למה רמזים עובדים

Shared knowledge is the mechanism

• Because of shared knowledge about a reference, allusions create emotional or intellectual associations and understandings.
• The CED gives the cause first: shared knowledge.
• So an allusion only works on a reader who holds the reference, and that is a claim about audience.

An allusion is a quiet inside joke between writer and reader; without shared knowledge, the doorbell stays silent.

Emotional or intellectual

• The CED names two kinds of association, and they behave differently.
• Emotional: the reference brings a feeling the poem has not had to build.
• Intellectual: the reference brings an argument, a story's logic, a set of relations.

Say which kind, and what came with it

• Naming the reference identifies the allusion; naming what it brought analyses it.
• A myth of a father's warning brings both — the grief of the story and the logic of a rule ignored.
• So an allusion analysis usually has two halves, one for each kind of association.

What happens when the knowledge is not shared

• Because the mechanism is shared knowledge, an allusion can fail for a reader without it.
• A poem may accept that risk to reach the readers who do hold it — which is itself a choice about audience.
• So it is legitimate to say who the poem assumes its reader is.

An association pass

• Name the reference and what the poem itself tells you about it.
• Say what emotional association it brings, and what intellectual one.
• Then say what the poem gained by borrowing instead of building.