Figurative Language
The Language of Literature
Figurative language
• Language which uses figures of
speech; for example, metaphor,
metonymy, synecdoche, simile,
alliteration, hyperbole, etc.
• Figurative language must be
distinguished from literal language.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
Frost, cont.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Literal language
Language use that takes the meaning of
words in their primary and non-figurative
sense, as in literal interpretation.
Literal / Literary
Literary = of, relating to, or having the
characteristics of letters, humane
learning, or literature
Literal = adhering to fact or to the
ordinary construction or primary
meaning of a term of expression
From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Literal / Figurative
• It’s heavily raining / pouring with rain /
the rain is pouring
• It is raining cats and dogs / the rain is
coming down in buckets
• You’re a pretty sight = You look awful
• You’ve got slightly wet, didn’t you? =
You’ve got drenched with rain
Speaking figuratively
•
•
•
•
you say less than what you mean
or more than what you mean
or the opposite of what you mean
or something other than what you
mean
Figurative speech
Broadly defined:
Any way of saying something other than the
ordinary (literal) way.
(From the antiquity on rhetoricians have
defined over 250 separate figures.)
Narrowly defined:
A way of saying one thing and meaning
another. Language that cannot be taken
literally.
Figures of speech / Tropes
Figures of speech = tropes
Trope (Greek ‘turn’) denotes any
rhetorical or figurative device
A figure of speech
An expression extending language
beyond its literal meaning, either
pictorially through metaphor, simile,
allusion, personification, and the like,
or rhetorically through repetition,
balance, antithesis and the like. A
figure of speech is also called a trope.
The Harper Handbook to Literature, ed. by
Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker, George
Perkins. New York: Harper & Row, 1984
Literary texts
A work of literature is always a coded text,
in parts it may use figurative language
(figures of speech or tropes),
and as a whole it always communicates
ideas different from its literal meaning.
Therefore the student of literature must learn
the various techniques of decoding literary
texts.
Philip Larkin
(1922–1985)
THE TREES
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin
(1922–1985)
Cliché
A dead metaphor (cliché) is one in which
the sense of a transferred image is absent.
Example: "to grasp a concept" uses
physical action as a metaphor for
understanding. Dead metaphors normally go
unnoticed.
Metaphor
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances
William Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act Two, Scene 7
The world is not literally a stage. But Dshakepseare figuratively
asserts that the world is a stage thus reveals the mechanics of the
world and the behavior of the people within it.
Metaphor
A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1937) describes a
metaphor as having two parts:
the tenor
the vehicle.
The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The
vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. In the
above example "the world" is the tenor, and "a stage" is
the vehicle; "men and women" forms part of the tenor and
"players" of the vehicle.
THE TREES
1
2
3
4
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
5
6
7
8
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
9
10
11
12
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The Trees
2
5-6
5-6, 6-7
9
11
12
Simile
Rhetorical question
Contrast, antithesis
Metaphor
Personification
Repetition (increase, crescendo)
4, 8, 10
Alliteration
THE TREES
1
2
3
4
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
5
6
7
8
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
9
10
11
12
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The Trees
1, 9
2, 11
Repetition
Repetition
THE TREES
1
2
3
4
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
5
6
7
8
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
9
10
11
12
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
THE TREES
2, 4, 5
Uncertainty, vagueness,
hesitance, instability (fear)
7
Turning point
11
Uncertainty (hope)
Dylan Thomas
(1914–1953)
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, cont.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(1914–1953)
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, cont.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(1914–1953)
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, cont.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
William Butler Yeats
(1865–1939)
THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
William Butler Yeats
(1865–1939)
John Donne
(1572–1631)
A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING
LET me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee ;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
Donne, cont.
On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.
Donne, cont.
O ! more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere ;
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon ;
Let not the wind
Example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth :
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.
•
HOLY SONNETS V
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite ;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt ; alas ! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler ; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING
LET me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee ;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
Donne, cont.
On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.
Donne, cont.
O ! more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth:
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.
•
Conceit
An extended metaphor (conceit, concetto)
establishes a principal subject (comparison)
and subsidiary subjects (comparisons).
Used extensively by English metaphysical
poets of the seventeenth century.
Catachresis
A mixed metaphor (catachresis) is one that leaps
from one identification to a second identification
inconsistent with the first. It can be deliberate or
unintentional.
Example:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I)
Imagery
Representation through language of sense
experience
Image
- visual imagery (mental image)
- auditory imagery (sound)
- olfactory imagery (smell)
- gustatory imagery (taste)
- tactile imagery (touch)
- organic imagery (internal sensation, hunger,
fatigue)
- kinesthetic imagery (movement, tension in the
muscles)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772–1834 )
KUBLA KHAN
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Coleridge, cont.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Coleridge, cont.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
Coleridge, cont.
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Figurative language
Metaphor (Greek 'to transfer‚ to carry over’)
How to spot metaphor: textual and contextual signals
Metaphor and simile in poetry:
figurative language with a purpose
The effects of metaphor: denotation / connotation
denotation = what is referred to
connotation = associations, connecting images,
ideas, moods, etc.
Figures of speech:
metaphor, simile
Used as means of comparing things that are
essentially unlike.
