How Doth The Little Crocodile
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
How doth the little crocodile is a poem describing a crafty crocodile which lures fish into its mouth with a welcoming smile. The author expresses himself through the use of stylistic features, phonetics and syntactic structure to create a formal poem.
Stylistic features such as affixation are present in the poem, focusing on suffixation such as 'waters' (-s being the morpheme) and smiling (-ing being the morpheme), this impacts on formality through creating more complex words using derivational affixes.
Phonetic features are used in this poem such as assonance, (a special effect involving the repetition of sounds - the same or similar vowel sounds). This is shown in lines 5 & 6: "How cheerfully he seems to grin" and "How neatly spread his claws", This acts as an inner rhyme, supporting the poem's rhythm. Another feature of the poem is rhythm, found in lines 3 & 4: "And pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale!". This shows the regular recurrence of repeated stresses followed by unstressed syllables creating a lively rhythm. Rhyme is found in the text as it is a common feature of poetry and involves the recurrent use of syllables of similar sounds at the end of poetic lines;
Stylistic features such as affixation are present in the poem, focusing on suffixation such as 'waters' (-s being the morpheme) and smiling (-ing being the morpheme), this impacts on formality through creating more complex words using derivational affixes.
Phonetic features are used in this poem such as assonance, (a special effect involving the repetition of sounds - the same or similar vowel sounds). This is shown in lines 5 & 6: "How cheerfully he seems to grin" and "How neatly spread his claws", This acts as an inner rhyme, supporting the poem's rhythm. Another feature of the poem is rhythm, found in lines 3 & 4: "And pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale!". This shows the regular recurrence of repeated stresses followed by unstressed syllables creating a lively rhythm. Rhyme is found in the text as it is a common feature of poetry and involves the recurrent use of syllables of similar sounds at the end of poetic lines;
“How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!”
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!”
The rhyme pattern uses the word at the end of a line to rhyme with the following second line, contributing to the cohesion of the text.
Syntactic structure such as simple sentences are used to create the poem, for example: "How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail" [subject verb object], this is a simple sentence as it only contains a single clause. Interrogative sentence types are shown in the poem; "How doth the little crocodile
improve his shining tail?". How being the interrogative verb posing the question. However the poem is dominated by declarative sentence types simple making a statement such as "How neatly spread his claws". This adds to the formality of the poem through variation in sentence type and structure.
A cohesive piece of formal poetry is created by Lewis Carroll through the use of distinct syntactic patterning, stylistic features as well as a variety of phonetic features affecting the sound of the poem.
No comments:
Post a Comment