Why Allusions Work
IntroducedShared knowledge is the mechanism
- Because of shared knowledge about a reference, allusions create emotional or intellectual associations and understandings.
- The CED gives the cause first: shared knowledge.
- So an allusion only works on a reader who holds the reference, and that is a claim about audience.
An allusion is a quiet inside joke between writer and reader; without shared knowledge, the doorbell stays silent.
The CED says allusions work because of...
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Which makes an allusion also a claim about audience.
Emotional or intellectual
- The CED names two kinds of association, and they behave differently.
- Emotional: the reference brings a feeling the poem has not had to build.
- Intellectual: the reference brings an argument, a story's logic, a set of relations.
Select all the kinds of association the CED names.
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Two kinds, and they behave differently.
Say which kind, and what came with it
- Naming the reference identifies the allusion; naming what it brought analyses it.
- A myth of a father's warning brings both — the grief of the story and the logic of a rule ignored.
- So an allusion analysis usually has two halves, one for each kind of association.
Emotional, intellectual, or neither?
Sort each thing an allusion can bring.
Naming the reference identifies the allusion; naming what it ____ analyses it.
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So an allusion analysis usually has two halves.
Naming the reference is identification; naming what it brought is analysis. The CED says allusions create emotional or intellectual associations — so the answer must say which kind arrived and what it consists of, not simply that the poem alludes to something.
Because the mechanism is shared knowledge, an allusion can fail for some readers.
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A poem may accept that risk to reach the readers who do hold the reference.
What happens when the knowledge is not shared
- Because the mechanism is shared knowledge, an allusion can fail for a reader without it.
- A poem may accept that risk to reach the readers who do hold it — which is itself a choice about audience.
- So it is legitimate to say who the poem assumes its reader is.
Match each half of the analysis to what it delivers.
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All three follow from one sentence in the CED.
An association pass
- Name the reference and what the poem itself tells you about it.
- Say what emotional association it brings, and what intellectual one.
- Then say what the poem gained by borrowing instead of building.
A poem names a father who warned his son not to fly too high. Emotional: the grief of a warning ignored arrives whole, with no lines spent on it. Intellectual: the logic that ambition and obedience cannot both be satisfied. Two associations, one reference, and the poem paid four words for both.
Because of shared knowledge about a reference, allusions create emotional or intellectual associations and understandings. Name which kind arrived and what it consists of. Since the mechanism is shared knowledge, an allusion is also a choice about audience.