16. Periphrasis. Epithet. Antonomasia.

Periphrasis does not belong with the tropes, but this way of identifying the object of speech is related to metonymy; it’s a direct description of what could be named directly. It couldn’t be expressed by one linguistic unit (the difference from metonymy).

A thriller=two hundred pages of blood-curdling narrative.

Stylistic effect – from elevation to humour.

• “I never call a spade a spade, I call it a bloody shovel.”

• Tea= the cups that cheer but not inebriate.

• Lies=alterations and improvements on the truth.

• “Major Burnaby was doing his accounts or – to use a more Dickens-like phrase – he was looking into his affairs.”

• He shouting indecent phrases = shouting some choice Anglo-Saxon phrases at the policeman.

In 19^th century prose P. carries a humoristic load.

• A disturber of a piano keys (a pianist)

• “Up Broadway he turned and halted at a glittering café, where gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm.” (the best wine, dresses, people)

Определение (перифраз) из учебника по физике (и даже из учебника по литературе) не будет считаться тропом!

Epithet is a word or phrase containing an expressive characteristic of the object, and thus creating an image.

О dreamy, gloomy, friendly trees!

We can’t expect to find a place for the epithet among the tropes, because it’s not a trope, although it may be metaphoric, metonymic, or ironical.

Fixed epithets (устойчивые) are often found in folklore: my true love; a sweet heart; the green wood; a dark forest; brave cavaliers; merry old England.

Antonomasia is the use of name of a historical, literary, mythological, or biblical personage applied to a person whose characteristic features resemble those of the well-known original.

Brutus – a traitor

Don Juan – a ladies’ man

Rockefeller – a rich man

Reversed antonomasia:

hooligan, quiszling (the name of the Norwegian collaborator in the years W. War II)

a mozart of painting

In such sentences there is hardly anything of special stylistic significance:

- He has sold his Vandykes.

- I’m fond of Dickens.

- This is my real Goya.

In common nouns – mackintosh, sandwich, shrapnel.

17. Simile.

Simile – imaginative comparison; an explicit statement of partial identity (affinity, likeness, similarity) of two objects.

The word explicit used in the definition distinguishes the simile from the metaphor, which presupposes similarity of the notion expressed and the notion implied. When using a metaphor we pretend to believe that the thing named is actually the thing referred to: calling a person a pig the speaker behaves as if he really believed what he said. In a simile the speaker is always aware that untidy, or greedy, or insolent person only looks or acts as does a pig.

Metaphor is a renaming and simile always employs two names of two separate objects. Simile contains at least one more component part – a word or a group of words signalizing the idea of juxtaposition and comparison. Formal signs – conj.: like, as (as if, as though), than; verbs: to resemble, to remind one of; verbal phrases: to bear a resemblance to, to have a look of etc. Examples of trite simile with alliteration:

As dead as a door-nail

As mad as a march hare

As cool as a cucumber

As proud as a peacock

Without alliteration:

To fit like a glove

To smoke like chimney

As fat as a pig

As drunk as a lord

Drunk like fish

A fresh simile, especially elaborate one is one of the best image-creating devices.

Care should be taken not to confuse the simile and any sort of elementary logical comparison. A simile pre supposes confrontation of two objects belonging to radically different semantic spheres; a comparison deals with two objects of the same semantic sphere:

She can sing like professional actress. (log. comparison)

She can sing like a nightingale. (simile)

Simile may be combined with or accompanied by another stylistic device, or it may achieve one stylistic effect or another.

Simile + Hyperbole:

• A young woman was “hotter than a welder’s torch and much, much more interesting.”

• “He held out a hand that could have been mistaken for a bunch of bananas in a poor light.”

• “She heaved away from the table like a pregnant elephant.”

Simile + litotes:

• “His eyes were no warmer than being an iceberg.”

• “Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb.”

‘Sustained’ (extended) simile:

• “…as if a was a millionaire invalid with four days to live, and who hasn’t as yet paid his doctor’s bill.”

• “…the chicken looked as if it had a sharp attack of jaundice before departing this earth.”

• “… stood holding a microphone the way a drowning man hangs on the lifebelt.