1. Words, Words, Words… Hamlet
Poetic Vocabulary II
Words, Words, Words…
Hamlet

2. Connotation/Denotation
Words have 3 parts
Connotation: what a word suggests beyond what it expresses; overtones
Denotation: dictionary meaning
Sound: combination of tones and noises

3. Example: Would you rather be called childlike or childish? Why?
“The poet plays a many-stringed instrument. And he plays more than one note at a time.”
Laurence Perrine

4. Figures of Speech
“A figure of speech is a way of saying something other than the ordinary way, and some rhetoricians have classified as many as 250 separate figures.” Perrine
We will only deal with a few.

5. Metaphor/ Simile
Both metaphor and simile are a means of comparing things that are essentially unalike. The only distinction between them is that the comparison is expressed by the use of some word as like as than similar to resembles in a simile; in metaphor the comparison is implied.

6. “The Hound” Life the hound Equivocal Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.
I cannot tell
The hound’s intent
Til he has sprung
At my bare hand

7. With teeth or tongue
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.
Robert Francis

8. Metonymy/Synecdoche Synecdoche: the use of a part for the whole
Metonymy: the use of a closely related thing for the thing actually meant
These terms are so much alike that it is hardly worth while to distinguish between them and metonymy is used for both figures.

9. When we say “the White House” for the president or “the old salt” for a sailor, we are using this figure of speech.

10. Why use figurative Language?
The mind takes delight in sudden leaps—seeing likenesses in unalike things.
Figurative Language makes the abstract concrete.
They add emotional intensity.
They make words more concentrated.
“Out, out brief candle” compares a candle to life…

11. Mirror Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful--

12. Bibliography
Perrine, Laurence. Sound and Sense. Sixth edition. Chicago: Harcount, Brace, Jovanovich: