Metaphor and Metonymy
A conversation: Your friend
comes in out of the rain.
“Well, you’re a pretty sight! Got slightly
wet, didn’t you?”
 “Wet, I’m drowned! It’s raining cats
and dogs, and my raincoat’s like a
sieve!”
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What’s literally true in these
statements? What’s “figurative.”
Figure of Speech
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Any way of saying something other
than in the ordinary way.
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Figurative language -- Language that
cannot be taken literally.
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Give me a list of clichés that employ
figurative language.
Metaphor and Simile
Both compare things that are essentially
unlike.
 Metaphor implies the comparison
 (My love is a rose.)
 Simile expresses the comparison by the
use of some word or phrase-- like, as,
than, similar to, resembles, seems.
 (My love is like a rose.)
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The Guitarist Tunes Up
Francis Cornford
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With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conqueror who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.
Metaphors
Sylvia Plath
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I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils,
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
Metonomy and Synecdoche
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Metonomy establishes a connection
based on association.
– “The Pen is mightier than the sword.”
– “In the sweat of thy face, thou shalt eat
bread.”
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Synecdoche -- A part standing for a
whole.
– “The crown lead the attack.”
– “The hands finished the haying.”
Metonomy/Synecdoche
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A Hummingbird -- Dickenson
– A route of evanescence
– With a revolving wheel;
– A resonance of emerald,
– A rush of cochineal;
– And every blossom on the bush
– Adjusts its tumbled head, -– The mail from Tunis, probably,
– An easy morning’s ride.
Huswifery, Taylor, 643
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What type of figurative langauge is he using
here?
What three metaphors does he develop?
Valediction, Forbidding
Mourning, Donne, 623
Vocabulary: valediction, mourning,
profanation, laity, trepidation, innocent,
sublunary, elemented?
 Find 3 similies and one metaphor in the
poem?
 Is the speaker dying? Or merely going
on a journey?
 How would you describe the language
in this poem?
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Prufrock, Eliot, p. 729
Find two similies
 Find an extended metaphor
 Find an example of synecdoche
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