Ministry of Education and Science of Kyrgyz Republic
Jalalabad State University
Philology faculty
English and literature department
Course work
Theme: The relation between stylistic and linguistics
Group: FLc 1-17
Student: Nurdinova Rahatai
Supervisor:Toromamatova Mirgul
Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………...2
Chapter 1
1. Stylistic ................................................................................................................3
2. Types of stylistic ..................................................................................................4
3. Branches of stylistic .............................................................................................6
Chapter 2
1. Linguistics ...........................................................................................................
2. Types of linguistics .............................................................................................
3. Branches of linguistics ..........................................................................................
Chapter 3
1. The relation between stylistic and linguistics .....................................................
2. Interaction between stylistic and linguistics in the literature ..............................
3. Linguo-stylistic ....................................................................................................
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individuals and/or in different situations or settings. For example, the vernacular, or everyday language may be used among casual friends, whereas more formal language, with respect to grammar, pronunciation or accent, and lexicon or choice of words, is often used in a cover letter and résumé and while speaking during a job interview.
As a discipline, stylistics links literary criticism to linguistics. It does not function as an autonomous domain on its own, and it can be applied to an understanding of literature and journalism as well as linguistics.[1][2][3] Sources of study in stylistics may range from canonical works of writing to popular texts, and from advertising copy to news,[4] non-fiction, and popular culture, as well as to political and religious discourse.[5] Indeed, as recent work in critical stylistics,[6] multimodal stylistics[7] and mediated stylistics[8] has made clear, non-literary texts may be of just as much interest to stylisticians as literary ones. Literariness, in other words, is here conceived as 'a point on a cline rather than as an absolute'.[9][10]
Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may attempt to establish principles capable of explaining particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as in the literary production and reception of genre, the study of folk art, in the study of spoken dialects and registers, and can be applied to areas such as discourse analysis as well as literary criticism.
Common features of style include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and individual idioms (or idiolects), the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, and so on. In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is 'going on' within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.
Chapter 1
1.Stylistic.
In many ways, stylistics is an interdisciplinarity study of textual interpretations, using both language comprehension and an understanding of social dynamics. A stylistician's textual analysis is influenced by rhetoric reasoning and history.
Michael Burke describes the field in "The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics" as an empirical or forensic discourse critique, wherein the stylistician is"a person who with his/her detailed knowledge of the workings of morphology, phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics, and various discourse and pragmatic models, goes in search of language-based evidence in order to support or indeed challenge the subjective interpretations and evaluations of various critics and cultural commentators."
Burke paints stylisticians, then, as a kind of Sherlock Holmes character who has expertise in grammar and rhetoric and a love of literature and other creative texts, picking apart the details on how they operate piece by piece—observing style as it informs meaning, as it informs comprehension.
2.Types of stylistic.
There are various overlapping subdisciplines of stylistics, and a person who studies any of these is known as a stylistician:
Literary stylistics: Studying forms, such as poetry, drama, and prose
Interpretive stylistics: How the linguistic elements work to create meaningful art
Evaluative stylistics: How an author's style works—or doesn't—in the work
Corpus stylistics: Studying the frequency of various elements in a text, such as to determine the authenticity of a manuscript
Discourse stylistics: How language in use creates meaning, such as studying parallelism, assonance, alliteration, and rhyme
Feminist stylistics: Commonalities among women's writing, how writing is engendered, and how women's writing is read differently than men's
Computational stylistics: Using computers to analyze a text and determine a writer's style
Cognitive stylistics: The study of what happens in the mind when it encounters language.
Modern Understanding of Rhetoric
As far back as ancient Greece and philosophers like Aristotle, the study of rhetoric has been an important part of human communication and evolution as a result. It's no wonder, then, that author Peter Barry uses rhetoric to define stylistics as "the modern version of the ancient discipline known as rhetoric," in his book "Beginning Theory."
Barry goes on to say that rhetoric teaches
"its students how to structure an argument, how to make effective use of figures of speech, and generally how to pattern and vary a speech or a piece of writing so as to produce maximum impact."
He says that stylistics' analysis of these similar qualities—or rather how they are utilized—would, therefore, entail that stylistics is a modern interpretation of the ancient study.
However, he also notes that stylistics differs from simple close reading in the following ways:
"1. Close reading emphasizes differences between literary language and that of the general speech community. ...Stylistics, by contrast, emphasizes connections between literary language and everyday language.
