FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a way of saying something other than the literal meaning of the words. For example, "All the world's a stage"

A figure of speech is a departure from the ordinary form of expression, or the ordinary course of ideas in order to produce a greater effect.

According to Robert Frost : "Poetry provides the one possible way of saying one thing and meaning another ". Evidently, he, is referring to the use of the figures of speech in poetry. It may seem absurd to say one thing and mean another. But we all do this to make our speech more vivid and forceful.

The main characteristics of figurative language are:

• A figurative statement is more forceful than a literal statement. Figures of speech add extra dimensions to language.

• Figures are used to heighten the effect. For example:

(a)  Instead of saying that a man is very brave, we would like to say that he is as brave as a lion.  Strictly speaking, the statement is not true, but it very aptly describes the man's bravery. The truth is that the words as brave as a lion are not used literally but figuratively. We have used a simile to heighten the effect.

(b)     Similarly in saying that "the camel is the ship of the desert" the usefulness of the camel in travelling through a desert is over-emphasized, although there is no real comparison between the camel and the ship. We have used a metaphor to heighten the effect.

• Figurative language is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense. Appealing to the imagination, figurative language provides new ways of looking at the world.
• Figurative language gives us imaginative pleasure. Imagination is the faculty of mind that is able to picture or image absent objects as if they were present. When we exercise this faculty, we feel pleased.
• Figures of speech are a way of bringing additional imagery into verse, of making the abstract concrete, of making poetry more sensuous. Figurative language is a way of multiplying the sense appeal of poetry.
• Figures of speech are a way of adding emotional intensity to otherwise merely informative statements, and of conveying attitudes along with information.
• Figures of speech are an effective means of concentration, a way of saying much in brief compass. Like words, they may be multi-dimensional.
• They make meaning more clear and vivid.
• They decorate the language.
• They make use of a comparison between different things.
• They show similarity between different things in a more impressive manner.
• They show difference between different things in a more impressive manner.
• They create musical effect in a more impressive manner.

Some rhetoricians have classified as many as 250 separate figures. However, the most commonly used figures are not more than 25 in number.

Figures of speech may be classified as under :

1. Figures based on similarity :

Simile, Metaphor, Allegory, Parable and Fable.

2. Figures based on association :

Metonymy, Synecdoche, Hypallage, Allusion.

3. Figures based on difference :

Antithesis,    Epigram,    Climax,    Anticlimax,    Oxymoron, Paradox.

4. Figures based on imagination :

Personification, Apostrophe, Hyperbole and Pathetic Fallacy.

5. Figures based on indirectness:

Irony, Innuedo, Periphrasis and Euphemism.

6. Figures based on sound :

Onomatiopoeia, Alliteration, Pun, Pronomosia, Assonance.

7. Figures based on construction :

Interrogation, Exclamation, Asyndeton and Hyperbaton.

1.  FIGURES BASED ON SIMILARITY

Figurative language is the opposite of literal language. Literal language means exactly what it says. Figurative language means something different to (and usually more than) what it says on the surface:

He ran fast.                            (literal)

He ran like the wind.              (figurative)

In the above example "like the wind" is a figure of speech (in this case, a simile).

1.  Simile:

The word 'simile' comes from the Latin ‘similes’ which means 'like' or ‘similar’.

In a simile, a comparison is made between two objects of different kinds which have however at least one point in common.

The simile is usually introduced by such words as like, as or so.

Examples:

1)      O, my love is like a red, red rose                              (R. Burns)

2)      Drive my dead thoughts over the universe ;

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth, (Shelley)

3)      They soul was like a star, and dwelt apart. (William Wordsworth: To Milton)

4)      Forlorn! the very word is like a bell.

To toll me back from thee to my sole-self (Keats)

5)      Let us go then, you and I,
where the evening is spread out
across the sky like a patient
etherized upon a table. (T.S. Eliot)

2. Epic or Homeric Simile:

It is so called because it was first used by Homer, the great epic poet of ancient Greece, and ever since it has been made use of by epic poets all over the world.

It is also called the long-tailed simile because in it the comparison is not confined to some one quality but a number of qualities are compared and the comparison is elaborated and spread over a number of lines.

Homeric simile imparts variety to the narrative and helps the poets to lengthen it out. Milton in his Paradise Lost and Pope in his mock-epic The Rape of the Lack have made abundant use of such Homeric similes. For example:

The broad circumference (of the shield of Satan)

Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views, etc.

(Paradise Lost: ‘Paradise Lost’)

3.  Metaphor: 

‘Metaphor’ comes from the Greek words_’meta’ which means over and ‘phero’ which means ‘carry’. So ‘Metaphor’ means transferring to one word the sense of another; one thing is likened to another as if it were the other.

The term metaphor has two meanings, a broad, more general meaning and a concise, specific meaning.

–        All figures of speech which use association, comparison, or resemblance can generally be called types of metaphor, or metaphorical.

–        One specific figure of speech which compares two unlike things by saying that one is the other is called a metaphor.

A metaphor is an implied simile.

It is a compressed simile: a simile contracted to its smallest dimensions. 

It does not like the simile, states that one thing is like another,—or acts as another, but takes that for granted and proceeds as if the two things were one.

Every metaphor has two parts:

(1) tenor = the thing being defined

(2) vehicle = the thing doing the defining. For example:

a)      "You (tenor) are like a hurricane (vehicle)"

b)      "Mother (vehicle) Nature (tenor)"

c)      "A ghost ship sailed across the night sky (vehicle)"

Examples:

1)      Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forest of the night                   

(William Blake: ‘The Tiger’)

2)      Life is but a walking shadow.           

3)      (William Shakespeare: ‘Macbeth’)

4)      All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances

(William Shakespeare: ‘As You Like It’)

5)      Scratching at the window with claws of pine, the wind wants in.

(Imogene Bolls, "Coyote Wind")

6)      Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

(William Shakespeare: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?)

Why use metaphors?

1. They enliven ordinary language. People get so accustomed to using the same words and phrases over and over, and always in the same ways, that they no longer know what they mean. Creative writers have the power to make the ordinary strange and the strange ordinary, making life interesting again.

2. They are generous to readers and listeners; they encourage interpretation.

When readers or listeners encounter a phrase or word that cannot be interpreted literally, they have to think--or rather, they are given the pleasure of interpretation. If you write "I am frustrated" or "The air was cold" you give your readers nothing to do--they say "so what?" On the other hand, if you say, "My ambition was Hiroshima, after the bombing," your readers can think about and choose from many possible meanings.

3. They are more efficient and economical than ordinary language; they give maximum meaning with a minimum of words.

By writing "my dorm is a prison," you suggest to your readers that you feel as though you were placed in solitary, you are fed lousy food, you are deprived of all of life's great pleasures, your room is poorly lit and cramped--and a hundred other things, that, if you tried to say them all, would probably take several pages.

4. They create new meanings; they allow you to write about feelings, thoughts, things, experiences, etc. for which there are no easy words; they are necessary.

There are many gaps in language. When a child looks at the sky and sees a star but does not know the word "star," she is forced to say, "Mommy, look at the lamp in the sky!" Similarly, when computer software developers created boxes on the screen as a user interface, they needed a new language; the result was windows. In your poems, you will often be trying to write about subjects, feelings, etc. so complex that you have no choice but to use metaphors.

5. They are a sign of genius. Or so says Aristotle in Poetics: "The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." It is "a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars."

4. Extended Metaphor

Metaphors are very effective ways of developing ideas in poems; one special form, the "extended metaphor," can be particularly effective in certain situations.

A sustained metaphor; a metaphor traced throughout a work.

An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is developed for several lines and sometimes throughout an entire poem. Its value lies in keeping the reader's attention focused on a single clear image while at the same time allowing the writer to develop

a number of different aspects of an idea.

Examples:

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.
I cannot tell
The hound's intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.                ("The Hound" by Robert Francis)

The poem begins by equating "life" and "the hound" and creating a clear image of the dog running towards the speaker (thereby giving tangible substance to the otherwise abstract "life"). The speaker cannot determine the dog's intention--whether it will attack or warmly greet--because its appearance is the same in either case. Only once things have progressed past the point where the speaker can effectively react does he learn which was the dog's intention, so that all he can do is to wait in uncertainty to learn which it is to be.

Like a steel drum
cast at sea
my days,
banged and dented
by a found shore of
ineradicable realities,
sandsunk, finally, gaping,
rustsunk in
compass grass.           (A. R. Ammons: "Coming To")

Although the speaker directly tells us none of the literal details of his life, we know from the comparison to the steel drum that his life has been a difficult one of aimless, directionless drifting that is about to reach its end just as the drum has at last randomly washed up on a shore and is beached, rusting away uselessly as it is being buried by the beach sands, ironically surrounded by "compass grass" which suggests that only now in approaching death is its direction at last clear.

5. Implied Metaphor: 

A less direct metaphor.

An implied or unstated metaphor is a metaphor not explicitly stated or obvious that compares two things by using adjectives that commonly describe one thing, but are used to describe another comparing the two.
 

Examples:

1)      For example, to describe a stubborn man unwilling to leave, one could say that he was "a mule standing his ground." This is a fairly explicit metaphor; the man is being compared to a mule. But to say that the man "brayed his refusal to leave" is to create an implied metaphor, because the subject (the man) is never overtly identified as a mule. Braying is associated with the mule, a notoriously stubborn creature, and so the comparison between the stubborn man and the mule is sustained...Implied metaphors can slip by inattentive readers who are not sensitive to such carefully chosen, highly concentrated language...

2)      John swelled and ruffled his plumage. (versus John was a peacock.)

3)      "Golden baked skin", comparing bakery goods to skin

4)      "leafy golden sunset" comparing the sunset to a tree in the fall.

6. DEAD METAPHOR:

A commonly used metaphor that has become over time part of ordinary language.

Dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed.

Example:

             I.      to grasp a concept

          II.      to break the ice

       III.      to gather you've understood

7. Symbol:

A symbol may be roughly defined as something that means more than what it is. It is a visible object or action that suggests some further meaning in addition to itself.

Image, metaphor, and symbol shade into each other and are sometimes difficult to distinguish. In general, however, an image means only what it is; a metaphor means something other than what it is; and a symbol means what it is and something more too: In other words, a symbol functions literally and figuratively at the same time.

Example to show the difference:

(a) If we say, “A shaggy brown dog was rubbing its back against  the wall”, we are talking about nothing but a dog and are presenting an image.

(b) If we say. "Some dirty dog stole my wallet at the party", we are not talking about a dog at all and are therefore using a metaphor, (dirty dog=bad man)

(c) If we say, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", we are talking not only about dogs but also about living creatures of any species. Here we are speaking symbolically. The old dog may be an old animal but it may also mean an old person.

The symbol is the richest and at the same time the most difficult of the poetic figures.

Another Example:

The Sick Rose: William Blake

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Hath found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

In this poem, the ‘Rose’ is a symbol of feminine beauty as well as of sensual pleasures.

'Bed' refers to a flower bed as well as to a woman's bed.

'Crimson joy' suggests the intense pleasure of passionate lovemaking as well as the brilliant beauty of a red flower.

The 'dark secret love' of the 'invisible worm' is the feeding of a cankerworm on a plant as well as suggestive of a concealed or illicit love affair.

‘The invisible worm’ stands for the lover who comes secretly at night and ravishes the beauty of the girl.

A symbol defines an area of meaning, and any interpretation that falls within that area is permissible. Accurate interpretation of the symbol requires delicacy, tact, and good sense. The reader must maintain balance between too little and too much, between under-interpretation and over-interpretation.

There are two general types of symbols: universal symbols that embody universally recognizable meanings wherever used, such as ‘light’ to symbolize knowledge, a ‘skull’ to symbolize death, etc., and constructed symbols that are given symbolic meaning by the way an author uses them in a literary work, as the west wind becomes a symbol of the French Revolution in Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’.

8. Allegory :

Literally the word means "speaking otherwise''.

An allegory is a narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface. It is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning; and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning. As such it can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels. Although the surface story or description may have its own interest, the author's major interest is in the ulterior (hidden) meaning. This is rather a form of literature than a simple figure of speech.

It is sometimes defined as an extended metaphor, and some times as a series of related symbols. Though less rich than the symbol, allegory is an effective way of making the abstract concrete, and has occasionally been used effectively in fairly short poems. It is less popular in modern literature than it was in medieval and renaissance writing. It is usually found in long narrative works such as Spenser's ‘The Faerie Queene’ , Swift's ‘Gulliver s Travels’, and Bunyan's ‘Pilgrims Progress’.

In allegory, there is usually one-to-one correspondence between the details and a single set of ulterior meanings.

B) FIGURES BASED ON ASSOCIATION

1.      METONYMY:

Etymology:

From the Greek, "change of name"

Substitution of one word for another which it suggests.

1)      A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government or of the sword for military power.

Examples

1)      The pen is mightier than the sword.

(pen refers to writer; sword refers to fighter)

2)      “Seek knowledge from the cradle (birth) to the grave (death).      (Hadith)

3)      "These lands belong to the crown."  Obviously, the "crown" doesn't own these lands.  The writer is using "crown" as a metonymy -- he actually means "to the king" or "to the country ruled by the king."

4)      “Give every man thine ear (listen all), but few thy voice (speak very little to many).”                 (Shakespeare)

5)      There are two mouths to feed in my family.

(mouth refers to person)

A metonymy neither states nor implies the connections between the objects involved in it. We must already know that the objects are related, if the metonymy is to be devised or understood. Thus, metaphor creates the relation between its objects, while metonymy presupposes that relation.

2. SYNECDOCHE:

Etymology:

From the Greek: "understanding one thing with another"

A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor) or the whole for a part (as the law for police officer).

Examples

Examples where a part of something is used to refer to the whole:

1)      Nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand (metonym for the person) that writ it.                                                                                     (Shakespeare)

2)      The hired hands (workers) are not doing their jobs.

3)      His parents bought him a new set of wheels (car).

4)      Can I get your digits (phone number)?

5)      “mouths to feed” (hungry people)

6)      “white hair” (an elderly person)

7)      "The Press" (news media)

8)      "bread" (food)

9)      "coke" for soda

Examples where the whole of something is used to refer to a part of it:

1)      "Use your head (brain) to figure it out."

2)      "smiling year" (spring)

3)      "No creature (person) would believe that story."

Synecdoche is a form of metonymy .If we see the image as part of a whole or whole for a part, then it is synecdoche. If the image is actually a whole thing and represents another whole thing, it is metonymy.

3. HYPALLAGE:

 A figure consisting of a transference of attributes from their proper subjects to others. It is also known as a transferred epithet. An ‘Epithet’ is a qualifying adjective that is regularly associated with a noun.

‘Transferred Epithet’ is the trope or rhetorical device in which a modifier, usually an adjective, is applied to the "wrong" word in the sentence. The word whose modifier is thus displaced can either be actually present in the sentence, or it can be implied logically.                                                       

Examples:

1)      "The plowman homeward plods his weary way

And leaves the world to darkness and to me"

(Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard")

“Weary way” is a hypallage: it is the plowman, not the way, that is weary.

2)      "restless night" — The night was not restless, but the person who was awake through it was.

3)      "happy morning" — Mornings have no feelings, but the people who are awake through them do.

4)      Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow                     

(T.S. Eliot)

5)      O’er rough and smooth she trips along

And never looks behind

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

(William Wordsworth: ‘Lucy Gray’)

4. ALLUSION:

Etymology:

Greek: to touch lightly upon

Allusion means 'reference'.

 An "allusion" is an indirect reference.

An Allusion is a reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.

The Bible, Nature, Shakespeare and the Classical Mythology provide the most common sources of literary allusions.

Writers usually do not explain their allusions. They expect that their readers will be familiar with the things to which they refer. An active reader is expected to think about the meaning of every allusion that he encounters.

