Apostrophe breaks off to address someone absent or something abstract or inanimate, often with "O." Milton's "Sing, Heavenly Muse" addresses a goddess who cannot answer; the two figures often appear together when a poem speaks to a personified idea. Treating it as a person; speaking to it. Apostrophe is address, not punctuation.

Two figures name by association.

ENL 0104 Metonymy and Synecdoche

Metonymy names something by a thing associated with it, as "the crown" for a monarch or "sabre rattling" for threatening war. Synecdoche, a kind of metonymy, uses a part for the whole or the reverse, as in "lend me a hand." Associated thing, or part for whole. Every synecdoche is a metonymy, not the reverse.

Some things stand for more than themselves.

ENL 0105 Symbol and Allegory

A symbol is a thing that stands for something beyond itself while remaining itself. An allegory is a whole narrative whose characters and events stand for moral or political ideas, sustained throughout. Spenser's Faerie Queene and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress are the glossary's examples of sustained allegory. One thing, or a whole story, meaning more. Allegory is systematic; a symbol need not be.

Images appeal to the senses, and they recur.

ENL 0106 Imagery and Patterns of Imagery

Imagery is sensory language that calls up pictures, sounds, smells or textures in the reader's mind, and it can carry tone, mood and symbol. A pattern of imagery is a set of related images repeated through a work, building meaning by accumulation. Sense words, and the ones that recur. The pattern matters more than any single image.

Irony sets things at odds.

ENL 0107 Irony: Verbal, Situational, Dramatic

Cicero called irony saying one thing and meaning another. Verbal irony is a statement whose meaning differs sharply from its words. Situational irony is an outcome opposite to what was expected. Dramatic irony is the audience knowing what a character does not, so the character's words carry a meaning he cannot see. Words, events, or knowledge at odds. Irony is not coincidence.

Four figures bend statement out of shape.

ENL 0108 Paradox, Oxymoron, Hyperbole, Litotes

A paradox seems self-contradictory yet makes sense, as in "I must be cruel only to be kind." An oxymoron joins opposite words in one phrase, such as bittersweet. Hyperbole exaggerates for emphasis. Litotes understates, often by denying the opposite, as in "not bad." Contradiction, collision, overstatement, understatement. Litotes says less to mean more.

Some references are left for you to complete.

ENL 0109 Allusion

An allusion refers to a person, place, event or text without naming or explaining it, so the reader must supply the connection. English poetry alludes constantly to the Bible and to classical myth. The exam lists literary references among its knowledge areas, so recognizing a common allusion is directly tested. A reference the reader completes. Unexplained is the point of the device.

Some words mean two things at once.

ENL 0110 Ambiguity and the Pun

Ambiguity is language that can be understood in more than one way, and in poetry it is often deliberate, letting two meanings stand together. A pun exploits the several meanings of a word, or of similar-sounding words, for humour or for serious effect. Two meanings, held on purpose. A pun can be grave as well as comic.

Here is the method for following a pattern of images.

ENL 0111 Following a Pattern of Imagery

Imagery questions ask what a set of images builds, so trace the whole set first. Mark every image in the passage, the concrete words that appeal to a sense; group them into families, such as season, light, ruin and fire; and notice how the groups change, because a pattern usually moves. Sonnet seventy-three offers three images of the speaker in decline, yellow leaves, fading twilight, a dying fire, each shorter in time than the last. State what that shrinking progression says: the standard reading is that his sense of remaining life narrows. Do not answer from one striking image; the progression is the answer.

Next, tone and style: the attitude a passage takes, and the habits of choice that make a writer recognizable.

The exam uses a fixed set of tone words.

ENL 0112 Tone Words the Exam Uses

Tone questions offer adjectives, so know them precisely. Ironic means saying the opposite of what is meant; elegiac, mournful; satiric, mocking to correct; nostalgic, longing for the past; reverent, worshipful; detached, emotionally distant; sardonic, bitterly mocking; and wistful, gently regretful. Wrong choices are often near-synonyms in a different strength. Know the adjectives exactly. Match the strength as well as the direction.

Now the method for reading tone from diction.

ENL 0113 Reading Tone From Diction

Tone is built from word choice, so answer from the words rather than the subject: a poem about death can mock, and a poem about love can be bitter. Collect the loaded words and sort them into approving, disapproving and neutral; notice the level of the language, Latinate or plain; and look for a gap between the words and the situation, because a grand word for a trivial thing marks mock-heroic irony, as in Pope's "dire offence" for a stolen lock of hair. Then choose the answer that matches both the direction and the strength of what you collected, comparing a choice like critical against contemptuous.

Every writer has habits of choice.

