Monday, February 3 poetry unit: diction / personification

In class:  new vocabulary- Task 1 words- quiz on Monday, February 110 (class handout / copy below); introducing a poetry unit. Our first topic is diction. The first literary device we will review is personification. (class handout)

Coming up: tomorrow we will be reading A September Night by George Marion McClellan, our focus being on diction and personification.

Diction refers to the author’s choice of words.
Words are the writer’s basic tools: they create
the color and texture of the written work; they
both reflect and determine the level of formality;
they shape the reader’s perceptions. When
studying serious literature, students should
rarely skip words they do not know. That is
tantamount to wearing earplugs to a symphony.
To understand voice, students must
both “hear” the words and “feel” their effects.
Diction reflects the writer’s vision and steers
the reader’s thought.

Effective voice is shaped by words that are
clear, concrete, and exact. Good writers eschew
words like pretty, nice, and bad. Instead
they employ words that invoke a specific
effect. A coat isn’t torn; it is tattered. The
United States Army does not want revenge; it
is thirsting for revenge. A door does not shut;
it thuds. Specific diction brings the reader into
the scene, enabling full participation in the

writer’s world.

Diction also depends on the occasion. As with
clothes, level of formality influences appropriate
choices. Formal diction is largely reserved
for scholarly writing and serious prose or
poetry. Informal diction is the norm in expository
essays, newspaper editorials, and works
of fiction. Colloquial diction and slang borrow
from informal speech and are typically used to
create a mood or capture a particular historic
or regional dialect. Appropriateness of diction

is determined by the norms of society.

Finally, diction can impart freshness and
originality to writing. Words used in surprising
or unusual ways make us rethink what is
known and re-examine meaning. Good writers
often opt for complexity rather than simplicity,
for multiple meanings rather than precision.
Thus diction, the foundation of voice,
shapes a reader’s thinking while guiding
reader insight into the author’s idiosyncratic

expression of thought: the writer’s voice.
_________________________________________________-

Practice: diction 1 class handout. If you are absent, please copy the material below and send along.
_____________________________________________________
Diction 1
Consider:

As I watched, the sun broke weakly through, brightened the rich red of the fawns, and
kindled their white spots.
— E. B. White, “Twins,” Poems and Sketches of E.B. White


1. What kind of flame does kindled imply? How does this verb suit the purpose of the sentence?

2. Would the sentence be strengthened or weakened by changing the sun broke weakly through to the sun burst through? Explain the effect this change would have on the use of the verb kindled.

Apply:
With a partner (s) brainstorm a list of action verbs that demonstrate the effects of sunlight.


*************************************************************************

The use of personification in poetry or literature is common. Personification is the attributing of human characteristics, thoughts or emotions to something that is non-human.

We use many examples of personification in every day speech. Some characteristics have become quite common to attribute to certain things, such as the following:

• Justice is blind
• Her heart skipped a beat
• The sun smiled down on them
• The stars winked
• The party died down
• The city never sleeps
• The wind howled
• The iron gates looked down at them cruelly
• The house sighed
• The car sputtered and coughed before starting

Personification and anthropomorphism has been a part of storytelling for thousands of years, evident in Aesop’s Fables and fairy tales from many different cultures.

Group practice:

1. Choose the correct personification definition:

A. The act of literally making something human.
B. A person who strives to be the best he or she can be.
C. A literary device which gives human qualities to nonhuman things.

2. Which of these lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 contains personification?

A. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
B. Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade…
C. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see…

3.  Which of the parts of this excerpt from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” make it an example of personification?

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination

A. Whoever you are
B. No matter how lonely
C. The world offers itself
D. To your imagination

****************************************

TASK 1 vocabulary                     quiz on Monday, 10

1.bungalow (noun)- a small house or cottage that is either single-storey or has a second storey built into a sloping roof

2. barbarous (adj)- savagely cruel; exceedingly brutal.

3. disillusionment (noun)- a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be.

4. optimism (noun)- hopefulness and confidence about the future

5. pessimism (noun)- a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen

6. nostalgia (noun)- a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past

7. remedy (noun)- a medicine or treatment for a disease or injury.

8. anecdote (noun)- a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person

9. to escalate (verb)- to increase rapidly.

10. hostility (noun)- unfriendliness or opposition