Paraclete, part five - Elements in Practice

Paraclete, part five - Elements in Practice

ELEMENTS IN PRACTICE

Voigt then quotes the list of people "who came to Gatsby's house that summer."


In this chunk of prose she defines the form, the list of people at Gatsby's. The structure is the syntax, explaining that syntax is a structure because it "makes meaning precisely through sequence and lexical relationships." The "shapeliness" (structure) of of the list (form) is "where our delight comes from as it moves" through these aspects of texture:
  • allusions
  • assonance
  • alliteration
  • anaphora
  • phrasal repetition & rhyme
  • images
  • figuration
  • puns
  • varying levels of diction
  • onomatopoeia
A poem cannot exist without texture, and a poem cannot succeed without both the form and the structure attended to appropriately (127).

As I begin the next phase of the critical thesis, I will be looking at a poem's texture, structure and form and observing aspects of these three elements. Then, using the guiding questions, I will evaluate these aspects and note what "works" and doesn't "work" for me an why.