Figurative language is a literary device that is the use of words in a non-literal sense to express more than the literal words can convey about a person, place, event, circumstance etc. Some common figurative language is metaphor (e.g., his resolve is a rock); simile (e.g., she is like a rose); hyperbole (e.g., he is the rock of Gibraltar); symbol (e.g., a waterfall over the soul); personification (e.g., a type of metaphor that gives human qualities to non-humans: the rock shrieked with heat). Other forms of figurative language are apostrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, allegory, parable, paradox, understatement, irony. [See Figurative Language for more detail.]
Examples of figurative language in Chapter 17 of The Scarlet Letter are:
Symbol: pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts.
Symbol: the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life
Personification: the crisis flung back to them their consciousness,
Personification: The soul beheld its features
Metaphor: in the mirror of the passing moment
Personification: something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse,
Simile: Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death
Hyperbole: clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom
[Note: As the Encyclopedia Britannica says, the literary device of alliteration is often called a figure of speech when in fact it is a literary device better referred to as a "figure of sound."]
No comments:
Post a Comment