A Lesson on IMAGERY
AP Literature & Comp
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Imagery involves one or more of your five senses (hearing, taste, touch, smell, sight). An author uses a word or phrase to stimulate your memory of those senses. These memories can be positive or negative which will contribute to the mood of your poem
Figurative language is the language that uses imagery and such figures of speech as similes, metaphors, and personification.
Creating poetry requires the use of imagery. Think of some imagery words to describe some part of nature: sea, a brook, clouds, a tree, a river, an animal, etc. List the words in the following table:
TOUCH / SMELL / HEARING / TASTING / SEEINGSmooth / Foul / Hissing / Gross / Ugly
Rough / Repugnant / Hum / Bitter / Serene
Scaly / Noxious / Rustling / Dry / Aggravated
Slimy / Musty / Thump / Tangy / Cautious
Now using that same table read this poem by American poet Robert Hayden and find the images. Be prepared to talk about how the images are created if other than direct statement.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
Callous / Burning wood / Popping / Darkness
Rough / Crackle
Breaking
Splintering
Whether they occur in real life or in literature, images call forth personal associations. The images an author chooses, and the way they are presented, provide clues to the feelings the author wants to express and help to establish the mood, or emotional atmosphere, or the work.
Now let’s think about Shakespeare’s poetry. In the following passage from Hamlet, find the imagery and try to describe the mood:
1. Hamlet – Act 1, Scene 5
Hamlet – Act 1, Scene 5. Lines: 13-27.
shakespeare.clusty.com; January 23, 2007
Hamlet
12. What?
Ghost
13. I am thy father's spirit,
14. Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
15. And for the day confined to fast in fires,
16. Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
17. Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
18. To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
19. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
20. Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
21. Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
22. Thy knotted and combined locks to part
23. And each particular hair to stand on end,
24. Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
25. But this eternal blazon must not be
26. To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
27. If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
TOUCH / SMELL / HEARING / TASTING / SEEINGRough / Fires / Blood / Ghost
Pointy / Blood
Quills
Using the online concordance, examine sets of images. As you look these images up and read the passages in which they appear, attempt to draw conclusions: what does this information tell you about what Shakespeare is trying to say with his imagery? Note the frequency of words in the play. You may note that “dark” images occur much more frequently than “light” images, giving the imagery of the play a decidedly dark feel.
Can you find any patterns in the way a word is used throughout the play? How does imagery work to set up a specific kind of (dark) tone?
Compare Shakespeare’s use of these words in Hamlet with his use of them in some of the other plays. Before Hamlet, scholars think he wrote Julius Caesar, and before that As You Like It. After Hamlet, scholars think he wrote Twelfth Night and then Troilus and Cressida. How is his use of imagery different in Hamlet than in the other work he was doing at the time? Draw conclusions!
Compare findings with the whole group, and see if you can uncover any larger patterns of imagery in the play.
Now, write your own poem about your father.