Figurative Language AP English Lit. & Comp.

Figurative Language Expressions that picture, describe, or discuss one thing by figuring it in terms of something else. It is communication via comparison. Can make an unfamiliar thing or idea more familiar by comparing it to something we all know. Can give familiar things or ideas new and surprising meaning by comparing it to something unusual.

Metaphor Carrying out an implied change. “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” – Shakespeare’s As You Like It Sometimes a metaphor is developed further later in a work – that is an “extended metaphor” When an author uses a metaphor through an entire poem, it is called a “controlling metaphor”

Similie Direct comparison using the words like or as. “Life, like a dome of many-colored glass/Stains the white radiance of Eternity.” - Percey Shelley, Adonais

Personification Giving human attributes to non-humans “O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out/Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days.” - Shakespeare “Sonnet”

Apostrophe Addressing and inanimate object as though it could answer “Break, break, break,/On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!” - Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Break, Break, Break”

Synechdoche Use of part to describe the whole

Paradox Implied contradictions “I, a child, very old.” - Walt Whitman

Oxymoron Condensed form of paradox. Two contradictions used together “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” - Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

Pun Play on words often creating humor through a word’s multiple meanings “Bravery runs in my family.” - A. A. Ammons

Hyperbole Intentional exaggeration for effect – overstatement “I will love thee still, my dear / Till a’ the seas dry” - Robert Burns, “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose”

Understatement Opposite of overstatement; deliberate underrating for emphasis “The grave’s a fine and private place / But none, I think, do there embrace.” - Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

Anaphora “Carry again, repeat”; repeating the same word for effect “Of the bells, bells, bells, bells -/ Of the bells, the bells, bells, bells/ Bells, bells, bells / To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!” - Edgar Allen Poe, “The Bells”

Allusion An indirect reference to something else