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AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 1
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AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 1, Problem 1. Which literary device is used in lines 31 to 37?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 4
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AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 4. Which of the following is not true of the structure of this poem?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 5
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AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 5. The verse form of this poem is a what?

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AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 2 236 Views


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AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 2. What is the grammatical referent of the word "it" in the phrase "that it should have any character at all"?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

To shmoop or not to shmoop, that... is not this question...

00:11

Yeah, you've already read this passage... but it gets better the fifth time, we promise.

00:36

What is the grammatical referent of the word "it" in the phrase "that it should have

00:43

any character at all"? And here are the potential answers...

00:49

Okay, so what is this question asking?

00:51

First of all... what's a referent? Aren't those the guys throwing yellow flags on Monday

00:55

Night Football?

00:59

Close. A referent is something that... refers to something else.

01:04

So this question wants to know what "it" is. Really, the best way to find the solution

01:11

is to replace the "it" with each of our choices, and see which one makes the most sense.

01:17

Society and divine nature are mentioned, but they're both part of prepositional phrases,

01:22

so they won't work in this context. We can nix B and D.

01:26

C won't work because Bacon is comparing "it" to being a savage beast... so it wouldn't

01:32

make any sense for our answer to be "a savage beast.

01:38

And yeah, Bacon is talking about solitude quite a bit here, but in this case it's not

01:42

the referent. Instead, he's really talking about the "aversation to society."

01:47

If we replace the "it," we get:

01:51

"For it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in

01:56

any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that aversation towards

02:03

society should have any character at all."

02:07

It's a little repetitious this way, but says the same thing.

02:10

Our answer is E.

02:10

Good. Now we can focus on our aversation towards words like "aversation..."

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