Figurative Language, Study notes of Literature

Download Figurative Language and more Study notes Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Figurative Language To get you thinking Can you say what two things are being compared in each of the following phrases? Phrase Elements My love is like a red, red rose. Lover & — flower The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. & The minister waddled up to the speaker's platform, ruffled his plumage important- ly, and addressed the crowd. & Shared beliefs are the foundation of any society. & The old man in the corner was well known for spinning yarns. & Are these “special” uses of language? Would you find any of them in everyday conversation? Theory The term “figurative” language has traditionally referred to language which differs from everyday, “nonliterary” usage. Figures were seen as stylistic ornaments with which writers dressed up their language to make it more entertaining, and to clarify the meanings they wanted to convey. According to this view, literary devices such as metaphor, simile, rhythm, and so on, embellished “ordinary” language, and so forced readers to work harder at making meaning in a text. Nowadays we recognize that all language is in some sense “figurative”: there are very few ways of talking and writing about the world that do not make use of comparisons, sym- bols, and so on. Literary Terms 6 1 The following are some important figures. Simile The comparison of two elements, where each maintains its own identity. For example: “My love is like a red, red rose.” Here a person is compared to a flower in a way that suggests they have certain features in common, such as beauty, fragility, and so on. Metaphor The merging of two elements or ideas, where one is used to modify the meaning of the other. For example: “The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.” Here the image of the moon in a cloudy night sky is merged with that of a sailing ship on stormy seas, so that some characteristics of the latter are transferred to the former. Metonym The use of a part to represent a whole, or the use of one item to stand for another with which it has become associated. For example, in the news headline “Palace Shocked by Secret Photos,” the palace stands for the royal family and their aides. Personification The description of a nonhuman force or object in terms of a person or living thing. For example, “The gnarled branches clawed at the clouds.” Here, the tree branches are given the characteristics of grasping hands. Symbol The substitution of one element for another as a matter of convention rather than similarity. For example, in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the serpent is used as a symbol of temptation. In the ceremonies of the modern Olympics, white doves symbolize peace and freedom. Language itself is also symbolic, since words and meanings are associated purely by convention. Literary Terms Summary Figurative language is that which provides the reader with comparisons, substitutions, and patterns that shape meaning. Literary texts sometimes make concentrated use of figurative language. However, most language is figurative in some sense, because words do not have single, objective meanings. See also: imagery Literary Terms Foregrounding and Privi eging To get you thinking Wi In the space below, write the meaning these words have in “everyday” use. (Use a dictionary if you are unsure.) foreground: privilege: i Underneath these definitions, indicate how these terms might be applied to the study of literary texts. What could they refer to? Theory In every text we read, some features seem more obvious or prominent than others. This kind of emphasis is often explained with the terms foregrounding and privileging. We can say that foregrounding refers to the emphasis placed on certain features of the text (words, phrases, and so on), whereas privileging refers to the degree of importance attached to particular meanings. Particular elements of a text are not foregrounded or privileged by the text itself: They are the combined effect of ways of organizing the text (textual organization) and ways of reading (reading practices). Certain features in a text may be emphasized through a variety of techniques, including the selection of detail, repetition, exaggeration, and contrast. When some aspects of a text are emphasized in this way, we say that the concepts they refer to have been foregrounded. 66 Litenary Terms For example: In this extract from Charles Dickens's novel, Hard Times, repetition and selection of detail have been used to foreground the “mechanical” style of the teacher, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind. (The scene is set in a nineteenth- century schoolroom.) “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them. . .” The scene was a plain bare monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's forefinger emphasised his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the s hoolmaster’s sleeve . . . “Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, “I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?” “Sissy Jupe sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying. “Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.” We could say that this extract foregrounds the rigid discipline of Thomas Gradgrind’s approach to teaching through repetition (“Facts”) and through details such as the numbering of the students. Dickens's novel is often read as an attack on “cold and unfeeling” forms of education. Read in this way, the text seems