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Symbol and Allegory

Check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.

Question 1.719

1. What is an allegory?

a poem with a moral at the end

a contextual symbol

a narration or description in which events and characters represent specific abstractions or ideas

a conventional symbol

Question 1.720

2. A symbol is

something that represents something else.

a word whose sound resembles its denotation.

the opposite of the literal definition of the word.

the denotation of a word.

Question 1.721

3. In Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” the night connotes darkness, death, and grief. By drawing on these connotations, Frost makes use of

situational irony.

a conventional symbol.

religious imagery.

allegory.

Question 1.722

4. If a poem contained characters named “Pride,” “Innocence,” or “Prudence,” that work should probably be read

as a conventional set of symbols.

as a prose poem.

as a sonnet.

as an allegory.

Question 1.723

5. Here are four lines from Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” What is the symbolic meaning of “Nature’s first green”? “Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold. / Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour.”

love

youth

spring

morning