Imagery

9 Key excerpts on "Imagery"

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  Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

  • Lynn C. Miller, Lisa Lenard-Cook(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • University of Wisconsin Press

    (Publisher)

  Connotative language makes a word and what it represents personal and specific by removing it from the realm of fact and placing it in the world of imagination. One of the ways the writer connotes meaning is through Imagery. Imagery refers to the sensory details of sound, taste, and smell as well as the visual details that provide the reader with an experiential quality. Imagery imbues language with vitality, while at the same time, as Sue William Silverman notes, “writing our senses helps us remember the past while also allowing us to make sense of it” (). As humans, we ground our experience in sensory detail, in what something feels like through the range of our five senses. If we’re lucky, the sixth sense becomes engaged as well: through vivid writing, the reader begins to intuit aspects of character, plot, and setting. Using Figurative Language The basic unit of figurative language is the metaphor. When Homer speaks of the “wine-dark sea” in The Iliad, he imbues the water with the intensity and bloodshed of war. Denotatively, water is not often “wine dark,” but figuratively, the image resonates. As writers, we use metaphors to personalize meaning. When we make the choice to connect two things or sensations via metaphor, we telegraph deeper meaning to the reader. A metaphor connects two unrelated things and creates a relationship between them. The phrase “the chasm of despair,” for example, lends an emotional tone and a physical image to an abstract noun. By making our writing metaphoric, we ask words to behave in specific ways. In I Could Tell You Stories, for example, Patricia Hampl, while discussing writing about her childhood piano lessons, seizes on the detail of her red music book: “Now I can look at that music book and see it not only as ‘a detail’ but for what it is, how it acts. See it as the small red door leading straight into the dark room of my childhood longing and disappointment” ().

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  Classical Hebrew Poetry

  A Guide to its Techniques

  • Wilfred G. E. Watson(Author)
  • 1984(Publication Date)
  • Sheffield Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  10 Imagery 10.1 Imagery At the technical level poetry is at its best when composed with thrift, that is to say, when the poet expresses as much as he can in a few words as possible. To use an analogy, this would correspond to an artist drawing a sketch with a minimum of pencil strokes (Matisse, Picasso). Of course poetry is not just economy of expression for, at the very least it would tend to be rather dry if not extremely dull. Like the painter, a poet has to infuse his word pictures with life and movement and make them appeal to the senses. The artist can use a whole range of colours while the poet has to resort to Imagery, to evoking pictures with figurative language. In the larger sense, poetry is Imagery, but here we are more directly concerned with technique which boils down to the use of simile and metaphor. And before we can turn to these topics we must first examine the nature of the image and Imagery. 1 An image is 'a figure of speech expressing some similarity or analogy' and most images are metaphorical. 2 The converse is not necessarily true, though: not all metaphors or comparisons are images. Imagery must be: 1. concrete and sense-related, not based on abstract concepts: 3 1. Much of the following is dependent on Ullmann's chapter 'The Nature of Imagery' in Language, 174-201. 2. Ullmann, Language, 177. 3. 'There can be no question of an image unless the resemblance it expresses has a concrete and sensuous quality' (Ullmann, Language, 178). 252 Classical Hebrew Poetry You tear men's skin away from them, 4 and their flesh away from their bones, eating my people's flesh, flaying their skin from them, crunching their bones, breaking (them) as if for the pot, or like meat within a cauldron. (Mic 3,2-3 5 ) 2. Further, an image should contain an element of surprise 6 as in the oracle against Jehoiakin: They'll not bewail him with 'My poor brother, my poor fraternity'. They'll not bewail him with 'Poor Master, Poor His Majesty'.