"2. Stylistics uses specialized technical terms and concepts which derive from the science of linguistics, terms like 'transitivity,' 'under-lexicalisation,' 'collocation,' and 'cohesion'.
"3. Stylistics makes greater claims to scientific objectivity than does close reading, stressing that its methods and procedures can be learned and applied by all. Hence, its aim is partly the 'demystification' of both literature and criticism."
Stylistics is arguing for the universality of language usage while close reading hinges upon an observation of how this particular style and usage may vary from and thereby make an error relating to the norm. Stylistics, then, is the pursuit of understanding key elements of style that affect a given audience's interpretation of a text.
3.Branches of stylistic.
Literary and linguistic stylistics, comparative stylistics, decoding stylistics and functional stylistics.
I. According to the type of stylistic research we can distinguish literary stylistics and lingua–stylistics. Both have common objects of research. Both study the common ground of:
1) the literary language from the point of view of its variability;
2) the idiolect of a writer;
3) poetic speech that has its own specific laws.
But they differ in points of analysis. Lingua–stylistics studies
functional styles and
the linguistic nature of the expressive means of the language, their systematic character and their functions.
The subjects of Literary Stylistics are:
II. Comparative stylistics deals with the contrastive study of more than one language. It analyses the stylistic resources not inherent in a separate language but at the crossroads of two languages, or two literatures and is linked to the theory of translation.
III. Decoding stylistics
A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back to the works of L.V. Shcherba, B.A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and other scholars of the Prague linguistic circle. A serious contribution into this branch of stylistic study was also made by Prof. I.V.Arnold.
Each act of speech has the performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. The former does the act of encoding and the latter the act of decoding the information.
If we analyze the text from the author’s (encoding) point of view we should consider the epoch, the historical situation, and personal, political, social and aesthetic views of the author.
But if we try to treat the same text from the reader’s angle of view, we shall have to disregard this background knowledge and get the maximum information from the text itself (its vocabulary, composition, sentence arrangement, etc.). The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively on the linguistic analysis. Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously combine the two methods of stylistic research and enable the scholar to interpret a work of art with a minimum loss of its purport and message.
IV. Functional stylistics
Functional stylistics is a branch of lingua–stylistics that investigates functional styles, that is special sublanguages or varieties of the national language such as scientific, colloquial, business, publicist and so on.
However many types of stylistics may exist or spring into existence they will all consider the same source material for stylistic analysis – sounds, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and texts. That’s why any kind of stylistic research will be based on the level–forming branches that include:
Stylistic Lexicology studies the semantic structure of the word and the interrelation (or interplay) of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context.
Stylistic phonetics (or phonostylistics) is engaged in the study of style–forming phonetic features of the text. It describes the prosodic features of prose and poetry and variants of pronunciation in different types of speech (colloquial or oratory or recital).
Stylistic morphology is interested in the stylistic potentials of specific grammatical forms and categories, such as the number of the noun, or the peculiar use of tense forms of the verb, etc.
Stylistic syntax is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that grew out of classical rhetoric. The material in question lends itself readily to analysis and description. Stylistic syntax has to do with the expressive order of words, types of syntactic links (asyndeton – the omission of conjunctions, polysyndeton – the use of a number of conjunctions in close succession), figures of speech (antithesis – opposition or contrast of ideas, notions, qualities in the parts of one sentence or in different sentences; chiasmus – inversion of the second of two parallel phrases or clauses, etc.).
Chapter 2
The uses of similes
1.The uses of similes in English languages
Similes are used in literature to make writing more vivid and powerful. In everyday speech, they can be used to convey meaning quickly and effectively, as many commonly used expressions or idioms are similes.
For example, when someone says "He is as busy as a bee," it means he is working hard, as bees are known to be extremely busy. If someone says "I am as snug as a bug in a rug," they mean that they feel very comfortable and cozy or are tucked up tight in bed.
Some other well-known similes you will often hear are:
As cute as a kitten
As happy as a clam
As light as a feather
As blind as a bat
As bold as brass
As bright as a button
As shiny as a new pin
As cold as ice
As common as dirt
As cool as a cucumber
As hard as nails
As hot as hell
As innocent as a lamb
As tall as a giraffe
As tough as nails
As white as a ghost
As sweet as sugar
As black as coal
As with a lot of figurative language, when talking to someone from another region or someone not speaking in their native language they might not get the meaning of many similes.
