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Figurative Language I

Perrine’s Poetry Chapter Five

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Simple, Metaphor, Personification, Apostrophe and Metonymy

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Figure of Speech

  • Any way of saying something other than the ordinary way. Saying one thing and meaning another.
  • It is the use of figures of speech. And there are 12 that we need to know.
  • Figurative language is not meant to be taken literally, but instead interpreted to see their figurative meaning.

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Simile

  • A comparison of things that are unlike.
  • It will be a phrase.
  • It will include the words like, as, than, similar to, resembles or seems.

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Harlem

By Langston Hughes

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What happens to a dream deferred?

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Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

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Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

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Or does it explode?

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Metaphor

  • A comparison of two things that is not expressed but is created when a figurative term is substituted for the literal term.
  • It is an implicit comparison of two unlike things.
  • It can (and often does) go beyond one or two lines of a poem. That is called an extended metaphor,
  • There can be four different types:
    • 1: Both the literal and the figurative terms are named: She is a rose.
    • 2. The literal term is named and the figurative term is implied (“Harlem”: Dream to a bomb)
    • 3. Literal term is implied and the figurative term is named.
    • 4. Both the literal and the figurative terms are implied and not directly named.

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Personification

  • Personification is a type of metaphor.
  • It is giving human qualities to an animal, an object or a concept.

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APOSTROPHE

  • Addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing was there and alive and could reply to what is being said.

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Metonymy

  • The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example:
  • He is a suit instead of saying He is a business executive.
  • I am at the track instead of I am watching horse racing.
  • The White House has a plan instead of The President has a plan.
  • Lend me your ears instead of Hey, pay attention!
  • Can you please give me a hand? Instead of Can you help me with this?

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