Literary Techniques and the Examination of Poetry: Literary Devices and the Art of Rhetoric Lesson objective: • To explore some figures of speech and to identify and analyze examples of their usage in poetry. Overview: What is Rhetoric? • By definition, rhetoric is the art, or study, of persuasive speaking and writing. • In Poetic Designs: An Introduction to Meters, Verse Forms, and Figures of Speech (1997), author, Stephen Adams, claims that it also has a negative connotation where it denotes artificiality, or “style without substance” (Adams: 105). • In his view, the study of rhetoric formed the foundation of “classical education” (Adams: 104) from the time of Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) “through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and into the nineteenth century” (Adams: 105). • Rhetoric is employed in both prose and poems and, traditionally, referred to different types of speeches, the structure (“component parts” (105)) of speeches and the “levels of diction” (Adams : 105), including both high and low. Overview: What is Rhetoric? Continued • With regards to poetry, the figures of speech are particularly important. They form the basis of poetic language and allow one to play with language. • According to Adams, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton and Sir Philip Sidney were trained in the figures of speech and this contributed to their literary genius. MSOAP5, Anastrophe and Metonymy • Here is an acronym, or metonymic device, for some frequently used figures of speech. • What does each letter represent? Hazard a guess. • The figures of speech can be divided into two patterns: schemes and tropes. • Schemes: the re-arrangement of word order or patterns of words. It involves the play with physical language. • Tropes: Means ‘concept’. The non-literal use of words that relies upon a turn on the literal meaning. Metaphor • • • • A trope. An implicit comparison between two dissimilar objects that makes an identity claim. Metaphor claims that A is B. In The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1965), I.A. Richards makes a distinction between the ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ which he sees as the two parts of the metaphor. It is useful, here. The tenor is the concept, or idea, the subject expressed and the vehicle is the material or image used to express the idea (Harmon and Holman: 340). In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare employs several different vehicles to communicate a tenor. Identify the metaphor after verse one: That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang— What is the metaphor, or tenor, here? Metaphor and Sonnet 73 Continued • Answer: old age is the tenor and the late fall is the vehicle. Simile What is simile? Simile Continued • Simile: a trope. It is a figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two dissimilar objects and tends to use ‘like’, or ‘as’. Identify the simile that John Milton employs in this passage from Paradise Lost: He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views (Milton). Simile in Paradise Lost Continued Answer: He likens Satan’s shield to the moon. What is being suggested by this simile? Simile in Paradise Lost Continued • Answer: that Satan’s shield is large. Onomatopoeia • A trope. Words whose sounds gesture towards their meaning. When the sound echoes the sense. For example, “bang”, “hiss” “murmur”. What does Emily Dickinson’s use of onomatopoeia contribute to her poem ‘I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - ’? I heard a Fly buzz - when I died The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air Between the Heaves of Storm - Adjectives They are describing words. Here is an example of an adjective poem by an anonymous author. Soccer Fun Fun, fast Fun, fast, goal-shooting soccer FANTASTIC! Adjectives Continued This poem is composed of nouns and adjectives. Which words are adjectives? What is their effect? Do you think that that was the author’s intention? Personification • A trope. The attribution of human qualities to non-human objects. For example, Andrew Marvell writes: My Love is of a birth as rare As ‘tis for object strange and high; It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility (Adams: 140). What abstractions are personified, here? How many times does the author personify love? Personification Continued • Answer: love, despair and impossibility. Three times. The Five Senses • • • • • Feel See Hear Taste Smell ‘Song of Myself’ 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. The Five Senses Continued • How many senses are in this extract from Walt Waltman’s poem? Anastrophe • A scheme. The re-arrangement of word order. This emphasizes the misplaced element. Traditionally, poets employed anastrophe for the purpose of rhyming. Identify an example of anastrophe in the opening paragraph of Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Metonymy • A Trope. It involves the substitution of the part for the whole. That is, one object that is commonly associated with another stands in for it. • For example, in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, the speaker states: I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas (Adams 138). Metonymy Continued • Question: In the preceding lines, does the speaker wish to be the whole creature, or merely a “pair of ragged claws”? If the former, then why do they state the latter? Plenary • List something new that you learned today. • What is the importance of the rhetorical devices?
