INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY STUDY, YEAR I (Winter Semester 2021/22)

LECTURES 4-5
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Language and meaning

metaphor
→ tenor / vehicle / ground
→ notional classes of metaphors (concretive, animistic, anthropomorphic,
synaesthetic)
→ implicit metaphor
→ personification / prosopopeia
→ compound (mixed) metaphor
→ dead metaphor

→ synecdoche
→ metonymy

symbol / symbolism

allegory
→ historical / political allegory
→ allegory of ideas
→ episodic allegory

literary forms related to allegory

→ fable / beast fable
→ parable
→ exemplum
o moral
o epigram

irony
→ verbal irony
→ structural irony
o naïve hero
o unreliable (fallible) narrator

uses of language related to irony

o sarcasm
o invective
o hyperbole
o understatement
o euphemism
o litotes
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→ irony as mode of organisation
o Socratic irony
o dramatic irony
o cosmic irony
o Romantic irony

satire
→ formal (direct) satire / indirect satire
→ Horatian satire / Juvenalian satire
→ Menippean satire

parody
paradox
oxymoron
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Selected literary examples for self-study

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metaphor

O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.
Shakespeare: Hamlet, I.ii
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Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, III.v
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How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, V.i
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Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
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To be, or not to be – that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
Shakespeare: Hamlet III.i
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synecdoche

The western wave was all aflame,

The day was wellnigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
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metonymy

I could find it in my heart to disgrace my man’s apparel and to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the
weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat: therefore, courage, good
Aliena.
Shakespeare: As You Like It, II.iv
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symbol

Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak? . . .

But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast, at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Robert Browning: “Transcendentalism”
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Carl Sandburg: “Grass”

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work –
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
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William Blake: “The Sick Rose”

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
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allegory

Now not far from this place where they slept there was a castle called Doubting-Castle, the owner of it
being Giant Despair, and they were lying asleep in his territory. Therefore, having arisen early in the
morning, while walking up and down in his fields this Giant caught Christian and Hopeful asleep in his realm.
Then said the Giant, “You have trespassed against me by trampling upon and lying on my grounds;
therefore, you must come with me.”
John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress
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“Sir,” explained Christian, “I was instructed to go this way by a man named Evangelist who gave me
directions to that Gate up ahead where I might escape the coming wrath. As I was going toward the Gate, I
fell in here.”
“But why didn't you look for the steps?” asked Help.
“Fear pursued me so hard that I fled this way and fell in.”
“Give me your hand.”
John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress
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Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Thomas Gray: “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
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beast fable

A vixen sneered at a lioness because she never bore more than one cub. “Only one,” the lioness replied,
“but a lion.”
“The Vixen and the Lioness”, Aesop’s Fables
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parable

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found
none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, “Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this
fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” And he answering said unto him, “Lord,
let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it. And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after
that thou shalt cut it down.”
(Luke 13:6-9)
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irony

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want
of a wife.
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
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It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they
see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four,
or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able
to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their
helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country
to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at
the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom
a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of
making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as
to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. . . .
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least
objection.
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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy
child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children
already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males;
which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are
seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be
sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the
sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck
plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two
dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a
reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day,
especially in winter.
Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal
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invective

PRINCE HENRY I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin. This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-
breaker, this huge hill of flesh –
FALSTAFF ‘Sblood, you starveling, you elfskin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish! O, for
breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck –
PRINCE HENRY Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again, and when thou hast tired thyself in base
comparisons, hear me speak but this.
Shakespeare: Henry IV Part 1, II.iv
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hyperbole

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.
Shakespeare: Hamlet, V.ii
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By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac’d moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,
Without corrival, all her dignities.
Shakespeare: Henry IV Part 1, I.iii
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understatement

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse.
Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub
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euphemism

Do you remember, John, on the day we were married, Pa’s speaking of the ships that might be sailing
towards us from unknown seas? – I think – among them – there is a ship upon the ocean – bringing – to you
and me – a little baby, John.
Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend (1865)
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litotes

At night there, something uncanny happens:

the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm‐set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.
Beowulf 1365-72
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He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.
Shakespeare: Hamlet, I.ii
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dramatic irony

Sophocles: Oedipus the King

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cosmic irony

The President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles
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Romantic irony

Thus would he while his lonely hours away,

Dissatisfied, not knowing what he wanted;
Nor glowing reverie, nor poet’s lay,
Could yield his spirit that for which it panted,
A bosom whereon he his head might lay,
And hear the heart beat with the love it granted,
With – several other things, which I forget,
Or which, at least, I need not mention yet.
Byron: Don Juan, Canto 1
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satire

Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal

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Sol through white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray,

And ope’d those Eyes that must eclipse the Day:
Now Lap-dogs give themselves the rouzing Shake,
And sleepless Lovers, just at Twelve, awake:
Thrice rung the Bell, the Slipper knock’d the Ground,
And the press’d Watch return’d a silver sound,
Belinda still her downy Pillow prest,
Her guardian Sylph prolng’d the balmy rest.
‘Twas he had summon’d to her silent Bed
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The Morning Dream that hover’d o'er her Head.
A Youth more glitt’ring than a birthnight beau
(That ev’n in slumber caus’d her Cheek to glow)
Seem’d to her Ear his winning Lips to lay,
And thus in Whispers said, or seemed to say. . . .
Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock
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parody

Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock

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Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

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paradox

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne: “Death, Be Not Proud”
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
George Orwell: 1984
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Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are
indeed greater slaves than they.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract
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oxymoron

Dear as remembered kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Tears, Idle Tears”
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. . . but when thou shad’st

The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle Heaven
John Milton: Paradise Lost
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Resources:

➢ dictionaries of literary terms