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  Multimodality, Poetry and Poetics

  • Richard Andrews(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Imagery in Poetry

  Implicit and Explicit

  Introduction

  Imagery in poetry and poetics is a well-trodden field. This is the level of figurative language—of metaphor, symbol, simile and metonymy—that is, fundamental not only to poetry but also to some kinds of prose and to other kinds of written language. Nevertheless, there is a level of signification in poetry that operates above that of the literal—or alongside it. Poetry seems to use Imagery (the default mode is the visual) to evoke imaginative spaces and to add dimension to literal description. The chapter draws on existing literature on figurative language, but it also breaks new ground in that it explores how and why images are invoked through the spoken and written word, and how they are deployed by both writer and reader (rhetor and audience) to generate new meaning. In addition, the chapter considers the classical notion of ut pictura poeisis and explores the function of Imagery in fugue.

  Poetic Language

  Bruns (1974) explores modern poetry and the idea of language, looking at the keystone role that poetic language has. At the heart of this exploration is the distinction between spoken and written poetic language.

  Spoken language is more obviously multimodal: it involves gesture, movement and sound, as well as the physical embodiment of the voice, and is more highly contextualized. There is a more obvious dialogism in spoken communication. Sub-sections of the spoken voice, such as tone and rhythm, are more readily identified, and spoken poetic language is more akin to music and especially song.

  But it was “the older grammatical tradition [in Rhetoric, that] took for its object not spoken but written (and most often, literary) language, and as a consequence tended to regard human speech as a wholly spatial and visual affair” (1974: 14). This narrow concentration on printed literary language made for rhetorics and grammars that looked at the way words on the page did all the work of invoking speech and of its attendant modes. Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence (1577, 1977) for example, “a manual devoted to the classification and description of rhetorical figures” (Bruns 1974: 20), suggests that the writer “may set forth any matter with goodly perspecuitie, and paynt out any person, deede or thing, so cunninglye with these coloures [i.e. verbal images, figures] that it shall seem rather a lyvely image paynted” (1557/1977). In other words, a piece of writing could be like a painting, evoking the visual images to excite and define the imagination. This position is close to, and perhaps derives from the notion of ut pictura poesis

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  The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 3: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century - Second Edition

  • Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry Qualls, Jason Rudy, Claire Waters(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Broadview Press

    (Publisher)

  Though the Imagist movement itself lasted only a short time (from about 1912 to 1917), it had a far-reaching influence on modern poets such as T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. FIGURES OF SPEECH Imagery often works together with figurative expression to extend and deepen the meaning or impact of a poem. “Figurative” language means language that is metaphorical, not literal or referential. Through “figures of speech” such as metaphor and simile, metonymy, synecdoche, and personification, the writer may alter the ordinary, denotative meanings of words in order to convey greater force and vividness to ideas or impressions, often by showing likenesses between unlike things. With simile , the poet makes an explicit comparison between the subject (called the tenor ) and another object or idea (known as the vehicle ), using “as” or “like”: It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration. … Reading Poetry 1031 In this opening to a sonnet, Wordsworth uses a visual image of a nun in devout prayer to convey in concrete terms the less tangible idea of evening as a “holy time.” The comparison also introduces an emotional dimension, conveying something of the feeling that the scene induces in the poet. The simile can thus illuminate and expand meaning in a compact way. The poet may also extend the simile to elaborate at length on any points of likeness. In metaphor , the comparison between tenor and vehicle is implied: connectives such as “like” are omitted, and a kind of identity is created between the subject and the term with which it is being compared.

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  The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics

