FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Saying one thing, and meaning another… Engaging Imagination

FIGURES OF SPEECH -- WHY?  They allow us to say something more vividly and forcefully than saying something directly.  Any way of saying something other than the ordinary way  In other words, saying one thing, and meaning another…  Language that cannot/should not be taken literally

DO NOT TAKE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE LITERALLY… FOR INSTANCE:  …from Sound and Sense  Let us assume that your brother has just come in out of a rainstorm and you say to him, “Well, you’re a pretty sight! Got slightly wet, didn’t you?”  And he replies, “Wet? I’m drowned! It’s raining cats and dogs, and my raincoat’s like a sieve!”  You’ve been saying less than what you mean, or more, or something other than what you mean…taken literally, it is nonsense… however

THE NONSENSE…  “Well, you’re a pretty sight!” - You mean the opposite.  “Got slightly wet, didn’t you?” – This is understatement to exaggerate.  And he replies, “Wet? I’m drowned!” – yet he isn’t, or he wouldn’t be speaking  “It’s raining cats and dogs…” – If THAT’s true  OUCH!  “…and my raincoat’s like a sieve!” -No one would wear a hole-filled “sieve” and think that of it as a raincoat…

SIMILE AND METAPHOR – A MEANS OF COMPARING THINGS THAT ARE ESSENTIALLY UNLIKE TO EMPHASIZE THE WAYS THAT THEY ARE ALIKE  SIMILE – The comparison is expressed by the use of some word or phrase such as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems.  METAPHOR –The comparison is not expressed but is created when a figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term.  …See “The Guitarist Tunes Up” p. 70

“THE GUITARIST TUNES UP” The Guitarist: (Similes)  Negative comparison – “Not as a lordly conqueror” (it says the guitarist is not like that)  Positive comparison – “as a man with a loved woman” (it says the guitarist is like this)  The Guitar:  Metaphor  “a loved woman”  Similarities: the curved shape, the capacity to utter sweet sounds, responsiveness to the man’s touch, and the way they’re both approached by the man – with “attentive courtesy” The comparisons are tied together by one word: ________ (a pun) (1) to play music, and (2) to engage in sexual play

METAPHORS – 4 FORMS – THE FIRST 2…  1. Both the literal and figurative terms are named  2. The literal term is named and the figurative term is implied.  Example – “The Hound” pp  “life” literal term  “hound” figurative term

METAPHORS, CONTINUED  3. The literal term is implied and the figurative term is named.  4. Both the literal AND figurative terms are implied.  See “It sifts from Leaden Sieves” pp

“IT SIFTS FROM LEADEN SIEVES” (72-73)  Subject: Snow (represented by the pronoun, “it”) (Snow is not directly named anywhere in the poem.)  Developed through a series of metaphors:  “it powders all the wood” – like flour  “alabaster wool” “fleeces” “celestial veil”  “leaden sieves” refers to the darkened sky or clouds from which the snow is falling  Kitchen sieves in Dickinson’s time were tin, so substituting “leaden” with its connotation of heaviness and darkness in the weather rather than the lighter, shinier connotation of tin emphasizes the heavy tone & mood.  “Face” metaphor for a natural surface, but faces are seldom “even”, “unwrinkled Forehead” – this is a special face  “wool” as a metaphor for snow suggests softness and whiteness, but…  “Alabaster” as an adjective brings in the additional comparison making the snow whiter and giving it a surface crustiness or hardness  The harvested field of “Stump, and Stack—and Stem” is metaphorically compared to a room once inhabited (before the harvest) by a personified summer but now “empty” (no longer filled with growing grain)  The “Artisans” are snowflakes, the ghostlike weavers of the fleeces, veils, ruffles, and laces.  At the end of the poem, the snowflakes stop falling, but their creation – variegated designs of snow on the ground – remains.

APOSTROPHE  Addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and could reply to what is being said.  “Bright Star” by John Keats, p.76

“BRIGHT STAR” BY JOHN KEATS  One of Keats’ finest sonnets  Complex use of apostrophe  This address to the star emphasizes its “steadfast” permanence in contrast to the speaker’s cherished but fleeting moment of romantic happiness as he lies next to his sleeping lover.  Speaker insists he doesn’t want the isolation of the star like a hermit (a “sleepless Eremite”)  Lyrical language suggest envy on poet’s part – i.e. alliteration of l- and n- sounds in line 2 “Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night” – emphasizes majesty of the situation  Lines 5-8 portray the star as a serene perceiver of a world purified by waters  In Contrast: Speaker lies “in a sweet unrest” (this shift is the key line in the poem) which suggests both 1) creaturely happiness, and 2) intellectual dissatisfaction knowing passion can’t last.  The contrast suggests a favorite Keats theme: passion vs. permanence

WHY USE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE?  A more effective means of saying what we mean than directly stating it.  More impact  1. Gives Imaginative Pleasure – allows the mind to “leap”  2. Make the abstract concrete, bring in imagery, appeal to senses  3. Add emotional intensity and conveys attitudes, not just provide info.  4. Concentrated – saying a lot in a few words (MacBeth’s description of life as a “brief candle” suggests truths about life that would take dozens of words in literal language to describe)

IMPORTANT -- ANALYSIS  Decide what is accomplished by use of the figurative language. This is just as important as identifying the figurative language..  Must be able to respond to figurative language.  Try, practice, try some more. Use your imagination.  Take the risk of possibly interpreting incorrectly.

“I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED”  Extended metaphor to express poet’s love of nature  Likens ecstasy of experience to intoxication  Liquor is the “air” and “dew” of nature  “inns of Molten Blue” are blue summer skies  Poet says she will outdrink her drinking companions – birds and butterflies – and make such a spectacle of herself even the saints and seraphs will come to heaven’s windows to see what the ruckus is all about – and they’ll see her leaning drunkenly against a celestial lamppost.  Spirited metaphors keep the poem light-hearted, high-spirited

“METAPHORS”  Speaker is a pregnant woman  Loaf = growing fetus  “fat purse” = her belly, swollen as if she’d eaten a bag of green apples  “red fruit” “yeasty rising” “new money” = unborn child  “ivory” = the child’s skin  “fine timbers” = baby’s delicate bones  “train” = pregnancy  “nine syllables” = nine months of pregnancy (poem has nine lines, each line has nine syllables)

“DREAM DEFERRED” P. 87  Dream = full and equal participation of blacks and whites in the political and economic freedoms that are supposedly guaranteed by The Consitution  Metaphors, because they are more condensed than similes, are more “explosive” & have more impact as a result  Metaphor = comparison between black frustration and a bomb (representing a race riot or even an armed revolution)  Italics to emphasize the poem’s most violent image is appropriately placed at the end of the poem with the question “Or does it explode?”