Symbolism and Imagery Flashcards
Margaret Atwood You Fit Into Me importance
The hook and eye (poking yourself with a fish hook) creates a physical response
Choice of words = Creates a image
What is the point of imagery?
Convey an experience that you are not presently having but that you have had at some point or can imagine having
To create a sensory experience in your mind without the need for sensory input
Imagery is descriptive for figurative language
Descriptive language that appeals to the senses
Ezra Pound “In a station of the Metro” Importance
Imagery
By not using a simile, metaphor, or metonymy, it does not show how they are connected but rather leaves it to you do the work of connecting.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals in a wet, black bough. (face to wet petals)
Yosa Buson “The Piercing Chill I feel” meaning
IMAGERY
Stepping on comb creates a cold and sharp experience (image)
Secondary sensation: The absence of the owner (dead wife) gives another meaning of a piercing chill but something about grief.
SYMBOLISM
Comb is concrete and objective (everyone experience in same way)
Wife is abstract (dead only existing in mind) and subjective (nobody experience of memory of her the same way thatthe speaker does).
Objective triggers something subjective
Symbol 2 characteristics
Something objective that triggers something subjective
Symbol
A concrete object or action that without ceasing to be itself suggests some further meaning
Seamus Heaney Digging
Poem shows connection to family history and the history of Ireland
Writing as archaeological act “going down and down/ for the good turf”
-3 generations telescoed by digging
-The speaker is doing something analogous to what his father (turf) and grandfather (potatos) did
Generations of the speaker personal past symbolically evokes stages of Irelands National Past
When do poets use symbols
Cannot express an idea in any other way.
Symbols aren’t a technique for concealing but revealing
Taylor Swift Ivy how do they use symbols
How do we know something is a symbol?
The ivy and stone house are unquestionably metaphors (the lover is not literally planting ivy)
However this metaphor links to other stuff in the song that are metaphorical (burning down the house) and literal (widow at stone, coming of spring)
Works systemically to bring a love affair of coldness warmth, dark adn ight, pain and solace and dead thing and living things.
W.B. Yeats The Second Coming
Symbols are deliberately deployed by writers but they are also a way of relinquishing control
The power of this poem derives from the way its symbols work together ot resonate with one another to create a complex sense of violent change
Falcon cannot hear the Falconer: Predatory animal energy, once put in service to human goals now escapes control
Falcon to Lion: Symbols predatory energy is not controlled by human but fused by it.
Ceremony of Innocence Drowned : Ceremony = restrain human behaviour, civilizations are defined by rituals , laws and the ceremonies keep people innocent
Adrienne Rich “Diving into the Wreck”
Unlike an allegory, an object or action that bears symbolic meaning never ceases to be itself.
About diving itself with stuff layered on. Demonstrates what diving should feel like.
-Panic and disorientation in a new environment, need to find a new way to look at yourself and power as it starts to work for you
-Looking to area where gender does not matter find new things
Book of Myths: mentioned beginning, middle, end is important
Deep sea dive symbolizes moving beyond a binary gender system in which you must be either one or the other
