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British Poetry

Notes bullet would go as follows: “Chris was a record-setting runner as fast as a speeding bullet.” A metaphor
might read something like, “When Chris ran, he was a speeding bullet racing along the track.”
A mnemonic for a simile is that “a simile is similar or alike.”

3.5.1 In Literature

Similes have been widely used in literature for their expressiveness as a figure of speech:
• Curley was flopping like a fish on a line.
• The very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric.
• Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus. Dickens, in the opening to ‘A
Christmas Carol’, says “But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.”

3.5.2 Explicit Similes

A simile can explicitly provide the basis of a comparison or leave this basis implicit. For instance, the
following similes are implicit, leaving an audience to determine for themselves which features are
being predicated of a target:
• She is like a dynamo.
• For he is like a refiner’s fire.
More detail is present in the following similes, but it is still a matter of inference as to what features
are actually predicated of the target:
• He fights like a lion.
• She swims like a dolphin.
• He slithers like a snake.
• He runs like a cheetah.
• He drinks like a fish.
• She kicks like a mule.
• He flopped like a fish out of water.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. A ...... is a traditional form for english poetry.
2. The heroic couplet was first pioneered by ...... .
3. ..... is commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama.
4. ...... rhythms come relatively naturally in english.
5. ...... is a figure of speech used in rhetoric.

3.6 Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own
name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance,
“Hollywood” is used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for American cinema, because of the
fame and cultural identity of Hollywood, California as the historical center of movie studios and

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