Poetic Vocabulary II

Words, Words, Words… Hamlet

Connotation/Denotation Words have 3 parts

Connotation: what a word suggests beyond what it expresses; overtones

Denotation: dictionary meaning Sound: combination of tones and

noises

Example:

Would you rather be called childlike or childish? Why?

“The poet plays a many-stringed instrument. And he plays more than one note at a time.”

Laurence Perrine

Figures of Speech “A figure of speech is a way of

saying something other than the ordinary way, and some rhetoricians have classified as many as 250 separate figures.” Perrine

We will only deal with a few.

Metaphor/ Simile Both metaphor and simile are a

means of comparing things that are essentially unalike. The only distinction between them is that the comparison is expressed by the use of some word as like as than similar to resembles in a simile; in metaphor the comparison is implied.

“The Hound” Life the hound Equivocal Comes at a bound Either to rend me Or to befriend me. I cannot tell The hound’s intent Til he has sprung At my bare hand

With teeth or tongue Meanwhile I stand And wait the event. Robert Francis

Metonymy/Synecdoche Synecdoche: the use of a part for the

whole Metonymy: the use of a closely related

thing for the thing actually meant These terms are so much alike that it is

hardly worth while to distinguish between them and metonymy is used for both figures.

When we say “the White House” for the president or “the old salt” for a sailor, we are using this figure of speech.

Why use figurative Language? The mind takes

delight in sudden leaps—seeing likenesses in unalike things.

Figurative Language makes the abstract concrete.

They add emotional intensity.

They make words more concentrated. “Out, out brief

candle” compares a candle to life…

Mirror Sylvia Plath I am silver and exact.

I have no preconceptions.Whatever I see I swallow immediatelyJust as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.I am not cruel, only truthful--

Bibliography Perrine, Laurence. Sound and

Sense. Sixth edition. Chicago: Harcount, Brace, Jovanovich: 1982.