Literary and Rhetorical Strategies
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
written
expression or language that is not meant to be taken literally.
SIMILE
a
comparison of two distinctly different things using "like" or
"as"
“swift as quicksilver it [the poison] courses through/The
natural gates and alleys of the body/…it doth…/curd, like eager droppings into
milk,/the thin and wholesome blood.”(1.5)
“Her clothes spread wide,/And mermaid-like
awhile they bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old lauds [songs] /
As one incapable of her own distress/Or like a creature native
and endued/Unto that element.”(4.7)
METAPHOR
a
direct comparison of two things; when a word or expression, which in literal
usage denotes one kind of thing or action is applied to a distinctly different
kind of thing or action
“Leave her [Gertrude] to…/…those thorns
that in her bosom lodge/To prick and sting her.” (1.5)
“Your bait of falsehood take this carp of
truth” (2.1)
“The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/…a
sea of troubles…”(3.1)
“[The world is] an unweeded garden/That
grows to seed.”(1.2)
METONYMY
a figure
of speech used in rhetoric and literature in which a thing or concept is not
called by its own name, but by the name of something closely associated with it
Here’s a sexist metonymy: “When these [tears] are
gone/The woman will be out.”
“I should have fatted all the region kites/With
this slave’s offal.”
“The Everlasting”
“the quick”
SYNECHDOCHE
a
type of metaphor; when a part of something is used to signify the whole or the
whole is used to signify the part
"So the whole ear of Denmark/ Is by a forged process
of my death /Rankly abused."
HYPERBOLE
The
use of extreme exaggeration to make a point
“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could
not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum.”(Hamlet, 5.1)
LITOTES
A
form of understatement
“He will stay until you come.” (Hamlet, 4.3)
PERSONIFICATION
A
type of metaphor that gives human qualities to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract
concepts.
Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy. On
Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.
Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?
Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.
Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or
in the middle of her favors?
Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.
Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most
true! She is a strumpet.
(3.2)
“...here joy most revels, grief doth
most lament;/Grief joys, joy grieves on, on slender accident.”(Player
King, 3.2)
APOSTROPHE
A
rhetorical figure of speech that allows the speaker to address an absent person
or inanimate entity
"frailty, thy name is woman"
(Hamlet, 1.2)
CONCEIT
a
figure of speech (an elaborate and extended metaphor) that draws an elaborate
parallel between dissimilar things
“are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face
without a heart?”
Claudius to Laertes, 4.7
G: Happy in that we are not overhappy./On
Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button./H: Nor the soles of
her shoe?/R: Neither, my lord./H: Then you live about her waist, or in
the middle of her favors?/G: Faith, her privates we./H: In the secret parts
of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet (2.2)
...You would play upon me, you would seem
to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would
sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much
music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call
me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot
play upon me. (Hamlet, 3.2)
PARADOX
A
statement which at first seems to be self-contradictory or absurd, but in the
end actually makes sense
"more than kin and less than kind"
“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count
myself a king of infinite space…”
“I must be cruel only to be kind....”(3.4)
OXYMORON
When
two paradoxical contradictory terms are joined together
“mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage” (1.2)
PUN
“I think it
be thine indeed, for thou liest in ‘t./G: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore
‘tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ‘t, yet it is mine./H: Thou dost
lie in ‘t, to be in ‘t and say it is thine. ‘Tis for the dead, no for the
quick; therefore thou liest.”
DOUBLE ENTENDRE
“Faith, her privates we.”
INNUENDO
“may I lie my head upon your lap”
ALLUSION
hyperion to a satyr
…than I to Hercules
Hecuba
Julius Caesar
Alexander the Great
ANALOGY
“A dream itself is but a shadow.”
”To die, to sleep—To sleep, perchance to dream”
“The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring
art/Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it/Than is my deed to my most
painted word.”
***
Antithesis: The use of a word (or sentence) being placed
against another to form a balanced contrast is known in rhetoric as ANTITHESIS. To be or not to be… (Claudius
explains the death of his brother and his marriage to the widow, scene 2)
These are also a form of
“balanced” sentence.
Periodic sentence: A periodic sentence is a
stylistic device employed at the sentence level, described as one that is not
complete grammatically or semantically before the final clause or phrase. A
periodic sentence delays…
(Lucianus’ speech in “The
Murder of Gonzago”)
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