Allusions are usually historical, literary, or mythological They are means of reinforcing the emotion or the ideas of one's own work with the emotion or idea of another work or occasion.

Because they may compact so much meaning in so small a space, they are extremely useful to the poet. Allusions have the further value of saving space. Only a passing reference can bring before the reader a whole incident or the situation.

A poem containing multiple allusions is The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot which makes reference to lines written by Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Marvell, Dante, Webster, St. Augustine, Goldsmith, Ovid etc.

Examples:

1)      The first five lines of Milton's "Paradise Lost" allude to the fall of Adam and Man's saviour Christ:

Of man s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.

The phrase ' Of man s first disobedience" alludes to Adam’s sin of tasting the forbidden fruit; another phrase ‘greater Man’ refers to Christ.

2)      Christopher Marlowe alludes to the beauty and elopement of Helen of Troy and the consequent Trojan Wars in the following lines from Dr. Faustus:

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burn’d the topless tower of Elyium?

3)      Keats alludes to the Greek mythology in his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn”.

4)      John Donne makes an allusion to the Bible in his poem, “The Good Morrow” when he compares the life he led until he met his present love. He describes it as a kind of sleep ("Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den"?)

C) FIGURES BASED ON CONTRAST

1. CONCEIT:

Etymology:

Latin: ‘Concept’

Fanciful poetic image, especially an elaborate or exaggerated comparison.

The Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century enjoyed creating particularly audacious metaphors and similes to compare very unlike things, and drawing attention to how skilfully they could sustain this comparison; this became known as the conceit.

Although the metaphysical conceit is characteristic of seventeenth-century writers influenced by John Donne, yet it became popular again in the 20th century after the revival of the metaphysical poets. This type of conceit draws upon a wide range of knowledge, from the commonplace to the esoteric, and its comparisons are elaborately rationalized.

It is an elaborate, ingenious and striking comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things. It incorporates simile, metaphor, oxymoron or hyperbole. It surprises us by wit and genius.

It is also called an intellectual comparison. It is usually very subtle and deep and requires sharp understanding. It is a far-fetched comparison because of which Dr. Samuel Johnson remarks that in Metaphysical poetry the most hetrogenious ideas are yoked together by violence.

Examples:

1)      For instance, Donne's "The Flea" (1633), partially quoted above, compares a flea bite to the act of love:

“This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is”

2)      In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (1633) separated lovers are likened to the legs of a compass, the leg drawing the circle eventually returning home to "the fixed foot."

3)      Abraham Cowley compares being in love with different women to traveling through different countries.

4)      In “The Definition of Love” Andrew Marvell compares the true lovers with two straight lines which go parallel but can never meet each other.

 2. OXYMORON:

Etymology:

Greek: ‘sharp dull’ or ‘pointedly foolish’

A rhetorical figure that combines two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox, as in the phrase ‘living death’, ‘deafening silence’ and a ‘mournful optimist’.

Such surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or dramatic effect, such as, cool fire, deafening silence, wise folly, etc.

More Examples:

1)      ‘darkness visible’       (Milton )

2)      Shakespeare has his Romeo utter several in one speech:

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first create;
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still waking sleep, that is not what it is!

3)      "I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief' (Charles Lamb)

4)      “fearful symmetry”                                        (William Blake: ‘The Tiger’)

  

Whereas Paradox is a statement, oxymoron is a  phrase in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined.

3. PARADOX:

As the word “paradox” of its Greek origin literally means “beyond-belief,” an element of paradox in poetry functions to give focus on the meaning of a word or a situation beyond what it first appears to be.

A statement which on the face of it, seems absurd, but on examination it is found to be true.

Christ used paradox in his teaching: "They have ears but hear not." Or in ordinary conversation, we might use a paradox, "Deep down he's really very shallow." Paradox attracts the reader's or the listener's attention and gives emphasis.

Examples:

1)      “The child is father of the Man.”                  (William Wordsworth)

2)      “Failures are the pillars to success.”

