Literary Element Test Review

REVIEW for Lit Elements Test on September 30^th

^{**Review Session Offered on Monday September 29th at 7:45 Am} 

The following Literary Elements will be applied to passages throughout the test.  Make sure you really know/understand the definitions.

·         Simile                

·         Metaphor                     

·         Personification                     

·         Theme                       

·         Hyperbole          

·         Tone                            

·         Symbol                                   

·         Flashback                                                                     

·         Foreshadowing                                                             

·         Idiom             

·         Tone              

·         Mood           

·         Dynamic             

·         Static

·         Denotation

·         Connotation

The following passage/poems will be on the Test.  Please feel free to analyze and annotate each passage prior to the test.

Milkweed - Jerry Spinelli –

1          So it was an even grander treat to see the horses moving.  I couldn’t resist.  The first day I went back alone I was determined to ride a horse.  There was a foot of snow on the ground, but I never felt the cold.  Every gilded saddle was occupied.  I stood watching them go round and round.   I think my eyes must have been as big as the horses’, my smile as wide as those of all the laughing children put together.

2          And then the horses slowed down and came to a stop, and the music stopped, and the waiting people rushed forward and pulled the children from the saddles.  I didn’t wait.  I leaped onto the platform and onto a horse.  It was the most beautiful of all the beautiful horses, and I had had my eye on it from the start.  It was as black as the coal dust under my fingernails.  It had gold tassels behind its ears and a flying tail and three golden hooves on the ground and one in the air.  Its head was flung high and its mouth was open as if shouting to the horses of the world:  Look at me!  For those few moments I was higher, I was grander, than anyone.

“Merry-Go-Round” – Patricia Hubbell

1          I rode a golden carousel                                                         

            across a tattered town,

(with an up pony, up pony, up pony, down).

Far across the tattered town

5          the carousel sped –

            (The carousel was living

            and the town was dead.)

            The faces of the people

            swirled around,

10        blurred and blended

in calliope sound.

The golden ponies shivered

and my hand clutched mane,

            The shrilling of calliope

15        filled my brain

            with an up pony, up pony, up pony, down;

            (around me pulsed the tatters

            of the torn, dead town).

            I was whirling carousel, carousel was me,

20        We were the living,

            wild and free.

All But Blind by Walter De la Mare

All but blind
In his cambered hole
Gropes for worms
The four-clawed Mole.

All but blind
In the evening sky
The hooded Bat
Twirls softly by.

All but blind
In the burning day
The Barn-Owl blunders
On her way.

And blind as are
These three to me,
So blind to someone
I must be.

"A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti :

My heart is like a singing bird      Whose nest is a weathered shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree      Whose boughs are bent  with thick-set fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell      That paddles in a halcyon [peaceful] sea;

My heart is gladder than all these      Because my love is come to me.

"The Garden of Proserpine" by Algernon Swinburne :

There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings;

And all dead years draw thither,  And disastrous things;

Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken,

Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs.  

And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs,

 and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure.