Imagery - LessonPaths

---

Imagery

To make an imaginary world seem real or to stimulate direct experience, an author often makes use of words and phrases that appeal to the senses. These words and phrases are called images. The images help a reader mentally experience what the characters in the literary selection are actually experiencing. Imagery refers to any sort of image, and there are two basic kinds. One is the images of the physical setting. The other kind is images as figures of speech, such as metaphors. These figures of speech extend the imaginative range, the complexity and comprehensibility of the subject. They can be very brief, a word or two, a glistening fragment of insight, a chance connection sparked into a blaze (warming or destroying) of understanding; or they can be extended analogies, such as Donne’s ‘conceits’or Milton’s epic similes. Generally, imagery includes all kinds of sense perception (not just visual pictures). Imagery therefore utilizes one of the five or six senses. They are • • • •

visual (seeing or sight) auditory (hearing or sound) tactile (feeling or touch) gustatory (taste)

eg. orange glare, green willows, wilted and dry trees, brown bark eg. crackling underbush, the melon gave way with a sigh eg. tepid water, hot July sun, sunbaked backs, damp jeans eg. a tall sweet frosted glass of lemonade, pink sweetness of the grapefruit • olfactory (smell) eg. There was in the warehouse a musty smell, like the smell of mouldy leather. • kinesthesia (muscular motion) eg. At the end of the fifth block, the two suitcases almost tore (sensation of movement or strain) his arms out of their sockets. Anything that evokes sense experience is an image. The above examples evoke different sorts of sense experience. Note that sometimes the experience evoked is more vivid than at other times. Note that even a simple image tends to evoke more than just the thing mentioned. A tall sweet frosted glass of lemonade evokes not only the taste but also the setting (ie. the South). In discussions of the imagery of a writer, we can refer to the areas in which he found his images. For example, a farmer will often use, in his speech, images from farm life. Similarly, a sailor will draw images from sea life, a garage mechanic from garage life, a doctor from his experiences as a doctor. A man with wide or intense reading may take his images from his reading. Some literary critics feel this practice is wrong. But the test of imagery is whether it evokes the proper experience in the reader. If it does, it is good. Coleridge, for example, though he had never been to sea, creates in “The Ancient Mariner” a powerful sea imagery — he drew upon his reading of older travel literature. There is nothing wrong here. Coleridge’s imagery in his poem is drawn from intense imaginative experience. Caroline Spurgeon, in Shakespeare’s Imagery shows that Shakespeare, in his images drew from many areas of experience — from the sea, from law courts, from games and sports, from hunting, from music. It is possible, by such investigations, to show that one writer’s imagery differs from another’s. Figures of speech are used to create strong images in the reader’s mind. These figures of speech work alone or in groups (synaesthesia) to create the total imaginative effect of the piece of literature.

Notes on Imagery

Prepared by Seaquam

Page 31

Imagery and Metaphorical Language 1. Both metaphor and simile make uses of images. 2. Metaphor links or combines two or more unlike images in a more or less dramatic fashion. 3. Simile is a sort of metaphor where the likeness of two unlike images is stressed. 4. Natural Metaphors: when the likeness of images is stressed we feel that the metaphor is natural; and often call this sort of metaphor, a natural metaphor. e.g. “Long fingers of sea reach up into the interior of this country. “ Here what is stressed is the resemblance of “fingers” and “sea-inlets”. 5. Strained Metaphor: where the stress is on the unlikeness of two linked images. This sort of metaphor can be extremely vivid. e.g.

“The stroke of death Is as a lover’s pinch, whtch hurts yet 1s desired. . . “ “I can love. . . Her , . .and her. , .and her. . . Her who still weeps with spongy eyes, And her who is dry cork and never cries. . . “ “Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care. . . .”

Floral imagery in literature is common and varied. Many authors and poets have chosen flowers with significant meaning to convey mesages and underlying tones. A very good example is the work of one of theatre’s greatest playwrights, William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, for example, used floral imagery in such plays as Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One well-known example is Ophelia’s speech in Act IV Scene v when she hands out flowers to various characters in the play. Each flowers meaning gives context to the act as she hands out rosemary for remembrance, rue for grace. Added associations come into play when one considers the medicinal purposes many of the plants also contained. Shakespeare gives obvious credence to this by directly addressing the meaningful associations of such plant as violets, pansies, and oxlips. He does this, not only directly as in Ophelia’s aforementioned speech, but in colloquial expressions as well. What might be the message conveyed with images of red and yellow roses?

Notes on Imagery

Prepared by Seaquam

Page 32