Infinite Riches in a Little Room

Dr. Pamela TroyerAssistant Professor of English, MSU Denver

Cheryl Upshaw English Major / Tech Comm Minor, MSU Denver

Social Media Assistant / Intern, Teaching with Primary Sources

Do not free them. Confine them.

An Elizabethan Courtier Must HaveSprezzatura

   “Infinite riches in a little room”

Sydney's Sonnet: The Room

14 lines140 syllablesIambic hexameterSet rhyme scheme

Literary Figures: The Riches

• Asyndeton - “not bound”

• Anadiplosis -“to double back”

• Paronomasia - “two meanings”

• Prosopopoeia -“making a mask”

• Hyperbole - “excess”

Astrophil and Stella – Sonnet 1

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain:

Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,

And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite --

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

Alexandrine Line (iambic hexameter)

Asyndeton (not bound)

Anadiplosis (to double back)

Hyperbole (exaggeration for effect)

Consonance (repetition of consonants)

Prosopopoeia (personification)

Paronomasia (double meaning)

Conceit (elaborate and unusual

comparison)

Natasha Trethewey

The U.S. Poet Laureate:Infinite Riches in a Little Room

Southern HistoryBefore the war, they were happy, he said

quoting our textbook (this was senior-year

history class) The slaves were clothed, fed,

and better off under a master's care.

I watched the words blur on the page. No one

raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.

It was late; we still had Reconstruction

to cover before the test, and, - luckily -

three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.

History, the teacher said, of the old South -

a true account of how things were back then.

On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,

bucked eyes, our textbook's grinning proof - a lie

my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.

Meiosis (understatement)

Paronomasia (double meaning)

Juxtaposition (next to)Irony (unexpected meaning)

Hyperbole (exaggeration)Prosopopoeia (personification)

The Tweet – Further Limitation

Robert Pinsky

Low Pay PieceworkThe fifth-grade teacher and her followers—Five classes, twenty-eight in each, all hers:One-hundred-and-forty different characters.

Billy CollinsThe poem creates a space. It hides in a tent

in a forest. Making its own bed, it falls asleep in the dark, wakes up under a lamp or the sun.