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Difficulty: MediumExtended Metaphors and Conceits

Read the following excerpt from Edward Taylor’s seventeenth-century poem "Huswifery" carefully:

Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele compleate.
Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.
Make my Affections thy Swift Flyers neere
And make my Soule thy Spindle to bee.
My Conversation make to be thy Reele
And yarn the twine of thy Wheele.

Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Yarn:
And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde it:
Then weave the Web himselfe. The yarn is fine.
Thine Influence this Action will receive:
Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,
Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory

Which of the following best describes the function of the spinning wheel and loom conceit in the excerpt?

  1. A
    It provides a detailed historical depiction of the labor and tools required for seventeenth-century domestic textile production.
  2. B
    It consists of a series of unrelated metaphors where the spinning wheel represents human ingenuity and the loom represents biological fate.
  3. It illustrates the speaker's plea for spiritual transformation, using the step-by-step process of cloth-making to represent divine grace refining every aspect of human life.Answer
  4. D
    It reveals Edward Taylor's personal anxieties regarding his own professional skills as a weaver in colonial New England.
  5. E
    It identifies the use of literary devices such as alliteration and personification to demonstrate the speaker's technical mastery of poetic forms.

Answer

The option stating that the conceit illustrates the speaker's plea for spiritual transformation, using the step-by-step process of cloth-making to represent divine grace refining every aspect of human life.
The correct answer correctly identifies how the conceit of the spinning wheel and loom functions as an extended metaphor for the speaker's spiritual development and submission to God. The step-by-step manufacturing of cloth (spinning, weaving, and clothing) parallels the steps of spiritual sanctification and receiving divine grace.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the central metaphor and identify the vehicle and tenor.
The vehicle is the domestic textile production process (spinning wheel, loom, weaving, clothing), and the tenor is the speaker's soul, mind, and behavior being shaped by God.
This establishes the basic comparison being made throughout the entire passage.
2
Examine how the metaphor is extended across the two stanzas.
The progression moves from spinning raw fibers into yarn (first stanza) to weaving yarn into cloth (second stanza), which represents a developmental progression of spiritual sanctification.
Conceits rely on an ongoing, structured comparison where each part contributes to a larger argument.
3
Evaluate the options to find the one that accurately synthesizes the conceit's purpose without falling into literal or disconnected interpretations.
The correct interpretation explains that the conceit represents the speaker's submission to divine grace for complete spiritual transformation.
This captures both the structural progression of the metaphor and its thematic purpose.

Key Concept

Extended Metaphors and Conceits
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Topics

Extended Metaphors and Conceits

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