Similes Add Depth to Writing
Similes can make our language more descriptive and enjoyable. Writers, poets, and songwriters make use of similes often to add depth and emphasize what they are trying to convey to the reader or listener. Similes can be funny, serious, mean, or creative.
Following are some more examples of similes regularly used in writing:
You were as brave as a lion.
They fought like cats and dogs.
He is as funny as a barrel of monkeys.
This house is as clean as a whistle.
He is as strong as an ox.
Your explanation is as clear as mud.
Watching the show was like watching grass grow.
That is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
This contract is as solid as the ground we stand on.
That guy is as nutty as a fruitcake.
Don't just sit there like a bump on a log.
Well, that went over like a lead balloon.
They are as different as night and day.
She is as thin as a rake.
Last night, I slept like a log.
This dress is perfect because it fits like a glove.
They wore jeans, which made me stand out like a sore thumb.
My love for you is as deep as the ocean.
I am so thirsty that my throat is as dry as a bone.
Similes in Classic Literature
Examples of similes can be seen in classic literature, such as in the poem "A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns:
"O my Luve is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune."
Another example of a simile can be found in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When Romeo talks to Mercutio before the Capulets' party, he makes the following comparison about love:
"Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn."
Similes in Song Lyrics
Similes can often be found in song lyrics, as they let you convey deeper meaning with fewer words. For example:
My heart is like an open highway. - "It's My Life," Bon Jovi
It's been a hard days night, and I've been working like a dog. - "A Hard Day's Night," The Beatles
And it seems to me you lived your life, Like a candle in the wind. - "Candle in the Wind," Elton John
You're as cold as ice. - "Cold as Ice," Foreigner
Steady as a preacher, Free as a weed - "American Honey," Lady Antebellum
Similes in Slogans
You'll even find that similes have been used in popular ads and company slogans over the years, such as:
Chevrolet: Built Like A Rock
Doritos: Tastes Like Awesome Feels
State Farm: Like A Good Neighbor
Almond Joy / Mounds: Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
Honda: The Honda's ride is as smooth as a gazelle in the Sahara. Its comfort is like a hug from Nana. Often the simile—the object or circumstances of imaginative identity (called the vehicle, since it carries or conveys a meaning about the word of thing which is likened to it)—precedes the thing likened to it (the tenor). In such cases, so usually shows the comparison:
The grass bends with every wind; so does Harvey.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o’re; So calm are we when passions are no more. ---Edmund Waller
But sometimes the so is understood rather than expressed:
As wax melts before the fire,/may the wicked perish before God.--- Psalm 68:2b
Whenever it is not immediately clear to the reader, the point of similarity between the unlike objects must be specified to avoid confusion and vagueness.
Rather than say, then, that “Money is like much”, and “Fortune is like glass,” a writer will show clearly how these very different things are like each other:
And money is like much, not good except it be spread.---Francis Bacon
Fortune is like glass- the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken ---Publilius
Syrus Like a skunk, he suffered from bad publicity for one noticeable flaw, but bore no one any ill will.
James now felt like an old adding machine: he had been punched and poked so much that he had finally worn out.
This paper is just like an accountant’s report: precise and accurate but absolutely useless.
Many times the point of similarity can be expressed in just a word or two:
Yes, he is a cute puppy, but when he grows up he will be as a house.
The pitching mound is humped too much like a camel’s back.
And occasionally, the simile word can be used as an adjective:
The argument of this book utilizes pretzel- like logic.
This gear has a flower-like symmetry to it.
Similes can be negative, too, asserting that two things are unlike in one or more respects:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…….—Shakespeare
John certainly does not attack the way a Sherman tank does; but if you encourage him, he is bold enough.
So a variety of ways exists for invoking the simile. Here are few of the possibilities:
X is like y X is not like y X is the same as y
X is more than y X is less than y X does y; so does z
X is similar to y X resembles y X is as y as z
X is y like z X is more y than z X is less than z
But a simile can sometimes be implied, or as it is often called, submerged. In such cases no comparative word is needed:
The author of this poem is almost in the position of a man with boxes of tree ornaments, but with no tree to decorate. The poet has enough imagery hand to decorate anything he can think, if only he can fix upon a “trim invention.” The “sense” he does locate is obscured; the ivy hides the building completely.
