Allusions
Today we started class by going over plagiarism and the turn it in log in and practice. The class code and password can be found on the classroom page under the intertextuality essay assignment. We also submitted a practice assignment to make sure we know how it works for our essay due Thursday. Next we went over allusions and their purpose as a rhetorical device in writing. The first thing we clarified was the difference between an allusion and an illusion. An illusion is like an optical illusion and an allusion is a literary device using either historical or literary references to outside things. Historical allusions mean an allusion to something that has happened in real life in history (so literally, everything ever). A literary allusion is an allusion to another text, like another movie, book or other work of art. The functions we talked about in class of an allusion were to reward the audience, define the audience, or to specify characterization. Allusions can be used to reward the audience by adding humor, for example. They can also award the audience by paying homage to whatever they are alluding to. To show this, the class watched an episode of Step Brothers as well as Wall-E. Allusions also help to define the audience based off of who will understand the allusion. This brings up implicit and explicit allusions. An explicit allusion names the thing that is being referenced whereas an implicit allusion only makes suggestions to what it is alluding to. Implicit allusions will only be understood by a target audience, for example a reference to the eighties that isn't explicitly said would only be understood by people who lived in the eighties.Talking about allusions today made me think of the TV show Family Guy. In the show, allusions are used as the basis for comedy. Most of what happens in the show is a literary or historical allusion. For example, there is a whole episode that alludes to the movie Star Wars, where Chris plays the role of Luke and Peter is Hans Solo. I think this is a good example of how allusion can be used to reward the audience by creating humor. Many of the jokes made are allusions to current events that may be controversial.
Your blog balances a casual tone with the sophistication, so you end up with a very efficient post. The descriptions of our class activities highlight the most important information, and help any students who were absent to understand what’s been happening in class. Consider how you can use multiple paragraphs to help further break down that analysis. The Family Guy example is strong, but it was really cemented when you gave that actual example of the Star Wars parody. That’s the information that really applies the learning (rather than just looking beyond our classroom and pointing at it).
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