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Figurative Language I

This document discusses different types of figurative language used in poetry: metaphor, simile, personification, and apostrophe. It provides examples and definitions for each. Metaphors directly state that one thing is another, while similes use comparative words like "like" or "as" to draw similarities between two objects. Personification gives human traits to non-human things. Apostrophe directly addresses something absent as if present. The document also analyzes Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" which uses metaphors to discuss the deferred dreams of African Americans through imagery of food, decay, and potential violence.

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24 views

Figurative Language I

This document discusses different types of figurative language used in poetry: metaphor, simile, personification, and apostrophe. It provides examples and definitions for each. Metaphors directly state that one thing is another, while similes use comparative words like "like" or "as" to draw similarities between two objects. Personification gives human traits to non-human things. Apostrophe directly addresses something absent as if present. The document also analyzes Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" which uses metaphors to discuss the deferred dreams of African Americans through imagery of food, decay, and potential violence.

Uploaded by

zh bhr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Figurative Language I

METAPHOR, SIMILE, PERSONIFICATION, APOSTROPHE


Poetry Provides the one permissible way of saying one thing
and meaning another.
Robert Frost
 Figure pf speech: an intentional deviation from ordinary language
use in order to produce literary effect.
 Literariness: defamiliarization.
 Saying one thing and meaning another. Figurative language
cannot be taken literally.
 More than 250 figures of speech.
•Something is like or as something else.
•We use comparative words such as: like, as ,

Simile
seems, than, similar to, seems in similes.

•Something is something else.


•We do not use comparative words in

Metaphor
metaphors.
•In metaphor the comparison is not expressed
but meant when a figurative term is substituted
for or identified with the literal term.
1. Simile

 Simile: Comparing two distinctly different things using words: like, as,
as if, than, similar to, resembles, seems, …
 E.g. My love is like a red red rose.
 E.g. I wandered lonely as a cloud.
Ground: what
they have in
common
e.g. beauty

Vehicle:
Tenor: literal
figurative
term
term
e.g. My love
e.g. Red rose
2. Metaphor
 In metaphor the comparison is implied.
 Extended metaphor

First form: both the tenor and the vehicle are named
e.g. the crystal gems of snow crusted the trees.

Second form: the tenor is named, the vehicle is


implied
e.g. does the dream explode?

Third form:the tenor is implied but the vehicle


named.
e.g. it fills with Alabaster Wool.

Fourth form: both vehicle and tenor are implied.


e.g. it sifts
3. Personification
 Giving human attributes to an animal, an object, or a concept.
 An implied metaphor: The sun is like a human that….
 E.g. Mirror by Sylvia Plath, Autumn by Keats.
4. Apostrophe
 Addressing an absent person, or something that is nonhuman as
present and human.
 E.g. Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art…
 E.g. O night with hue so black…
 E.g. Death thou shalt die.
Harlem
Harlem by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

 Harlem renaissance (1920s), Great Migration of


African-Americans from the south of America to
north.
 The American Dream
 The African-American Dream
freedom, equality, success.

 Ideals compared to everyday objects.


 What happens to a dream deferred?
 (deferred by oneself or others?)

• Dry up/Raisin in the sun

Dream • Fester/Sore
• Stink/Rotten meat

deferred
• Crust and sugar over/Syrupy sweet
• Sag/Heavy load
• Explode

Passive voice:
Suppression/Aging Vanish
Passive voice: Repulsion/false
callousness Pain/infectous and becoming a
deferred hope Or Active voice:
burden
turn into violence
 Cause And Effect by Charles Bukowski
 The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them
By Seiichi Furuya

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