  • Peter Stockwell, Sara Whiteley(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Experiencing Imagery In view of the above examples, Imagery seems still to be a useful concept, as it allows us to distinguish the ways in which language can refer to embodied experience with different effects (descriptive or experiential). We can also attempt to explain the affective implications of image-rich texts through a better understanding of the evocative power of linguistic choices. From the stylistic perspective (properly cognitive poetics: see Bro ˆ ne and Vandaele 2009; Stockwell 2002, 2009), this approach requires a focus on the specific ways in which language can be crafted to simulate experience. While this kind of investigation may not be easily accom- plished with a study of formal or grammatical means, a better under- standing of the evocative power of language is a goal worth pursuing. For 226 B A R B A R A D A N C Y G I E R this to be accomplished through the study of Imagery, we need to de-focus the actual matter of the description (what was seen, smelled, tasted, etc.), and emphasise the linguistic means that allow us to construe different experiences and experiencing Egos. The specific configuration of such Egos in a text and the mechanisms which invite the reader to one pattern of experiential alignment rather than another could be our primary tools. In other words, posing the question of Imagery as the question of an experi- encing Ego may lead to a better understanding of the processes involved and a more accurate stylistic tool-kit. The possibilities are numerous, often stylistically complex, and though poetry offers an intense example, they can be observed in any genre. Note I want to thank Kyle Robertson for drawing my attention to the example of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Steven Maye for pointing out the ‘tactile’ dimension of the ‘flood’ fragment to me. Intensity and texture in Imagery 227

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  The Shakespeare Workbook and Video

  A Practical Course for Actors

  • David Carey, Rebecca Clark Carey(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Methuen Drama

    (Publisher)

  2 LANGUAGE IN ACTION: Imagery, SOUND AND STORY Framework As you will have begun to discover in the last chapter, Shakespeare’s characters are enormously creative in the range of verbal strategies they use. They are constantly making choices about how best to tackle the problem at hand through language, and among the many tools that they have at their disposal are Imagery, sound and storytelling. While Imagery and sound are often thought of as the stuff of poetry, in Shakespeare’s hands they are very much the stuff of drama when used by characters in response to a strong need to have an impact on the listener. It’s important for you as an actor to embrace the fact that language that uses a lot Imagery or patterning of sound is out of the ordinary – it has a special kind of energy and edge that it would be a pity to ignore or minimize. But it’s also important to remember that you need to engage with it actively and not simply lavish appreciation upon it, painting the pictures or shaping the sounds for their own sake. Similarly, when Shakespeare’s characters tell stories, it is rarely with the intent of narrating events alone. The stories are constructed to bring the listener around to a particular point of view, and you will need to engage with the structure and detail of the narrative to have the desired effect. Imagery in language is a broad category that includes description, simile and metaphor (which we will also explore in Chapter 4). Imagery evokes pictures and associations in the imagination of the listener. Even 68 THE SHAKESPEARE WORKBOOK AND VIDEO a single word can conjure a response in a listener because of what it makes him see in his mind’s eye. We already began to work on speci-fying images and using them to influence others in the first chapter. In this chapter we will work in more detail on actively crafting images and making them vivid both for yourself and your audience. Sound also has the power to get under the skin of the listener.

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  Applied Cognitive Linguistics for Language Teachers

  • Jorg Roche, Moiken Jessen(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • LIT Verlag

    (Publisher)

  97 3.1.1 The Basics: Types of Imagery-Based Languages Using words in a non-literal sense was part of the art of oratory (rhetorics) in antiquity. Especially in ancient Greece, speeches were embellished and endowed with impressive Imagery to attain certain effects, impress the au- dience, and make statements more powerful. Back then, the art of oratory meant speaking effectively. This was how free men with the right to vote were won over for certain political decisions and court rulings. An edu- cated speaker had a lot of influence, power, and wealth back then. Imagery-based expression is still found today in poetry and literature. In literature, there is evidence of the poets striving “for innovation, originality and uniqueness in linguistic expression“ (translated from Schwarz/Chur 2004: 108). Figurative, Imagery-based word use was mainly of interest to rhetorics and literature for these reasons. On the other hand, Schwarz & Chur (2004) describe the role of metaphors in linguistics as follows: In early semantic theories metaphors were explained as semantic deviations (so-called anomalies). It was believed that metaphors are created by combining words that are incompatible due to their semantic characteristics. As a result, abyss was considered a con- cretum and despair an abstractum. From the point of view of lin- guistic selection rules, however, the direct connection of abstract and concrete reference areas (She plunged into an abyss of des- pair) is not possible. (Translated from Schwarz/Chur 2004: 107) For researchers, the focus of interest, therefore, initially shifted from speech to the linguistic system. They realized that applying names and words to seemingly different contexts was extremely common and in ac- cordance with regular systematics. This type of usage penetrates our lan- guages and for this reason is of interest to linguistic research.

