ILS1: Introduction to Textual Analysis Seminar 5 Example 2
I’m really fond I’m really very fond of you, he said. I don’t like fond. It sounds like something you would tell a dog. Give me love, or nothing. Throw your fond in a pond, I said. But what I felt for him was also warm, frisky, moist-mouthed, eager, and could swim away if forced to do so.
Example 4 When you are old and grey and full of sleep… …And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Example 5 He took her hand, and raised it to his lips with something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand and might have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed her, looked and moved away. ‘See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed’, she said, walking towards the window with only a dim sense of what she was doing…. While he [Will] was speaking there came a flash of lightning which lit each of them up for the other—and the light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love.
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Activity 1 The poem below by Sylvia Plath is full of explicit metaphors, but it also contains some similes. (1) Identify the metaphors, and their ground, tenor and vehicle (2) Identify the similes (these also can be explained in terms of ground, tenor and vehicle). You’re Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools’ Day, O high-riser, my little loaf. Vague as a fog and looked for like mail. Farther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn. Snug as a bug and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican Bean. Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on.
Activity 2 (1) Which type of metaphor is used in the text below? (2) Identify and analyze each specific metaphor in the paragraph. "Well, if punctuation is the stitching of language, language comes apart, obviously, and all the buttons fall off. If punctuation provides the traffic signals, words bang into each other and everyone ends up in Minehead. If one can bear for a moment to think of punctuation marks as those invisibly beneficent fairies (I'm sorry), our poor deprived language goes parched and pillowless to bed. And if you take the courtesy analogy, a sentence no longer holds the door open for you to walk in, but drops it in your face as you approach."
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