English Comps Part 1: Figures of Speech

Epithet

: a short, poetic nickname attached to the normal name. example: Homeric epithet - "grey-eyed Athena"

Synecdoche

A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state, "Twenty eyes watched our every move." Rather than implying that twenty disembodied eyes are swiveling to follow him as he walks by, she means that ten people watched the group's every move. When a captain calls out, "All hands on deck," he wants the whole sailors, not just their hands. When a cowboy talks about owning "forty head of cattle," he isn't talking about stuffed cowskulls hanging in his trophy room, but rather forty live cows and their bovine bodies. When La Fontaine states, "A hungry stomach has no ears," he uses synecdoche and metonymy simultaneously to refer to the way that starving people do not want to listen to arguments.

Synaesthesia

A rhetorical trope involving shifts in imagery or sensory metaphors. It involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in what seems an impossible way. In the resulting figure of speech, we end up talking about how a color sounds, or how a smell looks. When we say a musician hits a "blue note" while playing a sad song

Symbol

A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. For instance, consider the stop sign. It is literally a metal octagon painted red with white streaks. However, everyone on American roads will be safer if we understand that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass briefly without some sort of symbolic substitute. In literature, symbols can be cultural, contextual, or personal

Catalogue

Creating long lists for poetic or rhetorical effect. The technique is common in epic literature, where conventionally the poet would devise long lists of famous princes, aristocrats, warriors, and mythic heroes to be line up in battle and slaughtered. The technique is also common in the practice of giving illustrious genealogies ("and so-and-so begat so-and-so," or "x, son of y, son of z" etc) for famous individuals. An example in American literature is Whitman's multi page catalog of American types in section 15 of "Song of Myself."

Analogy

a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it. It aims at explaining that idea or thing by comparing it to something that is familiar. Metaphors and similes are tools used to draw an analogy. Therefore, analogy is more extensive and elaborate than either a simile or a metaphor. o Example: The given lines are from Amy Lowell's poem "Night Clouds" - "The white mares of the moon rush along the sky Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens." The poetess constructs the analogy between clouds and mares. She compares the movement of the white clouds in the sky at night with that of the white mares on the ground.

Metaphor

a comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. o Tenor and vehicle: Tenor is the real world subject and the vehicle is the second, often imaginary or at least not literally present image. Ex: Susan is a viper in her cruel treacheries" - Susan is the tenor and viper is the vehicle

Anastrophe

a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb and the object is changed. o For example, subject-verb-object ("I like potatoes") might be changed to object-subject-verb ("potatoes I like"). YODA!!

Prosopopoeia (personification)

a form of personification in which an inanimate object gains the ability to speak. For instance, in the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Dream of the Rood," the wooden cross verbally describes the death of Christ from its own perspective.

Trope

a rhetorical device or figure of speech involving shifts in the meaning of words,as opposed to schemes, which only deal with patterns of words. examples: metaphors, similes, synaesthesia, paradox, etc.

Conceit

an elaborate or unusual comparison - especially one using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction.

Chiasmus

author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern. For example, consider the chiasmus that follows: By day the frolic, and the dance by night." The words form an "x." I lead the life I love, I love the life I lead;" "Naked I rose from the earth, to the grave I fall clothed"

Hyperbole

exaggeration or overstatement

Kenning

poet creates a new compound word or phrase to describe an object or activity. The compound uses mixed imagery. May involve conjoining two types of dissimilar imagery, extended metaphors, or mixed metaphors. Ex: "whale-road" is a reference to the sea. Or, tramp stamps refers to trashy tattoos.

Apostrophe

sometimes represented by exclamation "O". A writer or a speaker detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech; An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present. In his Holy Sonnet "Death, be not proud," John Donne denies death's power by directly admonishing it. o Look at how Mary Shelly uses apostrophe in her novel "Frankenstein": "Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness." -- Talking to stars, clouds and winds is an apostrophe.

Understatement

the opposite of exaggeration: "I was somewhat worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw." (i.e., I was terrified). Litotes (especially popular in Old English poetry) is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in the negative to create the effect: "You know, Einstein is not a bad mathematician." (i.e., Einstein is a good mathematician.)

Antithesis

Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings. William Blake pits love's competing impulses—selflessness and self-interest—against each other in his poem "The Clod and the Pebble." Love "builds a Heaven in Hell's despair," or, antithetically, it "builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

Simile

An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverbial preposition such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor, which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing.

Irony

Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. Verbal irony (also called sarcasm) is a trope in which a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex. Situational irony (also called cosmic irony) is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. However, both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony--which is not the case in dramatic irony. Probably the most famous example of situational irony is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift "recommends" that English landlords take up the habit of eating Irish babies as a food staple.

Rhetorical Question

Often the question is asked in order to get a definite answer from the reader--usually, "no," as J. A. Cuddon suggests. The erotema often implies an answer, but usually does not provide one explicitly. Examples include Laertes' rant about Ophelia's madness, when he asks, "Do you see this, O God?" (Hamlet 4.5).

Anaphora

Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry... the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect. o Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which uses anaphora not only in its oft-quoted "I have a dream" refrain but throughout, as in this passage when he repeats the phrase "go back to" - Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities... o See Paul Muldoon's "As," William Blake's "The Tyger," or much of Walt Whitman's poetry, including "I Sing the Body Electric."

Periphrasis (circumlocution)

The act of intentional circumlocution, expressing a short idea with many more words than is absolutely necessary, or expressing indirectly an idea that one could express briefly and simply. J.A. Cuddon cites an example the sentence, "Her olfactory system was suffering from a temporary inconvenience," instead of "her nose was blocked" (701).

Metonymy

Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea. The term metonymy also applies to the object itself used to suggest that more general idea. Some examples of metonymy are using the metonym crown in reference to royalty or the entire royal family, or stating "the pen is mightier than the sword" to suggest that the power of education and writing is more potent for changing the world than military force. One of my former students wrote in an argumentative essay, "If we cannot strike offenders in the heart, let us strike them in the wallet," implying by her metonym that if we cannot make criminals regret their actions out of their guilty consciences, we can make them regret their actions through financial punishment. We use metonymy in everyday speech when we refer to the entire movie-making industry as the L. A. suburb "Hollywood" or the advertising industry as the street "Madison Avenue" (and when we refer to businessmen working there as "suits.")

Paradox

Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions, such as noting that "without laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous one: "Cowards die many times before their deaths" A statement or a group of statements; consists of a whole sentence.

Oxymoron

Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Simple or joking examples include jumbo shrimp, sophisticated rednecks, and military intelligence. The richest seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions. These oxymora are sometimes called paradoxes. For instance, "without laws, we can have no freedom." a combination of two contradictory terms; comes with only two words that contradicts itself.

Parallelism

When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. For instance, "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable." The previous sentence has parallel structure in use of adjectives.