Poetic Devices
Introduction
Poetry turns all things beautiful and adds delight to the reader as the message received through poetry fills the heart. In it, words paint pictures, compose music, and take wings. It discovers beauty by transforming things through its style. Figure of speech added to a bare statement is not a superficial ornament. It seeks to find a beautiful or forcible expression since:
ü afford to the reader imaginative pleasure because the reader can imagine what the poet means
ü It is a way of bringing additional imagery into verse, of making poetry more sensuous
ü It is a way of adding emotional intensity to otherwise merely information statement and of conveying attitudes with information
(Encyclopaedia of literature, p. 415)
Definition of Figures of Speech
The language used in a literary text is sometimes direct, straightforward, and simple. However, other times it is indirect, symbolic, and complex containing images and figures. Figures of speech give beauty and grant the words, meanings that deviate from their literal ones and that are called the figurative meanings or the implied meanings (hidden). This type of style intensifies the meaning and pushed the reader to reflect upon the point that the writer wishes to reach. It is also named “the ornaments of language”. Figurative language is used in all types of literature and mainly in poetry.
Types of Figures of Speech
The English language comprises a set of figures of speech like simile, metaphor, personification, irony, hyperbole, paradox, apostrophe, and many others.
2. Simile
It is a comparison made between items from different classes with the help of connectives such as 'like' or 'as' or 'than' or by the use of a verb such as 'appears' or 'seems'. You can understand from these connectives that the items compared are of distinctive classes. If the objects compared are from the same class, there is no simile present - e.g. "Bombay is like London."
Read the following line to recognise the presence of a simile:
"The holy time is quiet as a Nun"
Similes are easy to recognise and understand. The comparison is of two otherwise unlike things such as 'The holy time' and 'The Nun'. Yet the meaning is apparent and the comparison strengthens the meaning.
Example of simile from poetry:
O my love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my love is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune (Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose)
3. Metaphor
When the comparison is made between two unlike things without the connectives 'like' and 'as', it is called a metaphor. Metaphor is an implied comparison. It is a figure of speech in which we use a name or descriptive term or phrase for an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
Whereas in a simile there is a direct comparison, a metaphor suggests the comparison between two things not usually thought of as similar.
e.g. "The fog comes
on little cat feet"
Car feet move silently and softly. The reader can understand how the poet feels and sees the fog setting slowly and gently.
4. Personification
It gives the characteristics of a human being to abstract ideas or things or animals – in short to non-human beings. In other words, the poet speaks of something non-human as if it were a person. Such as:
April, April,
Laugh the girlish laughter
Then the minute after
Weep thy girlish tears.
5. Apostrophe
It is a figure of speech in which the poet addresses absent or inanimate objects, concepts or ideas as if they were alive and could reply. For example in John Donne apostrophizing the death in his sonnet Death be not proud
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Death do not be proud, though some have called you
Mighty and dreadful, you are not so;
For those, whom you think have destroy,
Do not die, poor Death, nor you can kill me
6. Hyperbole
Hyperbole may be defined as “simply exaggeration, but exaggeration in the service of truth”. Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses an unreal exaggeration to express strong emotion or create a comical effect of an idea or object or other that may seem strained and ridiculous.
Examples
- I’ll love you dear, I’ll love,
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain, and the salmon sing in the street.
- I have told you a million times not to lie!
7. Irony
Irony is a literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality that is different from what appears to be true. Situational irony exists when there is an incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human comprehension or control.
The effect of irony, however, can depend up on the voice and the context.
Examples:
- the student was given excellent! On getting zero in the exam
- Thank Heaven! The crisis,
The Danger is past,
And the Lingering Illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called “living”
Is conquered at last
(For Annie, by Edgar Allan Poe)
8. Paradox
It is a statement that appears to be logically contradictory and yet may be true. In other words, it is a contradictory expression that is presented when we put two opposed concepts together but can however create a sentence that invites analysis and reflection. Paradox is widely used in poetry.
Examples:
- We must be cruel to be kind (w. Shakespeare)
- Be realistic, do the impossible
- We who knew our fathers, in everything, in nothing ,
Suggest our inability to know or understand another human being, even a parent
(People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko)