Literal language is language which uses only the denotation of a word. It describes what actually happens.
Figurative language is used by people every day, perhaps more than you realise. "The mouth of the river" was once a metaphor - now we would call it a dead metaphor (we no longer find the idea of comparing a river to a mouth startling).
All of the poetic features we are about to examine make use of the connotations associated with the words they use.
There are three main uses of figurative language in literature.
Simile
An explicit comparison using ‘like’, ‘as’ or ‘as if’.
Example: ‘My love is like a red, red rose.’
Explanation: By comparing his love to a red rose, Burns is bringing the connotations of the rose into play, which are…
Metaphor
An implicit comparison; one thing is said to be another. Note: this is never literally true.
Example: ‘Old fools are babes again.’
Explanation: Although it is not literally true that old men have become babies again, Shakespeare has Goneril point out - in a very blunt manner - that old men do have some qualities in common with babies, such as…
Vehicle and Tenor (if this confuses you just ignore it!)
In all comparisons, whether simile or metaphor, one thing is said to be like another. We can (after the critic I.A. Richards) divide this into two parts: the vehicle and the tenor.
The tenor is the idea to which the metaphor is being applied: the ‘old fools’.
The vehicle is the metaphorical item itself: ‘babes’.
The vehicle carries the metaphor...
We can use these terms to write about metaphor in greater detail: ‘The tenor of the metaphor suggests something about Goneril’s character…’
Symbolism
When a writer uses something to stand in for or represent a more general quality.
Q. Consider whether the poet has used or created the symbol you are discussing.
Using an already existing symbol is more common than creating one.
For instance, the dove is a commonly drawn upon symbol for peace, but it is not one that any modern writer has created; it is not original or new to use the symbol in this way.
Why? Because it has its origins in the story of Noah for the Old Testament, in which a dove returned to the Ark with an olive branch, signifying the flood was over and the waters receded.
TIP: Referring to other stories or events is called allusion. For instance: ‘The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest features many allusions to the life of Christ.’
There are other symbols which are also not original but which we do not have prior examples of: for instance, black is commonly used to symbolise death in Western culture.
Interestingly, if you look to the East, white is used in many countries place of black. This is because connotations vary from culture to culture. Understanding this is vital to understanding the context of a piece of writing.
Original symbols created by writers: Philip Larkin’s poem Toad uses the image of a toad to stand in for work, and so work takes on some of the qualities represented by a toad.
Can you find any symbols in the poems you have been reading?
Where it is possible to have both a literal and a figurative understanding of a line, stanza, or even an entire poem, then we speak of there being an ambiguity.
You can imagine this ambiguity being the grey area between the literal and the figurative.
Q. Read the last three stanzas of Larkin’s poem The Explosion.
Make a list of words or phrases that could be interpreted literally, and those that could be read in a figurative way. If you compare your list with someone else’s, you will find there are some parts which can be read literally as well as figuratively. Here you could say there is an ambiguity – there are two readings.
The big question is: Why is Larkin using this ambiguity (it’s not accidental)?
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