to place a higher value on emotions and relationships than on “cold facts.” That is, in foregrounding the “mechanical,” it privileges the personal/humane. How- ever, different readings of the text might place the emphasis elsewhere. To a culture which values factual knowledge over feelings, this text might seem to offer a positive image of rigorous instruction. In such a reading, the same textual details might be foregrounded, but an opposing set of values would be privileged. By exploring a text in terms of forgrounding and privileging, we can begin to see how certain attitudes and values are promoted by particular readings. Literary Terms Gaps and Silences To get you thinking Can you make sense of these passages by filling in the gaps? As sound waves travel ________ the air they enter ears and bump against _________ ear drum. The ear is made of extremely _______, sensitive skin and the waves make it vibrate. _______ nerves in the skin the vibrations and pass ________ message to the brain. (Sensations, WA Education Dept.) Mr Jones, of the __________ Farm, had locked the hen-houses the night, but was _______ drunk to remember to the pop-holes. With the ring ____ light from his lantern _______ from side to side, ________ lurched across the yard, ______ off his boots at ___________ back door, drew himself a glass of __________ from the barrel in the _________, and made his __________ up to bed, where Mrs ______ was already snoring. (Animal Farm, George Orwell) i What factors enable you to “make sense” of the text? Is it the structure of the text itself, your own knowledge and experiences, or a combina- tion of the two? i What similarities are there between this activity and the “normal” process of reading? Theory No text can offer its readers a complete and balanced “window on the world.” Texts are made up of elements selected from a cultural system, such as language, and arranged according to certain conventions. In this way, texts are like the toys that children make out of blocks and construc- tor sets. The objects they make are only rough approximations of houses, ~ / 0 Literary Terms cars, and airplanes. What makes these things meaningful is the informa- tion supplied by the child: memories, imagination, playfulness. Like these toy houses, texts offer only a particular impression or version of reality, shaped by the basic elements from which they are made. For a text to mean anything at all, readers must apply a set of procedures to “decode” the signs and fill in background information. Readers make meaning with texts by supplying readings that are already available in the culture. A line such as: “he behaved like a prince,” for example, invites readers to make use of a range of memories and beliefs about princes, romantic love, men and women, and so on. The “spaces” of a text can be described in many ways. Modern ap- proaches often speak of them as “gaps and silences.” Gaps are places where the text does not bother to stitch things together but instead relies on “common sense” assumptions from the reader. For example, here is an extract from a news report. s Smith is the second girl to be reported mis een hitchhiking along a city street late on Monday afternoon. Police have issued a warning to young girls not to go out alone at night. ing this week. She was las These sentences do not say outright that there was a connection between Miss Smith’s hitchhiking and her disappearance; it is assumed that readers will make the connection. But the link is not obvious. It relies on very specific cultural knowledge about “the way the world works.” In order to construct the dominant reading of this passage, readers must assume: Withat the girl was kidnapped while walking; Wi that she was kidnapped by a male; Wi that this would be less likely to happen if she was accompanied; Wi that she was taking a risk by hitchhiking; and so on. If we resist the invitation to fill this gap with the conventional assump- tions, the text’s incompleteness becomes very obvious. It then becomes clear that the message requires readers to reproduce “unconsciously” a very strange set of assumptions about what “natural” behavior is! Silences result from the fact that textual gaps enable readers to avoid questioning certain cultural values. In the above example, the text remains silent about the behavior and motivations of men, even though it could have been written by a woman or a man. This has the double effect of Literary Terms making safety on the streets a woman's problem, and of vaguely implicat- ing all men in the disappearance. The text could have said: Police have issued a warning for men not to go out at night. This would certainly make the streets safer. In fact, by substituting this statement for the original, we can make ourselves aware of many silences in this text. By mapping these silences we can reveal that the text operates in the interest of some groups in the community, and against the interest of others. Practice This extract comes from “The Doll’s House” by Katherine Mansfield. (The letters and bolder type refer to the activities that follow.) [T]he school the Burnell children went to was (A) not at all the kind of place their parents would have chosen if there had been any choice. But there was none. It was the only school for miles. And the consequence was that (B) all the children in the neighborhood, the Judge’s little girls, the doctor’s daughters, the storekeeper’s children, the milkman’s, were forced to mix together. But the line had to be drawn somewhere. Tt was drawn at the Kelveys. Many of the