ENL 0114 Style: What Makes a Writer Recognizable

Style is the sum of a writer's habitual choices: diction, sentence length and shape, figures, rhythm, and stance toward the reader. The exam asks you to identify characteristics of style, and some questions ask you to name the author of a quotation, which is possible because style is consistent. Habitual choices, consistently made. Style is evidence; the answer still needs a reason.

Now the kinds: the broad families of writing, from satire to tragedy, and the terms the stage adds to them.

Satire mocks in order to correct.

ENL 0115 Satire: Horatian and Juvenalian

Satire ridicules vices, follies and abuses, usually to shame them into improvement. The glossary names Juvenalian satire, after the Roman Juvenal, as bitter and often cruel, using sarcasm more than humour. Horatian satire, after Horace, is the gentler kind, mocking with good humour. Menippean satire attacks attitudes rather than individuals. Mockery meant to correct. Satire has a target; find it.

Imitation can mock, in two directions.

ENL 0116 Parody, Burlesque and Mock-Heroic

Parody imitates a particular work or style in order to mock or comment on it. Burlesque provokes laughter by treating serious subjects ludicrously or trivial ones grandly. Mock-heroic applies epic grandeur to a trivial subject or a fool, and it flourished in the Restoration and Augustan periods in Britain. Imitation that mocks, two ways round. Mock-heroic shrinks its subject by inflating it.

The pastoral idealizes country life for city readers.

ENL 0117 Pastoral

Pastoral depicts an idealized life of shepherds in the countryside, usually for an urban audience. It descends from the Greek Theocritus and the Roman Virgil, and English poets used it for love poems, elegies and veiled commentary on court and church. Shepherds, idealized, for city readers. The shepherds are seldom about sheep.

Tragedy brings a great figure down.

ENL 0118 Tragedy and the Tragic Hero

Tragedy is drama built on suffering that befalls a main character, traditionally aiming at catharsis, the purging of the audience's emotion. The tragic hero is an admirable figure undone by hamartia, Greek for "missing the mark": a mistake, misperception or flaw. A great figure, a flaw, a fall. Hamartia is often a mistake, not a vice.

Comedy ends in harmony, by several routes.

ENL 0119 Comedy: Romantic, Satiric, of Manners

The glossary defines comedy as drama marked by optimism, fellowship, love and good humour. Romantic comedy ends in marriage after obstacles; satiric comedy exposes folly. The comedy of manners uses witty dialogue to satirize a society's codes, as in English Restoration comedy, Congreve, and later Oscar Wilde. Obstacles, folly, or wit at society's expense. Comedy means a happy ending, not only jokes.

Some forms mix or stage spectacle.

ENL 0120 Tragicomedy, Masque and Interlude

Tragicomedy blends tragic and comic elements, often a serious play with a happy ending. The masque was a festive court entertainment of music, dance and spectacle; Ben Jonson wrote many, designed by Inigo Jones. Later Tudor morality plays are commonly called interludes, such as Skelton's Magnyfycence. Mixed endings; court spectacle; Tudor short play. The interlude's definition here rests on one source.

The stage lets the audience hear what others cannot.

ENL 0121 Soliloquy, Aside and Dramatic Irony on Stage

A soliloquy is a speech in which a character, usually alone on stage, speaks his thoughts aloud to the audience. An aside is a brief remark to the audience that, by convention, other characters do not hear. Both let the audience know what others on stage do not. Alone and thinking aloud; a remark unheard. A soliloquy addresses no one on stage.

Every plot has a recognizable shape.

ENL 0122 Plot, Exposition and Climax

Plot is the arranged sequence of events. Gustav Freytag's nineteenth-century analysis divides a five-act drama into exposition, which sets out the situation; rising action; the climax, or turning point; falling action; and the resolution, or denouement. Later critics proposed other structures, but these terms remain standard. Setup, rising, turn, falling, close. The climax is the turning point, not the loudest scene.

Fiction depends on who tells the story.

ENL 0123 Point of View: First Person, Omniscient, Limited

Point of view is the stance from which a story is told. A first-person narrator is a character saying "I." An omniscient narrator can report every character's thoughts and actions. A limited third-person narrator stays with one character's perceptions. The choice decides what the reader can know. Who tells, and how much they can see. Third person is not always omniscient.

This first part showed meaning built from choices you can point to. We named the figures, from tenor and vehicle to irony, paradox, allusion and the pun, and followed a pattern of imagery by its progression rather than a single image. We read tone from diction, matching both direction and strength, and treated style as a writer's habit. And we sorted the kinds, satire, mock-heroic and pastoral, tragedy and comedy, with the stage's soliloquy, aside and plot, ending on point of view. Part two takes point of view into narration and the prose forms, then into criticism and the question types.