ENGL 110- Discussion 2
Pina21
ImagerySymbolismandAllusioninPoetry.pptxImagery, symbolism, and allusion
Imagery
Imagery refers to the creation of mental images – sight, sound, taste, touch – through words.
Imagery is related to the themes and ideas of a poem. Poets use imagery to create an experience that opens the reader up to the poem’s themes and ideas.
Types of imagery
Visual imagery uses words to create sights. In Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” the visual is that of faces in a station crowd. In Pound’s image, these faces are “Petals on a wet, black bough” (line 2).
Auditory imagery captures sounds. In “Preludes,” Eliot’s images of the city include the familiar sounds of inner-city life:
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. (lines 9 – 12)
Types of imagery
Olfactory imagery uses smell to create an experience. It’s quite direct in Eliot’s “Preludes”: “The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passageways” (lines 1-2). And again: “The morning comes to consciousness / Of faint stale smells of beer” (14-15).
Gustatory imagery describes tastes. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats describes pining for the taste of wine thus: “O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been / Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, / Tasting of Flora and the country green” (lines 11 – 13).
Types of imagery
Tactile imagery relates to touch and texture. Eliot’s “Preludes” creates a cycle of urban life that connects day and night, work and rest, using images:
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands. (lines 35-38)
Kinetic imagery is images of general motion, while kinesthetic imagery is images of human or animal movement. In “Sonnet 130,” Shakespeare describes the awkward walk of his beloved: “My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground” (line 12).
Symbolism
Symbolism is the use of symbols to create meaning in an imaginative way.
A symbol is a thing that represents something else. Think of symbolism as using code to express ideas.
A word, an action, a setting, a character, a situation – all of these can be symbolic and, as symbols, significant to the themes and ideas of a work.
Symbolism
Symbols are often indirect and subtle. For example, one wouldn’t say that a character’s cough is a symbol for the character’s illness. The cough is a symptom of the illness and directly related to it.
Be careful how you use the terms “symbolism,” “symbolize,” and “symbol.” Often students use “symbolizes” when they actually mean “represents” in the general sense.
Identifying symbolism and symbols in works of literature is interpretation, and, like all interpretation, it must be supported by the text.
symbolism
Cultural or universal symbols are symbols that are common and easily recognized. Spring as a symbol for new life is a cultural/universal symbol.
Contextual, private, or authorial symbols are symbols that are specific to a text. In Blake’s “Infant Sorrow” (Experience), the “swaddling bands” symbolize the confinement of the human world which the infant has come into. Swaddling bands aren’t universally recognized as symbols for confinement.
allusion
Allusions are references to other works, history, art, mythology, religion, and other aspects of culture.
For example, in “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats makes a reference to the Bible (Ruth in line 66) and several references to Greek mythology (“Dryad,” “Bacchus,” etc.). These allusions elucidate the themes of memory, imagination, and freedom.
