Figurative LanguageFigurative LanguageFigurative LanguageFigurative Language
Vocabulary List 1Vocabulary List 1
Alliteration• Apt alliteration’s artful aid is often an
occasional element in prose.• “The fair breeze blew, the white foam
flew, the furrow followed free.” – Coleridge
• “The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees.” – Tennyson
ConceitAn outlandish comparison/metaphor
(brief metaphor or entire poem)• Petrarchan: Subject is compared
extensively/elaborately to an object
• Metaphysical: Complex, startling, highly intellectual
Conceit• Robert Burns compares his love to a
rose• Shakespeare compares someone to a
summer’s day• Donne compares his relationship to a
woman with the woman’s relationship to a flea
• Donne compares his relationship with a woman to a compass
Extended MetaphorThe bonsai tree
in the attractive potcould have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountaintill split by lightning.
But a gardenercarefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.Every day as he
whittles back the branchesthe gardener croons,
It is your natureto be small and cozy,domestic and weak;how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.With living creatures
one must begin very earlyto dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,the crippled brain,the hair in curlers,
the hands youlove to touch.
Figures of speech
Intentional departure from the normal meaning of
words in order to achieve a certain effect
Imagery• “Unloved, that beech will gather
brown/ and many a rose carnation feed/ with summer spice the humming air.” – Tennyson
• “A sea the purple of the peacock’s neck is/paled to greenish azure.” – Moore
A note on writing about imagery
• Never just say, “The writer uses imagery.” Describe the imagery - biblical, nautical, seasonal, animal, visual, etc.
• For example, “In the poem “Living in Sin,” Adrienne Rich uses domestic imagery…”
• If you say, “The author uses imagery to paint a picture in the reader’s mind,” I will stuff you and sell you on Ebay.
Metaphor“Hope is the thing with feathers/ that
perches in the soul.” – Dickinson• “It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”
– Shakespeare• It’s raining cats and dogs• That’s my old flame
MetonymyMilton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dowerOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
• Wordsworth uses an alter to stand for religion, a sword to
stand for the military, and a pen to stand for literature
PersonificationGiving human qualities to
non-human things•Anthropomorphism –
specifically referring to giving animals human qualities
Personification• “Poetic justice with her lifted scale”
– Pope• “Full many a glorious morning I
have seen/flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eyes/kissing with golden face the meadows green.”
- Shakespeare
Simile
• “My love is like a red, red rose” – Burns• “A poem should be palpable and
mute as a globed fruit.” – MacLeish
Synecdoche
• “With all its muddy feet that press the coffee stands” - Eliot
• Gray beard – old man• Wheels – a car• Threads - clothing