When I think of the English final exam, I think of dungeons and chains and racks and primal screams.
Leslie has silky hair and the skin of an angel.
2.The uses of simile in Kyrgyz language
A simile is used in Kyrgyz language to compare two unlike things through the use of suffix –дай (дѳй, дой, дей).
Кайран баатыр! Суудай таза, жолборстой эр жүрөк, жүзгө чыккан карыдай акылга дыйкан эле(Т.К) -мышыкча басуу; ай сыяктуу; таанымал өңдүү... When a verb or phrase is compared to a verb or phrase,as is used: They remained constantly attentive to their goal, as a sunflower always turns and stays focused on the sun. Here is your pencil and paper. I want you to compete as the greatest hero would in the race of his life.
Ch. Aitmator “Ealy cranes” (Чынгыз Айтматов «Эрте келген турналар») Айыл этекте. Мектептен карасаң,туш тараптан далай жерлерге чейин алакандын отундай көрүнөт Арабанын кылдырт, балким башка бирөөнүн кулагынын кужурун алып кыжырын келтирер беле. Бирок Султанмурат жыргалдын бешигинде жаткандай термелди Кайран баатыр! Суудай таза, жолборстой эр жүрөк, жүзгө чыккан карыдай акылга дыйкан эле(Т.К) -мышыкча басуу; ай сыяктуу; таанымал өңдүү...
Жаагыңдан чыккан саамайың,
Калтардын тал-тал жүнүндөй.
Салкындап бассаң иреңиң,
Саардагы чолпон жылдыздай.
Кубуласың, сүйлөйсүң,
Куйруктуу сары жылдыздай.
Сунган менен кол жетпейт,
Суу түбүндө кундуздай.
(Korgol Dos uulu)
Эки ийинине караса
Эки киши конгондой,
Эки бетин караса
Эки даңгыт тойгондой
(Sagymbai Orozbak uulu)
Мурду тоонун сеңирдей,
Көзүн көрсөң капырай
Көп өгөгөн темирдей
Эриндери калбыйып,
Эки уурту балбайып,
Көкүрөктө эмчеги
Киндигине салбайып,
Элүү менен кыркыңдын
Ортосунда жашы бар
(Sagymbai Orozbak uulu.)
Мурутунун бир талы,
Айбалтанын сабындай.
Мурду тоонун сеңирдей,
Булкушканды жегидей
Көзү көлдүн быткылдай,
Көрүнгөндү жуткандай.
(Sayakbai Karalaev).
Өзү бышкан өпкөдөй,
Сакалына караса
Сарапты тешип өткөндөй,
Көзү өгөгөн темирдей,
Мурду тоонун сеңирдей
(Sagymbai Orozbak uulu).
Chapter 3
Simile examples
1.Significance of Simile in Literature
Simile can be an excellent way for an author either to make an unusual thing seem more familiar (i.e., “The planet Zenoth was as cold as ice”) or a familiar thing seem more unique (i.e., “Her smile was jagged like a broken zipper”). In this way, similes can help the reader imagine the fictive world of a piece of literature. Good similes can also make readers think about things in a new way, and can sometimes create a lasting effect. Scottish poet Robert Burns’s declaration that his “luve’s like a red, red rose” forever linked the concepts of love and red roses in our minds.
Simile can also sometimes be used to show a comparison, though with the conclusion that these two things really are unalike or even at odds with each other. This can either be a negative simile, which might come in the form of “A is not like B” (see Example #1 below) or an ironic simile, which communicates the opposite of what is expected at the beginning of the statement. For example, the famous feminist quote popularized by Gloria Steinem, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” ultimately concludes that a woman has no need for a man.
Simile can help to make new connections for the reader. One of literature’s purposes is to help better explain the world around us, and the technique of simile is one of those ways in which we are able to see things in a new way. All types of analogies are cognitive processes of transferring meaning from one thing to another, and thus the use of simile in literature has real synaptic effects. For this reason, and for aesthetic purposes, simile has been a popular literary technique for many hundreds of years.
Writers use simile to add color and feeling to their writing and to allow readers to see something in a new way through the comparison that the simile creates. Simile can be used to render the familiar strange and unusual, to make the strange seem familiar, or to draw a surprising association between things that don't seem to belong together.
