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GATE 2022 XH2 (English) – Question 58

Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Aesthetic and Rhetorical Strategies: Narrative and poetic techniques, and figures of speech · 2 marks · Multiple select

Which of the given examples of rhetorical/figurative devices is/are correctly paired?

  1. ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’ : Paradox
  2. ‘Truth makes the greatest libel.’ : Personification
  3. ‘Reading furnishes the mind only with material of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.’ : Antithesis
  4. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ : Irony

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Correct answer: (C) ‘Reading furnishes the mind only with material of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.’ : Antithesis; (D) ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ : Irony

Explanation

Locke's sentence sets reading against thinking, which is antithesis, and Austen's opening is ironic. The line from Psalms is a rhetorical question, and “truth makes the greatest libel” is a paradox, not personification.