1.

FIGURES OF SPEECH OR FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE TROPES

These terms refer to the use of the language by which words are made to say something more
than or something other than, their literal meaning. E.g., the literal meaning of the word crown
is “a circular object for the head worn by a sovereign” but in the sentence “The crown
announced that the country would go to war,” the word crown is not used in its literal
meaning. This would be the figurative way of saying: The king (or queen) announced that the
country would go to war. The meaning of this figure of speech (metonymy) is conveys to us
through association. We associate “crown” with “king” and therefore understand the
transference.

Association is not the only mental process called upon by figurative language. The ability to
perceive resemblance between dissimilar things is frequently demanded by a writer. In the
sentence “The storm had been gathering for years before it broke in 1861” (the Civil War began
that year in U.S.A) the author, having compared war with a storm and found a resemblance
between them (maybe the destructive power of each) proceeded to call war a storm. Here a
comparison has been made but only one element of the comparison has been stated, storm.
This figure of speech, metaphor, conveys meaning through resemblance.

Sometimes writers, particularly poets, demand of the reader that he accept the imaginary
circumstance that the work he is reading is addressed to someone or even something other
than himself. Keats starts his Ode to a Grecian Urn with the line: “Thou still unravished bride of
quietness,” addressed to the Grecian urn. This technique is known as apostrophe and it is
based on imagination.

Also considered a figure of speech -though not necessarily employing figurative language- is
antithesis. This is the bringing together of opposites, for instance hot and cold, bold and weak.
When a poet brings opposites together the result is that the reader becomes more aware of
their contrasting meanings both denotative and connotative. Thus, when Shakespeare says
“Youth is hot and bold/ Age is weak and cold” these attributes of youth and age are
contrasted. In this case the writer has emphasized his meaning through difference.

When a writer employs words ironically -for instance, if he bestows lavish praise where none is
due- he is relying on the reader’s capacity to perceive that the words are not meant to be
taken at face value. In such case the writer conveys his idea through indirectness of speech.

Figures of speech may be classified according to any of the five mental processes we have just
seen. Whatever the process, a properly used figure of speech heightens the effect of language
by evoking images and ideas. Since the evocative quality of its language more than any other
feature is what distinguishes poetry fro prose, figurative language is the very essence of
poetry.

1. FIGURES BASED ON ASSOCIATION

Metonymy This figure consists in naming a thing by some attribute or accompaniment
instead of naming the thing itself, as in the well-known phrase “The pen is mightier
than the sword.” Or when we name an author when we mean his works: Eliot was
influenced by Shakespeare.
Synecdoche This figure consists in a) mentioning a part of something when we mean
the whole. E.g. “His seventy winters had made him wise.” b) mentioning the whole
when we mean a part. For instance, “The country protested the passing of the law.” c)
mentioning an archetypal figure when we mean a class, e.g. “How often must Cain
 kill?” Though metonymy and synecdoche are recognizable, they are not easily
distinguishable, so critics have chosen to ignore the distinction and only employ the
term metonymy.

2. FIGURES BASED ON RESEMBLANCE

Simile A simile is an explicitly stated comparison between dissimilar things. If we say of
a hill that it is like a mountain we are not using a simile for these are not dissimilar
things; but if a poet says that “a young woman is like a rose” he is making us aware of
a point of resemblance (beauty) between two dissimilar things. He is, therefore,
employing a simile. Most definition of simile mention that the words as or like must be
present in a simile; however, we should consider as similes cases in which the poet
compares two dissimilar things, finds a point of resemblance but also finds a difference
of degree in the resemblance. One of Shakespeare’s sonnets begins:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Certain verbs such as seem and resemble also serve to express similes even when the
words as and like are not expressed, as in the phrase “He seemed a lion in the fight.”
Metaphor A metaphor is the stated result of the process of comparing two things,
finding them to be identical in some aspect and concluding that by mentioning one,
the other will be evoked. A metaphor may also be defined as a compressed simile, for
one step has been skipped, that of comparing. Let us take a symbol of universal usage,
a dream to refer to life, and follow the process of comparison from simile to
metaphor.
The first step in comparing the two would be “life is like a dream.” Which is a simile.
The second step would be to state the identical nature of both, “life is a dream.” Here
we already have a metaphor. But sometimes, a writer does not think it necessary to
state the equation -in this case “life is a dream,” or life = dream- and he will fuse the
two elements as in the phrase “the dream of life” which is another expression of the
same metaphor. If the context permits it he will refer to “life” without even using the
word itself and say “this dream” which is still another expression of the same
metaphor. In poetry, the metaphor is by far the most frequently employed trope.
The process that goes from the simile to the synthetical expression of the metaphor is
followed by another figure if speech, personification.
Personification Strictly speaking this is the attribution of human qualities or actions to
what is not human. For instance, “the flowers wept”; but for want of another term, it is
extended to define the figure by which the inanimate is vested with animate qualities
be they human or animal. E.g. “the wind howled all night long.” Or “the sea pounced
on its prey” present a resemblance between inanimate things and the world of
animals.
Posts often combine apostrophe with personification. Consider these two lines of
Keats’ Ode to Autumn: Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
The second line which is clearly a case of personification is, at the same time, part of
the apostrophe.