2.Famous Simile Poems
A simile poem, or in this case, a classic nursery rhyme, that everyone may know is "Twinkle Twinkle:"
"Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky."
In "A Lady," Amy Lowell brings the description of a woman to life with similes:
"You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir."
"Simile" by N. Scott Momaday is one of the few poems where the entire poem is a simile, here comparing people to deer:
"What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight"
"The Base Stealer" by Robert Francis is also chock full of similes:
"Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tightrope-walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate-now!"
Poems depict all emotions. You can feel the fear and confusion in these lines from the simile poem "Greater Than That" by Joyce Garacci:
"Like a bruised, little bird
Too confused to fly,
I'm trapped, in a word,
So confined am I.
A captive, collared lion
Alone in its pen,
I'm pacing and dying
In a manmade den.
For an eagle was not meant
To be locked in a cage,
Its life to be spent
Like a picture on a page."
3.Simile in Literature
Examples of Simile in Literature
Example #1
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
(“Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare)
This excerpt from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” is an example of a negative simile. Shakespeare goes against the expectation praising his mistress’s beauty and instead says what she is not like. Her lips are not as red as coral, her skin is not pure as snow, and so on. This striking simile example plays with both the tradition of sonnets as well as the usual function of similes.
Example #2
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
(A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)
This excerpt from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol also plays with the tradition of similes. Dickens knowingly uses the clichéd simile “dead as a doornail” (perhaps more clichéd now than even in his day). He then investigates the simile, humorously pointing out that there is nothing “particularly dead about a doornail” and that a coffin nail would have provided a better simile. But, as he concludes, some similes display “the wisdom of our ancestors,” which is to say, not much wisdom at all.
Example #3 What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
(“Harlem” by Langston Hughes)
Langston Hughes uses five examples of simile in this short poem, “Harlem.” Each simile is one possibility that Hughes imagines for “a dream deferred.” The imagery was so striking in this poem that playwright Lorraine Hansberry named her famous play A Raisin in the Sun after the first simile in the poem. All of the similes in this poem share a sense of decay and burden, just like a dream that does not come to fruition.
Example #4
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate.
(To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
The classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee centers around the tragedy of Boo Radley, a man falsely accused for a crime. This evocative simile at the beginning of the novel somewhat foreshadows the main characters’ relation to Boo: the children Scout and Jem are fascinated by him as well as terrified of him. This fascination and terror draws their friend Dill “as the moon draws water,” an allusion to the way the presence of the moon changes the tides.
Example #5
I wait, washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig.
(The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood)
This simple example of simile in Margaret Atwood’s dystopic novel The Handmaid’s Tale is not so simple when looked at more closely. The protagonist of the novel is Offred, a woman whose sole purpose is to reproduce with the higher social classes. Women in this new society have had their rights entirely taken away, even to the point of their humanity. Therefore, Offred’s comparison between herself and a prize pig shows that she is treated no differently than—and no better than—an animal.
Example #6
Lord Jim (By Joseph Conrad)
“I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.”
In these lines from Lord Jim, the helplessness of the soul is being compared with a bird in a cage, beating itself against the merciless wires to be free.
Example #7
To the Lighthouse (By Virginia Woolf)
“… impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil… “
In the above example of simile, Ms. Woolf makes the point that her thoughts are difficult to follow, and cannot be written quickly enough.
Example #8
Lolita (By Vladimir Nabokov)
“Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.”
This simile produces a humorous effect by comparing old women leaning on walking sticks with the ancient leaning tower of Pisa.
Example #4: A Red, Red Rose (By Robert Burns)
“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
Here, Robert Burns uses a simile to describe the beauty of his beloved. He says that his love is a fresh red rose that blossoms in the spring.
Example #9
the Daffodils (By William Wordsworth)
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’er vales and hills.”
The poet envisions himself as a free cloud that floats alone in a blue sky above valleys and the mountains. By choosing this simile, Wordsworth describes his loneliness.
Example #10
Sonnet 18 (By William Shakespeare)
A significant thing to consider here is that at times simile is drawn without using the words “as” or “like.” Consider the following example:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines”
In the very first line, Shakespeare poses a question if he should compare his beloved to a summer’s day. But then he rejects this idea and says that his beloved is better than that. This is an example of an extended simile. is an example of an extended simile.
