Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English

- Introduction to the Study of Cultures and Literatures in English
- Előszó
- Contents
- Part 1 What is English Studies?
  - 1. What is a university? A proseminary
  - 2. Paradigms and paradigm shifts
  - 3. What is English Studies? English as a university subject
  - 4. Ideology, criticism, history
  - 5. Registers of Culture
  - 6. Canon formation and alternative reading practices
- Part 2 Fields of English Studies. Language, Literature, Culture, and Critical Approaches
  - 1. Preliminary problems: definitions, scientific expectations
  - 2. Ontological problems: the way literature exists
    - Semiotics
    - Literary communication
    - Language and Critical Thinking
    - The Language of the Sciences and the Language of Literature
  - 3. Methodological problems: the way we understand texts
    - Meaning and context
    - The Process of Interpretation
  - 4. The Theory of Genres
    - Genres and Their Historical Changes
    - Genre-generating Factors and Historical Changes
  - 5. Poetry and Figurative Language
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 1
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
      - IV Fourth level of meaning
  - 6. Narrative Fiction
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 2
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
      - III Third level of meaning
  - 7. Drama
    - Exercise in Interpretation / 3
      - I First level of meaning
      - II Second level of meaning
  - Self test I
  - 8. Literature, Culture, and the Reading Subject: An Overview of Major Trends in Literary and Cultural Theory
    - I Preliminaries
    - II Formal critical trends: from the authorial intention to the close reading of the text (1st shift)
    - III Contextual aproaches: from text to context
    - The critique of structuralism
  - Self test II
  - 9. Critical Literature Consulted and Recommended
  - 10. Appendix

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# 5. Poetry and Figurative Language

Out of the three main kinds of literature (poetry, narrative fiction and drama) we are going to start out here with the study of poetry, which is usually a subjectively engaged, expressive representation of a personal state of mind. As has been explained under the theory of genres, it represents the close, subjective, personally involved attitude to reality, and it maintains a very close distance to the represented (possible) world.

In order to be as expressive as possible, poetry employs language in a special way. This is, of course, true to all genres of literature, but it is especially applicable to poetry, where we find the greatest number of linguistic devices that help the speaking voice convey an expressive representation in a condensed and intensified manner.

Since literary texts do not have to correspond to the actual reality, they can be fictitious, made up, invented, that is: they can use language in a special way. The writer of literature enjoys a special “poetic license.” In poetry, we very often realize that the words in the text have to be understood “differently”, because the literal meaning makes no sense. We are used to this because we are aware that literature in general and poetry in particular employs figurative language. When we read in a poem “My love is a rose, and I love her truly”, we will realize that the poetic voice is actually not talking about a flower. Instead, the flower as a rhetorical device stands for the woman that is the object of love in the poem. In this case, the rhetorical figure is called a metaphor. Rhetorical figures may be less or more complicated, for example, the same metaphor will be a little more difficult to recognize when we read “I went to see my rose at midnight” – here, we have to realize that the rose stands for the love of the speaker. Upon closer look, we may also realize that saying “my love” is already a rhetorical figure that stands for “the woman I am in love with.” The metaphor is perhaps the most important element of figurative language, since metaphorical understanding is often the key to understanding poetry or literature in general.

In the process of metaphorical understanding we realize that language is used in a way that something is standing for something else: we have to understand it differently, not literally. In the case of the metaphor, we have an act of identification by which two seemingly distant, incompatible things are identified. The first element of the metaphor is the tenor, and the second element is called the vehicle: the vehicle “carries” some special information about the tenor.

Observe the following metaphor: “She is a candle in my room.”

In this case, a woman (she) is identified (is) with a candle, which she obviously is not. Why is this possible? The metaphor works on the basis of a field of shared attributes: characteristic features that are common to both the tenor and the vehicle, even if normally we think they are different elements of reality and not identical at all. The woman is beautiful, tall, slim, white, fragrant, blonde, elegant, red-lipped, lonely, and her eyes are glittering as if she was emanating some light. The candle is small, slim, white, made out of wax, it does not smell nice, but it is standing lonely on the table or in the corner and it gives light. We see that there are some attributes that are common to both elements (loneliness, light, slenderness, whiteness), and on the basis of these the two things are identified, even if the woman is obviously not a candle.

In this metaphor, we have both the tenor and the vehicle, it is an explicit metaphor. The situation is somewhat more difficult when the tenor is missing, and we only have the vehicle: here, we have to realize that this is a metaphor and find out what it stands for. When we read “I was enchanted by the diamonds in her face”, we will realize that the person the text is talking about does not wear jewelry in her face – the diamonds (vehicle) stand for the glittering, beautiful and mesmerizing eyes of the person (vehicle). This is an implicit metaphor, and in literature we very often have to work to find and understand these metaphors. Of course, our everyday, colloquial language (and very often even scientific language) is also full of metaphors that make our communication more expressive. We use a whole lot of dead metaphors: when we say, for example, that “we are going to meet at the foot of the bridge”, we identify the bridge with an animal or a human being and say that it has a foot. When astronomy says that “black holes tend to swallow up red dwarves when they collapse”, we see that science employs metaphors for elements of the universe we have no original names for. When we read in a newspaper that “the Asian tigers are again dominating the automobile industry”, we will understand that the tigers here refer to Asian countries with a powerful and growing economy.

