Imagery
The collective use of images. Look at the title of the book Caroline Spurgeon wrote on all the images that Shakespeare has used in all of his plays: Shakespeare 's Imagery and What It Tells. The word
"Imagery" in the title is singular and its pronoun is "It". It covers all the images of Shakespeare's plays. If we say imagery of "To Autumn", we mean all the images in it. It is customary to use the word "imagery" instead of "images" when we want to mean all the images of a text or of a writer. We use the plural of "imagery" when we mean all the images of two or more texts or writers.
Innuendo:
A figure of speech which hints at something unpleasant instead of stating it plainly. For examples:
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine;
(Pope: The Rape of the Lock)
The unpleasant meaning suggested in these lines is that dinner is more important to the judges than the life of the accused.
"Some have been thought brave, because they were afraid to run away." (Proverb)
People thought that those who remained in the battlefield were brave. In fact, those soldiers were so cowardly that they even could not run away in fear of life.
"All is fair in love and war." (Proverb) People in love and war do not obey any rule.
Internal rhyme:
Rhyme within a verse line.
For instance:
When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
(Blake: "Nurse's Song")
Here the word "children" rhymes with "green" as "rest" rhymes with "breast".
Coleridge excels in the use of internal rhyme in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Here are some examples:
a) "The guests are met, the feast is set:"
b) "The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,"
c) "And he shone bright, and on the right"
d) "The Wedding Guest he beat his breast,"
e) "The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,"
f) "And everyday, for food or play,"
g) "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,"
h) "We were the first that ever burst"
Invocation:
A formal prayer to the Muse (the goddess of poetry) for inspiration, help and guidance at the beginning of an epic.
Examples:
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
(Homer: The Iliad. Trans. Pope)
The man for wisdom's various arts renown'd,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
(Homer: The Odyssey. Trans. Pope)
"O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;"
(Virgil: The Aeneid. Trans. Dryden)
Of Man's First disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World and all our woe
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse ...
(Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I)
Usually the invocation in an epic goes together with the proposition (declaration) of its subject. Epic poets also invoke the goddess of poetry for help inside the texts.
Irony:
A statement or a situation or an action which actually means the
opposite of its surface meaning. The first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is an example of irony:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
After reading the novel one, however, finds that it is not the rich man who needs a wife but, quite opposite to it, it is the marriageable girls' mother who needs rich husbands for her daughters.
An often quoted example of irony is in Antony's speech at the funeral of Caesar who was killed by Brutus. A part of the speech is quoted here:
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men;
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me; But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
(Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II)
Antony repeats "Brutus is an honourable man" a few more times in the rest of the speech. The irony in this statement glorifying Brutus had tremendous opposite effect. Though Antony says: "Brutus is an honourable man" the Romans assembled around the dead body of Caesar understood the opposite of what Brutus says. They understood that Brutus was a dishonourable "traitor" and a despicable "villain". They immediately turned rebellious against Brutus.
Situational irony occurs when the opposite of expectation takes place. For instance, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Part II, Chapter VI, Gulliver talks to the King very highly about the parliament, judiciary, treasury, army, war and some other aspects of England expecting the King to praise the people of England. But the King ends up with a bitter comment totally opposite to Gulliver's expectation: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth."