3)      “Cowards die many times before their death.”        (William Shakespeare)

4)      There is no one so poor as a wealthy miser.

4. ANTITHESIS:

Greek: ‘Opposition’

A Figure of balance in which two contrasting ideas are intentionally juxtaposed, usually through parallel structure; a contrasting of opposing ideas in adjacent phrases, clauses, or sentences.

Examples:

1)      "To err is human, to forgive, divine." by Alexander Pope which illustrates an example of antithesis with words and phrases with opposite meanings balanced against each other.

2)      “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”                     (John Keats)

3)      “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." (Goethe)

4)       “Man proposes, God disposes”

5. EPIGRAM :

Greek: ‘Inscription’

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Examples:

1)      I can resist everything except temptation.--Oscar Wilde

2)      The reward of suffering is experience. – Aeschylus

3)      Art lies in concealing art.

4)      Our sweetest songs are those that tell us

Of our saddest thought---Shelley

D) FIGURES BASED ON INDIRECTNESS

1. IRONY:

Literally the word means 'hiding under a false appearance'.

As a term, it means an expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.

Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire, but they are different. ‘Sarcasm’ is simply bitter or cutting speech intended to wound the feelings. ‘Satire’ is a more formal term, usually applied to written literature rather than to speech it is ridicule of human folly or vice, with the purpose of bringing about reform. ‘Irony’ , on the other hand, is a literary device or figure that may or may not be used in the service of sarcasm or ridicule.

Irony always implies some sort of discrepancy or incongruity. So it may be of three kinds:

(a)  Verbal Irony: It implies the opposite of what is said. In it the discrepancy is between what is said and what is meant. Calling a fool wise is a verbal irony.

                                    Examples of Verbal Irony:

1)      In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, when Mark Antony refers in his funeral   oration to Brutus and his fellow assassins as “honorable men” he is really saying that they are totally dishonorable and not to be trusted.

2)      Talking to fools, we say: And wisdom shall die with you.

3)      The slaves were being starved in the interest of their health.

4)      A fine friend you are to forsake me in my distress.

5)      Out of generosity, he gave the poor woman one rupee.

6)      Talking of a worthless book; I shall lose no time in reading your book.

(b)  Dramatic Irony:    In this irony, the discrepancy is between what the speaker says and what the reader or listener understands. The speaker's words may be straightforward but they may indicate to the reader ideas or attitude quite opposed to those the speaker is voicing. It is a discrepancy between appearance and reality.

An example can be found found in Twelfth Night, where Olivia, believing Cesario's claim to be "a gentleman", mutters "I'll be sworn thou art" - as the audience is aware that Cesario is, in fact, the disguised Viola, this affirmation of what Olivia believes to be the truth is also a denial of the truth to the audience.

(c)      Irony of Situation: It occurs when a discrepancy exists between what one anticipates and what actually comes to pass, between expectation and fulfilment.

For instance, in Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ Captain Blifil anticipates the imminent death of Squire Allworthy, who is seriously ill, and thus to possess his property, dies himself soon thereafter.

2. EUPHEMISM:

Greek: ‘fair speech”

The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, pleasant or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, unpleasant or offensive.

Examples

1)      "He is at rest" is a euphemism for "He is dead."

2)      You are telling me a fairy tale (=a lie).

3)      They dropped down one by one. (=died) ------Coleridge

E). FIGURES BASED ON IMAGINATION

1. HYPERBOLE:

Etymology:

From the Greek, "excess" or “overshooting”

An extravagant statement; overstatement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

Examples:

1)      Andrew Marvell employed hyperbole throughout “To His Coy Mistress”:

An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest...

2)      Wordsworth uses hyperbole on seeing the daffodils in the Gowbarrow Park in London in the early morning:

“Ten thousands I saw at a glance”

           

3)      Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.

(Alexander Pope: ‘The Rape of the Lock’)

4)      I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers

Could not with all their quantity of love

Make up the sum

                        (Shakespeare: ‘Hamlet’)

5)      She, all states, and all Princes, I

(John Donne: ‘The Sun Rising’