Figures of speech in which one thing is described in
terms of another.
Metaphor – the comparison is implied, implicit,
i.e. the figurative term is substituted for or identified
with the literal term
Simile – the comparison is expressed, explicit
(like, as)
Metaphor and simile
Metaphor:
tenor (the concept, idea, new element)
vehicle (the image to illuminate the tenor)
grounds (the basis of comparison: their similarity)
"O Rose, thou art sick.” (Blake)
No sign of comparison: vehicle stands for tenor
Simile:“O my luve's like a red, red rose” (Burns)
luve = tenor
red, red rose=vehicle
like = grammatical indicator of similarity
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which one thing is described
in terms of another.
I. A. Richards (1893-1979), English literary critic,
by 'tenor‘ meant the purport or general drift
of thought regarding the subject of a
metaphor; by 'vehicle' the image which
embodies the tenor.
Further figures of speech
Synaesthesia /sɪni:s’θi:zɪə/ – the mixing of
sensations, the concurrent appeal to more than
one sense (e.g. hearing a colour, seeing a
smell)
Personification – give the attributes of a human
being to an animal, an object or a concept
Metonymy /mɪ’tɒnəmi/ – the use of something
closely related for the thing actually meant
Synecdoche /sɪ’nɛkdəki/ – the use of the part for
the whole
Metonymy / Synecdoche
Metonymy = “substitute naming” – an associated
idea names the item:
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Synecdoche – a part stands for the whole or the
whole for a part:
“Listen, you've got to come take a look at my new
set of wheels.” (One refers to a vehicle in terms
of some of its parts, "wheels“.)
Even further figures of speech
Symbol – something that means more than what it is
Allegory – a narrative or description that has a
second meaning, with more emphasis on the
ulterior meaning than on the surface story
Unlike metaphors, it involves a system of
related correspondences.
Unlike symbols, it puts less emphasis on the
images for their own sake
Allegory / Symbol
A narrative that serves as an extended metaphor.
Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables,
poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre.
The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that
has characters, a setting, as well as other types of
symbols, that have both literal and figurative
meanings. The difference between an allegory and
a symbol is that an allegory is a complete narrative
that conveys abstract ideas to get a point across,
while a symbol is a representation of an idea or
concept that can have a different meaning throughout
a literary work.
Examples of allegory
Plato’s Cave allegory (The Republic, Book VII)
Aesop’s Fables
Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
George Orwell’s Animal Farm
Allegorical figures in
Thomas Gray’s (1716-1771)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
(excerpt)
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Gray cont.
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
The portrait of Thomas Gray
by John Giles Eccart (1747-1748)
Churchyard, Stoke Poges
Southwell Minster
Carvings in the Chapter House
of Southwell Minster
Carving in the Chapter House
Statues in Salisbury Cathedral
Figures of speech easy to confuse
Image, metaphor, and symbol are
sometimes difficult to distinguish.
An image means only what it is.
A metaphor means something other than what it is.
A symbol means what it is and something more, too.
It functions literally and figuratively
at the same time.
Rhetorical figures
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
simple repetition /'rɛpɪ'tɪʃən/
parallelism /'pærəlɛˌlɪzəm, -lə'lɪz-/
antithesis /æn'tɪθəsɪs/
climax /'klaɪmæks/
hyperbole /haɪ'pɜ:rbəli/
apostrophe /ə'pɒstrəfi/
irony /'aɪrəni, 'aɪər-/
Find examples for each in the quotation from
Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man (1732-1734):
Further rhetorical figures
Paradox – an apparent contradiction that is
nevertheless somehow true
Hyperbole (overstatement) – exaggeration,
adding emphasis to what is really meant
Understatement – saying less than what is
meant
Irony
a trope, a non-literal use of language like
metaphor, metonymy, etc, also can be
conceived as a rhetorical figure
• a type of tone, a particular way of
speaking/writing, a matter of style,
• can be widespread in text
(unlike metaphors which are usually
discrete parts of text)
Irony
• ironic meaning WE have to construct
• DIFFERENCE between apparent meaning and
true meaning
• the text as a whole or a large part of it is
unreliable if taken literally
• an implied (vs explicit) interpretation is true
Example:
difference between text and situation:
“WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.” – when all sorts
of things go wrong
Mechanisms and techniques of irony
• overemphasis of inverted meaning:
Yes! I'd really like that!
• internal inconsistency
- in narrative: narrator is shown not to
have seen the truth
- in style: unexpected change in register
unexpected change of rhythm
unexpected alliteration
rhyme fails to appear
Effects of irony
Irony which destabilizes:
• where the intended meaning is difficult to
pinpoint
• internally inconsistent text
• literal meaning is insufficient
• no specific, authoritative or unified
worldview – a final, implied meaning
remains elusive
Types of irony
Verbal irony – saying the opposite of what is
meant
Dramatic irony – discrepancy between what the
speaker says and what the author means
Irony of situation – discrepancy between the actual
circumstances and those that would seem
appropriate
or discrepancy between what one anticipates
and what actually comes to pass
Allusion
A reference to something in history or
previous literature.
It is like a richly connotative word or a
symbol, a means of suggesting more
than it says.