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Identifying uses of figurative language Videos 7 videos

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 1
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AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 1, Problem 1. Which literary device is used in lines 31 to 37?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 3
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AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 3. To what is war being compared in line 2?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 5
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AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 5. What is being personified?

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AP English Literature and Composition 1.3 Passage Drill 5 216 Views


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AP English Literature and Composition 1.3 Passage Drill 5. This form of address is most commonly referred to as a what?

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English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Rest and Sleep. Two of our three favorite

00:08

things to do while lying down.

00:19

This form of address is most commonly referred to as a... what?

00:24

And here are the potential answers...

00:30

Okay, so this poem is clearly addressing... someone.

00:33

It's not like the speaker is talking to himself. Although... with all this talk of Death, it's

00:37

likely he doesn't have many friends...

00:39

But this question wants to know what form of address this poem is written in.

00:42

So... it's mainly a vocab question. Let's see if we can narrow things down by eliminating

00:46

some of the decoys...

00:47

D is probably the easiest choice to cut, because dialogue implies that two or more people are conversing...

00:53

...and in this case, we only have one morbid gentleman communicating all by his lonesome.

00:58

Asides are uber-short statements, not 14-liners... and they are reserved more for plays than for poems...

01:03

...so it's not an aside either.

01:05

It can't be an apostrophe, because that's a punctuation mark, not a...

01:08

...hold on a second.

01:10

What if -- bear with us for a sec here -- the word "apostrophe" has a... second meaning?

01:16

In fact... it does. Which is a fact you would only know if you had studied your poetry terminology.

01:20

So... hopefully you have.

01:22

In poetry, "apostrophe" can also refer to lines that are being delivered to an abstract

01:26

thing, rather than to an actual person or living audience.

01:29

Which... is precisely what we have here.

01:32

The author is speaking to Death -- probably because he's such a good listener.

01:35

It's not a soliloquy, because it's not a long speech directed at the audience...

01:40

...and monologue doesn't work, because it's not a speech delivered in a play to another character.

01:44

So yeah -- believe it or not, B -- apostrophe -- is the correct answer.

01:48

Tell all your friends...

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