In what follows we are going to survey the most important rhetorical figures and the logic they are based on.

To start out with, we need to see that there are two basically different ways in which rhetorical figures can work.

## Task / groupwork

Observe the following examples and try to see the principle their linguistic effects are based on. Discuss your findings in group work.

1. “Bús donna barna balkonon mereng a bíbor alkonyon.”

2. “Hálót fon az est, a nagy, barna pók.”

3. “Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the forest of the night.”

4. “This country in an unweeded garden.”

Perhaps you felt already after the first reading that there is an important difference between No. 1 and No. 2: the first example will have an effect even on those readers who do not speak Hungarian. The repetition of the “b” sounds and the flow of the rhythm make the sentence pleasing to the ear, even if we do not understand the meaning. There is some strong regularity, order, repetition in the sentence. As opposed to this, the second example will have no effect on somebody who speaks no Hungarian, because here it is only the meaning that is special: you need to understand the content of the sentence which employs a metaphor, and identifies the night with a spider. This is strange, irregular, but it will produce a poetic effect if we “solve” the riddle of the metaphor.

In No. 3 we have both kinds of effect: the repetition of the “t” and “b” sounds and the rhyme (bright / night) will have an effect even on those who speak no English, but we have to speak English to understand that the tiger is burning and that the night is identified with a forest. These are metaphors which produce a special effect only if we understand the meaning of the words.

No. 4 again will have an effect only if we speak the language: the metaphor identifies the country with a garden full of weeds, but we are not able to appreciate this if we do not understand the English words.

On the basis of this, we can posit that rhetorical figures can operate on the basis of two different principles.

SCHEMES work on the basis of intensified regularity at the level of form or expression.

TROPES work on the basis of intensified irregularity at the level of content or meaning.

The following list will give you a list of the most important schemes and tropes:

## Important

Figurative Language

RHETORICAL FIGURES

I. SCHEMES

(Figures of Speech: foregrounded regularity on the level of expression)

Figures of repetition:

1/ phonetic/phonological:

consonant alliteration: burning bright

vowel alliteration: atomic ant, antelope antlers

rhyme: Laugh at my trouble / And make it double.

eye rhyme: Wherever he goes / A lot of harm he does.

2/ structural:

refrain: the repetition of the same unit at the end of stanzas or units

stanza: the repetition of the same unit of lines in a poem

couplet: two lines

quatrain: four lines

Petrarchan sonnet: 4 + 4 (2 quatrains = octave) + 3 + 3 (2 tercets = sestet)

rhyme scheme: abba abba cdc dcd

Shakespearean sonnet: 3 quatrains and a couplet in one single block

rhyme scheme: ababcdcdefefgg

chiasmus: “Beauty is truth / Truth, beauty.”

Sometimes the understanding of the meaning might also be important: “Flowers are lovely; / Love is flower-like.”

II. TROPES

(Figures of Thought: foregrounded irregularity on the level of content)

Figures of opposition:

zeugma: (one verb refers to two or more objects) “Or stain her honour, / or her new brocade.”

antithesis: (statement followed by negation) Willing to love / Yet afraid to kiss.

oxymoron: (bringing together two radically opposite elements) hot ice, heavy lightness

paradox: (longer oxymoron)

Very common in the Bible: “He that would save his life must lose it; and he that would lose his life will save it.”

Figures of irony:

litotes: (negating the opposite of what you want to say) not too old, not a bad idea

irony: (the opposite meaning is intended indirectly) Arnold Swarzenegger has been the most talented and best governor in the history of the USA.

Naming figures:

apostrophe: (direct addressing of something or somebody)

“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!”

hyperbole: (deliberate exaggeration) My birthday cake was larger than your car!

allusion: (reference to a well-known cultural item)

Bring me an apple, but not the one from the serpent!

Figures of substitution:

simile: (act of comparison) The summer sky is like a lake of blue water.

metonymy: (saying the material, the part, the quality of an tribute of the thing instead of the thing itself)

The soldier stuck his iron into his enemy’s breast.

The White House accuses the Kremlin.

The British Crown negotiated peace with Paris.

Twenty sails are approaching on the sea.

Give me a helping hand!

symbol: (an often used extra meaning becomes standard cultural use)

The white dove is a symbol of peace in Western culture.

allegory: (representation of abstract qualities or principles)

the fresco of Lady Justice (Justicia) on the ceiling of a courtroom

metaphor: (act of identification of two seemingly incompatible things)

“Within the book and volume of my brain.”

life is a journey, love is war, your room is a junkyard, her heart broke, an arrow of pain hit his breast

## Task / groupwork

1. Find the sources of the examples in quotation marks on the internet, and collect more examples for the rhetorical figures from the texts!

2. Work out an exercise for language students in a class where you ask them to collect examples for schemes and tropes separately!

## Review questions

1. What is the main difference between the operational logic of schemes and tropes?

2. What is the process of metaphorical understanding? What is the difference between explicit and implicit metaphors?

3. Why is it possible for Hungarian speakers who do not speak English to enjoy English songs or poems when they are being performed?

4. What is the difference between a symbol and an allegory?

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