Example #11
Will There Really Be a Morning? (By Emily Dickinson)
“Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries.”
In this example of simile, the speaker is feeling dejected, wondering if there could be hope and morning again. The poet has used trochees, giving a strong rhythm to the poem. Notice in this first stanza, the accented syllables are emphasized. See that word “I” is unaccented or unstressed with different feet.
Example #12
To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt (By Charles Dickens)
“… when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash — rush — flow — I do not know what to call it — no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive — in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river.
Charles Dickens, in this excerpt, uses a simile in the last line, indicated in bold.
Example #13
(By William Shakespeare)
“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,—
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.”
The last line here exhibits a beautiful use of simile by Shakespeare, where Othello compares Desdemona’s smooth skin to alabaster.
Example #14
Othello (By William Shakespeare)
Othello: She was false as water.
Emilia: Thou are rash as fire,
To say that she was false: O she was heavenly true.
Othello compares Desdemona’s infidelity to water, but Emilia calls him as rash as fire and testifies to her fidelity. In both cases, these are very good similes to reflect the character of a person.
Simile in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
In this example from The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway describes Tom and Daisy Buchanan's mansion in Long Island. Nick is from the midwest and has never encountered the level of luxury he discovers on his first visit to the Buchanans' home:
A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
Not only does Fitzgerald's use of simile convey Nick's astonishment at the extent of the Buchanans' wealth, but it also enlivens what might otherwise have been an unremarkable description. Without simile, the passage would read something like, "The wind blew through the room. It ruffled the women's clothing. Tom shut the window and the wind stopped." Fitzgerald's similes bring the room to life.
Simile in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, Sonnet 97, and Sonnet 130
No discussion of simile would be complete without a reference to Shakespeare's sonnets. One of his most well-known similes is the opening line of Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (That simile is also a good example of a simile that contains a word other than "like" or "as" to establish its comparison.)
In Sonnet 97, the narrator compares his separation from his beloved to a barren winter, even though the couple was actually separated during the summer. (The narrator admits this in the line, "And yet this time removed was summer's time"):
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have a I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer's time
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease.
In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare challenges the traditional function of similes and the conventions of love poetry:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare
In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare actually comments on the way similes function within conventional sonnets about love by turning all of the would-be similes into negative similes. Instead of writing that his mistress' eyes are like the sun, that her lips are red as coral, her breasts as white as snow, and so on, Shakespeare says that her eyes are "nothing like the sun," and that, "coral is far more red" than her lips. It's as though the he's acknowledging the fact that many similes have become hackneyed or clichéd, and he's instead proposing to pay a more meaningful tribute to his love by inverting those similes and treating her like a real-life woman.
Simile in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio
"Hands," one of the short stories in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, tells the tale of Winesburg resident Wing Biddlebaum. Biddlebaum is a shy old man who keeps to himself, yet becomes animated and talkative in the presence of his only friend, a reporter named George Willard:
The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.
The "obscure poet's" simile, which likens the "restless activity" of Wing's hands "unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird" is also the source of the character's nickname. Further, Wing Biddlebaum's social role in the community is similar to that of an imprisoned bird, in the sense that he lives apart from the rest of the town, shut off from companionship.
Simile in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator undertakes a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son Chris, his friend Sylvia, and her husband John. The motorists pride themselves on taking scenic backroads that prolong their journey, but better suit their solitary, contemplative style of traveling. When they cross a main road one Monday morning, Sylvia makes the following observation about the grim-looking commuters:
"It was all those people in the cars coming the other way...The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one, they were all the same...Its just that they looked so lost...Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession."
Sylvia compares the drivers to members of a funeral procession because she feels that, in rushing from point A to point B, the commuters are missing out the pleasure of life and travel.
Simile in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
In this example from Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim emerges from an underground slaughterhouse where he has been held prisoner by the Germans during the deadly World War II firebombing of Dresden:
It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.
Vonnegut compares the bombed city of Dresden to the moon in order to capture the totality of the devastation—the city is so lifeless that it is like the barren moon.
Note that Vonnegut also emphasizes the destruction of the city by exaggerating the air pollution created by the bombs ("the sky was black with smoke"). This type of exaggeration for literary or rhetorical purposes is called hyperbole, which can sometimes overlap with simile.
Conclusions
125
195 667 
