Rhyme scheme. Rhyme is the repetition of sounds at the ends of words. A rhyme scheme is a pattern of end rhymes or rhymes at the end of lines of verse.
Alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Meter. The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern.
Personification. Personification is a figure of speech in which an idea, animal, or thing is described as if it were a person.
Parallelism. Parallelism is a rhetorical technique in which a writer emphasizes the equal value or weight of two or more ideas by expressing them in the same grammatical form.
Assonance. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables with different consonant sounds.
Repetition. Repetition is the writer’s conscious reuse of a sound, word, phrase, sentence, or other element.
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“The Naming of Cats” is taken from Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, first published in 1939 (available in paperback from Harcourt, 1982). Some of the cats mentioned in the book include Mungojerrie; Rumpelteazer; Jennyanydots; Bustopher Jones, the cat about town; and Macavity, the mystery cat.
A musical play, Cats, based on the Old Possum poems set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948– ), has had great success with audiences in the United States and in Great Britain. Recordings are available on CD and audiocassette.
What characteristics would you list to describe cats?
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