children, including the Burnells, (C) were not even allowed to speak to them. Even the teach- ers had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other chil- dren when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of (D) dreadfully common looking flowers. Like all texts, this one requires readers to supply a great deal of knowledge in order to “make sense” of the writing. The bolder type sections of text highlight gaps which readers fill on the basis of “common sense.” What information must readers supply in order to produce the dominant reading of this passage? (Some possible readings of the bolder type sec- tions are provided below. Use them to fill in the table.) “Gap” Information Literary Terms In the activity above, you were making distinctions between sex and gender. In many areas of society, these distinctions are hidden, with the result that gender differences are often thought to be “natural” —like a person’s anatomy. The problem with this is that gender is used as a means of social organization. It is a technique for producing inequalities between men and women. Cultures create gender through social practices such as education, employment, and childrearing. These activities slot men and women into different positions of power. Traditionally, women have been raised to take on domestic roles such as wife and mother, while men have been prepared for more powerful positions as wage earners and decision mak- ers. They have even been given personality characteristics which match these positions. These “dividing practices” are supported by myths about the “natural” differences between men and women. In our culture, novels, plays, films, and other kinds of text have been important in maintaining these myths. They encourage us to believe that there are naturally occurring moral, intellectual, and emotional differences between males and females. By reading such stories as “reflections of life,” people come to accept their images of men and women as natural. This is why it is important to challenge both the texts we read and the way we have been trained to read them. Practice Here are two very common storylines which reinforce dominant beliefs about men and women. An ambitious young woman decides to pursue a career rather than marry and have a family. She works hard, and achieves her goal, but despite her success she is unhappy. She realizes that she no longer has any friends. Then, she meets a stranger in unusual circumstances. After initially disliking each other, she and the man fall in love. Happy at last, the woman gives up her career and settles down to raise a family. A sensitive young man suffers at the hands of his male colleagues, who tease him because of his gentleness. The women where he works treat him as a joke. One day, he meets up with a very shy, plain-looking woman. They fall in love, and for the first time the young man begins to feel wanted. Then, in unusual circumstances, the woman is placed in Literary Terms danger. The young man risks his life to save her, and in the process proves himself braver than his colleagues. His life is changed. People treat him with new respect, he gains a promotion, and marries his sweetheart, who takes off her glasses, lets down her hair, and is revealed to be very beautiful. 1. Stories of this kind are structured around pairs of ideas about what men and women should be like. Suggest some of the oppositions which are supported by these storylines by filling in this table. Masculine Feminine career-oriented family-oriented 2. Here are some cultural practices which slot people into masculine and feminine roles. Number the items from 1 to 12, indicating which ones you think are most obvious, and which are the least obvious, in shaping gender. Sport & recreation Common sayings School subjects Children’s toys Codes of dress Religious practices Family structures “Literary” texts Children’s games Traditions(e.g.,marriage) Fairytales Occupations 3. Which factors do you think might be most powerful, and hardest to change—those which are obvious, or those which are largely unno- ticed? Why? Literary Terms Summary Gender refers to the social categories of masculinity and femininity. These categories are related to sex differences in complex ways, but they are produced by culture, not biology. See also: feminist criticism representation a Literary Terms // Which features of the “Red Riding Hood” story would be emphasized if the following genre categories were applied to it? Match the “genre” with a possible emphasis below. Genre Emphasis Horror the woodcutter’s rescue Mystery the killing of grandma, the wolf Fantasy ___ the talking, scheming wolf Moral fable the disguised wolf Romance | the danger of leaving the path How does each genre “contain” or construct femininity, through the image of the young girl in the story? Suggest genre categories which might promote these readings. Use the list above to get you started in filling in the following chart. Reading Genres RRH is a helpless female who needs to be rescued by a capable man, RRH is an “innocent” girl who must keep herself safe from predatory creatures. RRH is a perceptive girl who quickly sees through the wolf’s disguise, and so shows she can take care of herself. Literary Terms Summary Genres are categories set up by the interaction of textual features and reading practices, which shape and limit the meanings readers can make with a text. See also: conventions text “ . »” . reading” entries Literary Terms 8 1 Identification To get you thinking Wi Using a table layout, make a list of some people you