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  Middlemarch

  Critical Approaches to the Novel

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  5 The Language of the Novel Imagery HILDA M. HULME ON 24 OCTOBER 1871 George Eliot's publisher, John Black-wood, had his day's work destroyed by a visit from Alexander Main, a rhapsodic admirer of her novels ('the Gusher' as he was privately called), who was seeking permission to prepare a volume of extracts from George Eliot's writings. 1 Blackwood describes with some enjoyment his talk with the 'little fellow': 'He is quite an enthusiast and told me he did not read much but he read deep. He worships George Eliot as having done for the Novel what Shakespeare did for the Drama. When he wound up some glowing period by saying she was Concrete I was nearly upset.' 2 The visiting linguist who seeks to examine some of the detail of the Middlemarch Imagery in an attempt to discover whence this Imagery derives its characteristic force cannot but feel certain affinities with Blackwood's guest, one who had 'evidently seen nothing of the world or scarcely' and who 'used his knife in a dangerous manner at lunch'. Such an examination is necessarily experimental and there is difficulty at the outset in defining one's aim while yet preserving freedom of action. To express it in the most general terms, one would like to find out, from sources outside the novel, what kinds of Imagery (perhaps also what ideas about Imagery) the novelist has at her disposal and at the same time to see how, within the novel, she adapts this image-language to the purposes of her art. Supposing that such an investigation could be carried out systematically and at full scale, it would be hard, we may agree, for even the most disciplined of critics to fit together into a satisfactory sequence the resulting 87 LANGUAGE OF THE NOVEL patchwork collection of accumulated material and I shall not therefore pretend to any very logical order of exposition when describing, within the limits of a single chapter, the several different approaches to this problem which have appeared to me of interest.

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  Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion

  An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind

  • Michael Burke(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  What is happening here? The character in the novel appears to “ignore” or “bypass” the physical locations described by Virgil and somehow replaces them with his own idiosyncratic and fragmented Imagery of places, people and events from his own youth; more specifically, images of his childhood home and of a primary caregiver. Why does this occur? What process is at work here? Does this also occur when real people read works of literature? These are the questions that I will seek to address in this chapter which will be on the nature of “perception” with regard to mental images that are produced in the minds of people when they read literature. For the sake of ease, I will call this phenomenon Literary Reading Imagery (LRI).

  In the previous chapter I explained how the perception of clearly defined objects in the world relies to a significant extent on light stimuli that are picked up by the cones of the photoreceptors in the retina. LRI, however, has a less direct stimulus. There is no immediate, ready-formed image “out there” in the world: just words on the page. This means that there must be a profound difference between the perception of real objects in the world— even artistic objects, which undoubtedly require far more affective processing than everyday objects—and culturally-determined, linguistic symbols. Instead of being primarily ready-formed and hence relying to a large extent on the bottom-up process of patterns of light striking the retina, reading-induced “vision” must be grounded in something else. It is highly plausible that the elementary base for this kind of visual input comes from our emotive and somatically infused long-term memory. As a result, the kind of Imagery that gets channelled is quite possibly grounded in the indistinct, unconscious remembrance of past events, past locations and past loved ones: not too dissimilar to what Stevenson describes in the above literary citation.

  I will argue in this chapter that because our childhood memories—i.e. the important places and people from our personal pasts—are the most emotive and most enduring kind, they are most prone to unconscious activation while reading literature in order to flesh out all kinds of situations in novels. Of course, not only childhood memories will be activated, highly emotive memories are not limited to childhood, but I believe they will generally dominate for reasons that will become clear in later chapters.

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