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Difficulty: MediumDiction and Poetic Syntax

Examine the poetic excerpt provided and supply the precise literary device to complete the structural analysis.

Answer:Extract:
"Silent moved the solitary shadow through the night,
And loud did echo the distant horn."

By placing the predicate adjectives 'Silent' and 'loud' before their corresponding verbs rather than following standard English word order, the poet employs 【inversion】 to accentuate the shift in sensory emphasis.

Answer

The literary device that completes the statement is inversion (or anastrophe).
The correct response is inversion (or anastrophe), as the excerpt reverses standard subject-verb-modifier word order by fronting 'Silent' and 'loud' for stylistic emphasis.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the grammatical structure of the excerpt
Standard word order would be 'The solitary shadow moved silent...' and 'The distant horn did echo loud...'. The poet has flipped this arrangement.
Identifying departures from conventional prose syntax is essential to determining poetic syntactic devices.
2
Identify the literary term for altering normal word order for poetic effect
The deliberate reversal of normal syntax or word order in poetry is termed inversion (or anastrophe).
Poets use syntactic inversion to place initial stress on key descriptors and maintain metric or stylistic focus.

Key Concept

Syntactic Inversion (Anastrophe) in Poetry
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Diction and Poetic Syntax

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