Western literature/week7

A. introduction
Simile: 

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two things.Although similes and metaphors are similar, similes explicitly use connecting words (such as like, as, so, than, or various verbs such as resemble), though these specific words are not always necessary.

While similes are mainly used in forms of poetry that compare the inanimate and the living, there are also terms in which similes and personifications are used for humorous purposes and comparison.

                                                                                                                                                                
metaphor:
A metaphor is a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing.

It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas. Where a simile compares two items, a metaphor directly equates them, and does not use "like" or "as" as does a simile.

One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature is the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances[...]

       —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

A ballot box is a temporarily sealed container, usually a square box though sometimes a tamper resistant bag, with a narrow slot in the top sufficient to accept a ballot paper in an election but which prevents anyone from accessing the votes cast until the close of the voting period.

A Poem is said to be written in pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where 'foot' is a combination of a particular number (1 or 2) of unstressed (or weak) syllables and a stressed (or strong) syllable. Depending on the pattern of feet, pentameter can be iambic (one of three two-syllable meters alongside trochaic and spondaic) or dactylic (one of two three-syllable meters alongside anapestic).

Self-sufficiency:

Self-sufficiency (also called self-containment) is the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction for survival; it is a type of personal or collective autonomy. On a national scale, a totally self-sufficient economy that does not trade with the outside world is called an autarky.

The term self-sufficiency is usually applied to varieties of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed other than what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals.

B.Shakespeare's sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 

And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 

And every fair from fair sometime declines, 

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; 

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, 

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; 

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

                                               ---Shakespeare

C. The Odyssey

	The Odyssey /ˈɒdəsi/ is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.  It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature.
	Ithaca /ˈɪθəkə/ in Greek mythology, was the island home of the hero Odysseus. The specific location of the island, as it was described in Homer's Odyssey, is a matter for debate. There have been various theories about its location.

D. Vocabularies to know

De-: down, away from prefix

decay	deport	deduct	decode
to break down;  to rot	to send out of the country; to expel from the country	to take out; to remove; to take away from another (usually related to money)	to break down words or sentences to read

E. Others

poetry sound and sense:

Sound and Sense was originally developed for use in Laurence Perrine's poetry class.
It became one of the most influential works in modern American education.