3. FIGURES BASED ON DIFFERENCE

 Antithesis This is the bringing together of two opposites, in order to heighten the
contrast they present. In Shakespeare’s “Crabbed Age and Youth” we find an entire
poem based on antithesis, but a few lines should suffice as illustration:
Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather.
Paradox A statement of what seems to be contradictory yet which, on closer scrutiny,
encloses a truth. Michael Drayton’s poem of religious experience “The Paradox”
employs this figure of speech throughout. Each of these lines of the poem contains a
paradox:
When first I ended, then I first began;
Then more I travelled further from my rest,
Where most I lost, there most of all I won.
Oxymoron This figure is closely related to paradox and consists in combining words
with apparently contradictory meaning, such as “cold fire”, “sad laughter”, “cruel
kindness”, etc.

4. FIGURES BASED ON IMAGINATION

Apostrophe This figure which consists in imagining a particular reader or hearer and
addressing the poem to him. The hearer may be a personified object such as Autumn
in Keats’ poem above, or a person such as in Wordsworth sonnet “To Milton”. This is
an address to a brother poet who had lived two centuries before Wordsworth’s day.
Hyperbole This figure consists in exaggeration. It reached the height of its popularity
during the Renaissance and was generally employed in love lyrics. Hyperbole is usually
found in the form of farfetched similes and metaphors. John Suckling uses hyperbole
in each stanza of his poem “The Bride”; in the first stanza we find the following
example:
But O she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
Synesthesia This is the figures that evokes an image or sensation associated with one
sense (e.g. sight) and applies it to something perceived through another sense (e.g.
sound) as in “the black grumbling of the thunder”; or it may apply a word related to
the senses to a non-sensorial concept as in “those were the gray years of my life”.

5. FIGURES BASED ON INDIRECTNESS

Irony By this figure a writer implies the opposite of what he states as in “Man is so
intelligent, he will persist in his ways”; here, if a man’s ways have been pointed out as
erroneous, the expression “man is so intelligent” is an instance of irony. When irony is
employed to convey bitter personal disapproval, it is usually referred to as sarcasm.
The insulting personal quality of sarcasm accounts for the rarity of its use in literature.
Understatement The term refers to a deliberate control in the expression of emotions.
It is the opposite of hyperbole. An extreme example of understatement would be to
say: “It’s all right”. To express our appreciation of a master work. Understatement is
one of the distinguishing qualities of contemporary poetry. Let’s consider the restraint
of the final lines of Wilfred Owen’s “The Young Soldier” where the theme could very
well call for an outburst of anger against the ravishes of war.
It is the smile
Fain: as a myth,
Faint, and exceeding small
On a boy’s murdered mouth.
Litotes It is a form of understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the
negative of the contrary. To use the same example, we would be using litotes if we
expressed our appreciation of a masterwork by saying “it’s not bad”.
Euphemism This figure consists in expressing something considered to be disagreeable
in words that can make it sound agreeable, e.g. in Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”
where the poet speaks of his own death by using the expressions “when I put out to
sea”, “when I embark”, and “when I have crossed the bar”.
Transferred epithet A transferred epithet is the use of a qualifying word with an object
it does not properly belong with; as in the sentence “He raised his terrified gun and
shot into the bushes”. Here “terrified” belongs with “he” and not with “gun”. A very
common use of a transferred epithet is found in the phrase “humble home”, since
humility is a human quality it should be applied to the owner of the home and not to
the home itself. The result of a transferred epithet is almost invariably a
personification.
Inversion The indirectness in this figure of speech consists in changing the customary
syntax of a sentence. It is sometimes used for emphasis, based on the assumption that
the first part of a sentence draws more attention than the rest. E.g. “Him I do not
trust”. However, many times, inversion in poetry is used for the sake of preserving the
predominant rhythm or in order that a particular rhyming word may come at the end
of the line, as in these lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence”:
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry.
The first line quoted could have been arranged in a number of ways, the most natural
order would have been “Ah! Then I sprang up from the ground” but the rhymed
couplet form of the poem made the author choose I as the final word. Besides,
emphasis is given to the word up by placing it before the verb it modifies. By the same
principle, we change the syntax of the command “Get up!” to “Up you get!”
Rhetorical question This is a question asked merely for effect with no answer
expected. In fact, the answer is almost invariably implicit in the question, as when
Shelley in his Ode to the West Wind asks: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
The direct way of expressing the concept would have been a statement instead of a
question.
Chiasmus This consists in reversing the elements in a sentence that would normally
follow a parallel construction. E.g. the sentence “He heard the cannon and he saw the
smoke” it would become “he heard the cannon and the smoke he saw”.
Zeugma It is the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words in such a
manner that it applies to each in a different sense. This device was a favorite of
Alexander Pope’s as when he writes that Belinda (In The Rape of the Lock) fears “to
stain her honour or her new brocade”. Here the word stain is used figuratively with
honour and literally with brocade. In the same manner he plays on two meanings of
the verb to take when he writes:
Here, thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey,
 Dost sometimes counsel take- and sometimes tea.
Pun A pun is a play upon words. Although the word is occasionally used in literary
criticism, it generally refers to the oral form of playing upon words. Most puns are
based on witty uses of homonyms, their effectiveness, therefore, is related to speech.
E.g. “Queen Victoria reigned till 1901; after that the British had good weather”. Or “I
wouldn’t give a cent for the scent he sent”.