Guide to Figurative Language

1. Guide to Figurative Language

2. Allegory • a literary device in which an author uses the form of a person, place, or animal to represent an abstract idea

3. Apostrophe • words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea “Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.” “Tree at My Window” by Robert Frost

4. Hyperbole • – a bold, deliberate overstatement not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement. • Ex: “There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with.” From “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” by Mark Twain

5. Irony • a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or  discord-ance between what a speaker / writer /actor says or does, and what he or she means or what is generally understood. • Ex: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both… And be one a traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth… Then took the other, as just as fair.” “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

6. Metaphor • another kind of comparison between unlike things. The comparison instantly reveals some reasonable connection. A metaphor is a more forceful comparison than a simile because no connective word is used. • Ex: “The diabetic grandmother…Stares from the porch…A torch…Or pure refusal.” From “Grape Sherbet” by Rita Dove

7. Paradox • a statement that appears to be absurd, untrue, or contradictory, but may actually be true. • Ex: "One short sleep past, we wake eternally,  And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."   John Donne

8. Personification • when we attribute human qualities to a nonhuman thing or to an abstract idea, we are using personification. • Ex: “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.”  William Shakespeare

9. Simile • a figure of speech that uses a connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles to compare things that seem to have little or nothing in common. • Ex: “Then he lay down…to sleep like a snow-covered road…Winding through pines older than him,…without any travelers, and lonely for no one..” “Eating Together” by Li-Young

10. Symbol • a thing (object, person, situation, or action) that stands for something else more abstract. • Ex: TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? “The Tiger” by William Blake, discussing his Muse (and inspiration)

11. Understatement • the opposite of hyperbole, understatement (or litotes) refers to a figure of speech that says less than is intended. Understatement usually has an ironic effect, and sometimes may be used for comic purposes • Mark Twain’s statement, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.“