Figures of Speech

1. Figures of Speech The Language of Literature

2. Philip Larkin 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Literal language Language use that takes the meaning of words in their primary and non-figurative sense, as in literal interpretation.

6. literal language vs literary language

7. Literal / Literary Literal = adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term of expression Literary = of, relating to, or having the characteristics of letters, humane learning, or literature From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. Figures of speech / Tropes Figures of speech = tropes Trope (Greek ‘turn’) denotes any rhetorical or figurative device

12. 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. 2 June 1967

13. Philip Larkin(1922–1985)

16. 1The trees are coming into leaf 2Likesomething almost being said; 3The recent buds relax and spread, 4Their greenness is a kind of grief. 5Is it that they are bornagain 6And we growold?No, they dietoo, 7Their yearly trick of looking new 8Is written down in rings of grain. 9Yet still the unresting castles thresh 10 In fullgrown thickness every May. 11Last year is dead,they seem to say, 12 Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

17. The Trees 2 Simile 5-6 Rhetorical question 5-6, 6-7 Contrast, antithesis 9 Metaphor 11 Personification 12 Repetition (increase, crescendo) 4, 8, 10 Alliteration

18. A figure of speech is 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. Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker, George Perkins. New York: Harper & Row, 1984

19. 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 InterpretationThe world is not literally a stage. But Shakespeare figuratively asserts that the world is a stage and thus reveals the mechanics of the world and the behaviour of the people within it.

20. Metaphor I. A. Richards inThe 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 thevehicle.

21. Tenor and vehicle tenor= the purport or general drift of thought regarding the subject of a metaphor vehicle = the image which embodies thetenor tenor= the concept, idea, new element vehicle= the image to illuminate the tenor

22. Metaphor All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances

23. Figurative language Metaphor (Greek 'to transfer‚tocarry 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.

24. Figures of speech: metaphor, simile Used as means of comparing things that areessentially 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)

25. Metaphor and simile Metaphor: "O Rose, thou art sick.” (William Blake) No sign of comparison: vehicle stands for tenor Simile: “O my luve'slike a red, red rose” (Robert Burns) luve=tenor red, red rose=vehicle like=grammatical indicator of similarity

26. Philip Larkin 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.

27. 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.

28. John Donne(1572–1631)

29. A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING [excerpt] Our two souls therefore, which are one,     Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion,     Like gold to aery thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so     As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show     To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit,     Yet, when the other far doth roam,It leans, and hearkens after it,     And grows erect, as that comes home.

30. Compasses George Wither 1635

31. 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 sufferThe 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)

32. 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.

33. Philip Larkin 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.

34. Carol AnnDuffy(1955)SitatPeace(from The Other Country, 1990)

35. When they gave you them to shell and you sat on the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopes with your thumb, minding the queues of peas, you were sitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace, all summer. When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the back of your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundless in a cave of pain, you ran to your house, a greeting wean, to be kept in and told once again. Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peace on a coloured-in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimes your questions were stray snipes over no-man’s land, bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey.Sit – At – Peace!Jigsaws you couldn’t do or dull stamps didn’t want to collect arrived with the frost. You would rather stand with your nose to the window, clouding the strange blue view with your restless breath. But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they came from nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet room you were glad of. A long silent afternoon, dreamlike. A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.

36. 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

37. Philip Larkin 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.

38. Metonymy / Synecdoche Metonymy= “substitute naming” – an associated idea namesthe 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“.)

39. Even further figures of speech Symbol – something that means more than what it is. Allegory – a narrative or description that has a secondmeaning, with more emphasis on the ulterior meaningthan on the surface story. Unlike metaphors, it involves a system of related correspondences. Unlike symbols, it puts less emphasis on the images fortheir own sake

40. 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.

41. 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

42. Allegorical figures inThomas 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.

43. 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?

44. The portrait of Thomas Grayby John Giles Eccart (1747-1748)

45. Southwell Minster

46. Carvings in the Chapter Houseof Southwell Minster

47. Carving in the Chapter House

48. Imagery Representation through language of senseexperience 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 themuscles)

49. Figures of speech easy to confuse Image, metaphor, and symbol aresometimes 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 figurativelyat the same time.

50. 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 AnEssay on Man (1732-1734):