Gulliver speaks of England: “I then spoke at large upon the constitution of an English Parliament; partly made up of an illustri
ous body called the House of Peers; persons of the noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies. . . .” King of Brobdingnag speaks of Brobdingnag: “He asked, ‘What methods were used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable part of their lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly when any noble family became extinct?’” Which element of the passages above suggests that the author is using format to highlight differences? high-level wordslong sentencesparallel ideas in the two passagesverbs written in the past tense
The correct answer is “parallel ideas in the two passages”.
Parallelism is a similarity of grammatical form for similar elements of meaning among sentences. For two sentences be considered parallel, they should be expressed in parallel grammatical form, this is exactly what happens here because both passages are written in the past tense.
