Figurative Language AP English Lit Comp Figurative Language

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, /On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!” - Alfred Lord Tennyson, “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 -/ Of the 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