think are a lot like you, or who you want to be like. List the reasons for your choice in the right-hand column. Person Reasons Movie star: Friend, relative: Fictional character: Theory Identification is a psychological term. It describes a process in which people develop a sense of who they are by forming relationships with those whom they admire or wish to be like. Small children, for example, often seem to model their behavior on that of parents and friends. Adults, too, might emulate the views of people they admire—whether these are personal acquaintances, or even famous public figures. When people form such attachments, we can say that they identify with the other person. In reading stories and watching films, a similar process seems to occur, and so it is common to speak of readers identifying (or forming an identi- fication) with the main character in a novel. This happens when features in the text combine with reading practices in order to “equate” the reader with the character. This kind of identification plays a powerful role in reproducing certain values and beliefs. For example, many “thriller” movies contain scenes in which a young woman alone is being stalked by an unseen pursuer. In these scenes the camera generally places the viewer in the position of the hidden assailant: we see the frightened woman “through the assailant’s eyes.” In this way, the viewer is positioned alongside, or “equated to” the assailant. This Litenary Terms Ideology To get you thinking i Whose views seem to be expressed by these common beliefs? Check your choice in each box. Belief Viewpoint Material possessions are important O Manufacturers for a happy life. O Consumers Men are the stronger sex; women should O Men let them take charge of things. XO Women There are right and wrong ways of reading a 0 Casual readers literary text. O Critics i How can you explain the fact that such beliefs are often thought to be true even by people they might work against? Theory People often use the term ideology to refer to someone else’ political beliefs: for example, “socialist ideology.” This implies that the other person's beliefs are false or biased, and that one’s own beliefs are true and neutral. But are there any “neutral” beliefs and values? Groups of people who share similar interests develop specific ways of looking at the world. Manufacturers might see the world in terms of profit and loss; workers might see it in terms of fair payment and exploita- tion; priests might see it in terms of good and evil. Some theories of culture argue that powerful groups can succeed in passing on their view of the world to others, so that one way of thinking tends to dominate. In this way, groups of people come to think and act in particular ways, even though those ways may not serve their best interests. They might even come to think of this as a “natural” state of affairs. Literary Terms “Ideology” can be said to refer to ways of thinking and acting which work to the advantage of particular groups of people, but which are thought to be neutral or “natural” and true. Ideologies are spread from one group to another through cultural practices such as education, employment, marketing, and childraising, and through texts such as novels and films. This can occur because the control of these practices is generally in the hands of particular groups of people. Their values are reproduced and passed on to people as “knowl- edge.” In the case of literature, the values of white, Anglo-Saxon, middle- class males have tended to dominate, because these are the people who exercised control over schooling, publishing, and so on. Thus, much of what was claimed to be objective literary “knowledge” was ideological. Today there is a greater diversity among theories of literature, but compet- ing theories all serve specific interests. There are 70 neutral approaches to literature. Ideologies can be resisted. When groups of people begin systematically to study their place in society, they may begin to question the values they have been taught to live by. Movements such as Marxism and feminism are examples of this process. The theories and practices of these groups are aimed at overturning the dominant ideology in favor of new forms of social organization and new values or ideologies. Practice This is an extract from the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in the 1770s. It is intended to reflect a set of neutral beliefs and values. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 1. Underline parts of the text which can be read as implying the follow- ing ideologies: Mi gender ideology Mireligious ideology MI political ideology Literary Terms 2. In whose interests do these ideologies generally operate? (Circle your choices.) Gender ideology: men? women? Religious ideology: atheists? Christians? pantheists? Political ideology: conservatives who believe in absolute truths? radicals who believe “truth” is always a question of politics? 3. Which of the following behaviors might be supported by the domi- nant reading of the extract above from the Declaration of Indepen- dence? Wi going to church? Wi teaching the theory of evolution? Wi overthrowing the leaders of a nondemocratic country? Wi fighting a war? 4. Does this document work to bring about “equality,” or does it divide people into groups? Summary Ideologies are systems of thought and action which work to the advantage of particular groups of people and which might be shared even by people who are disadvantaged by them. See also: class feminist criticism Marxist criticism Literary Terms