ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:02

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by mysterious priests.

00:06

There's nothing like wearing a dark robe

00:08

to make you look shady.

00:10

All right. Februus, remember him?

00:12

All right, yeah. Read it, read it. Come on, get through it.

00:15

What literary device is demonstrated in lines eight through ten?

00:19

And here are the potential answers.

00:21

Lot of five dollar words.

00:24

Okay, well, we've got another literary device question here.

00:28

It's asking us what method the author decided to use

00:30

in lines eight through ten in order to evoke

00:33

some mental or emotional reaction

00:35

from the reader.

00:36

Be careful, there may be a madness to his method.

00:39

All right, so let's look at lines eight through ten.

00:42

"What men or gods are these?

00:44

What maidens loth?

00:45

What mad pursuit?

00:47

What struggle to escape?

00:49

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?"

00:52

Ooh.

00:52

Well, before we even begin to think about literary devices,

00:55

one thing should leap out at us immediately.

00:57

Like some creepy guy hiding in a bush.

00:59

Every sentence starts with the word "what."

01:02

What? Why?

01:04

Well, it just so happens that there's a name for

01:06

a rhetorical device where a word or group of words is used

01:09

to start a bunch of sentences in a row.

01:12

Anaphora. Which is option C.

01:14

And as long as we're familiar with the term, well, this question

01:17

is just a cinch.

01:18

But let's go ahead and see why we can rule out the other answer choices anyway.

01:22

There's no reference to famous people or historical events,

01:25

so there's definitely no allusion here.

01:27

An allegory is like a fable and it's tough to communicate

01:30

an entire fable or parable in just three lines

01:33

of poetry, so that's gone.

01:34

Yusaf tried and failed and he got horrendous grades

01:37

in his poetry class.

01:38

Nothing is being referred to by the name of something

01:41

associated with it, so metonymy is a no.

01:44

And nothing is being compared in a symbolic way, so E is out, as well.

01:48

So, yeah, C - anaphora is the best answer,

01:51

the best solution, the best choice, the best option.

01:55

We just did anaphora-ed you and you didn't even notice.

Full Transcript