Introduction to textual analysis Seminar 6 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, tenorand 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.
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Activity 2 ‘The Snowstorm’, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, contains some good examples of embeded (implicit) metaphors. (1) Identify the embeded metaphors in the text. (2) Decide what the vehicle, tenor and ground might be in each of them. The Snowstorm Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind’s masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian1 wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall, Maugre2 the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. NOTE 1 Parian=as if made from fine white marble from the Greek island of Paros 2 maugre=in spite of
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Activity 3 (1) Read the text below and identify figures of speechs (focusing on meatphors). (2) Identify tenor, vehicle and ground in each case. "The city was rancid, pregnant with squalor behind its immortal veil. From his room on Kurzbauergasse, Egon looked onto the boulevards for hours on end, watching the carriages roll up and back, listening to the horses’ hooves rattling off the cobblestones and onto the gravel paths, to the piercing clicks of ladies’ clicks. He looked down on the tall hats of the landed gentry and the stubby caps of workers, learning to differentiate the confident strides of the doctors from the sedate strolling of lawyers. Clerks, valets and housekeepers would rush down the street, reach for their master’s elbow, pose a question and then scurry away with the answer. In the slice of Vienna below his window, Egon learnt to know mankind in all its colours and classes." (Lewis Crofts, The Pornographer of Vienna)
Activity 4 (1) Write a similar description of a place of your own choice. (2) Focus on sound and colour in your description. (3) Use explicit and embeded (implicit) metaphors to make the description as “audible” and as “visual” as possible.
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