![]() ![]() There’s more syllepsis in The Pickwick Papers (“Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair.”), Dombey and Son (“Mr. Most syllepsis is employed for comedic effect, so it’s no surprise that Dickens seemed to be rather fond of it. In this excerpt from The Pickwick Papers, Dickens joins together “take his hat” and “take his leave” to humorous effect. The Dickens quote above is a classic example of syllepsis, a literary device that playfully links two phrases with different meanings and connotations by using one common verb. Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836 This makes some sense: aporia comes to us from the Greek prefix a-, meaning "not," and poros, which means “passable.” Poros is more familiar to us in the name for those tiny openings on your face, pores.ĭefinition: the use of a word in the same grammatical relation to two adjacent words in the context with one literal and the other metaphorical in senseĪt length Mr. He knows where he’s going to begin, but he uses aporia to help guide his audience towards an intended conclusion: that the bride and groom have more good qualities than he can list in a toast.Īporia also refers to a logical impasse or contradiction, particularly in philosophy and textual criticism. When the best man at a wedding introduces his celebratory toast of the bride and groom with, “Where do I even begin?”, he’s pretending that he’s uncertain about how to enumerate the qualities of the happy couple in order to hint to the assembled well-wishers that the bride and groom have so many good qualities that it’s difficult to choose. When the doubt expressed is pretended, it can be used to help plot a path through a speech or argument for the audience. When the doubt expressed is real, it shows the humility and humanity of the speaker, which can create a sense of compassion for the speaker (and their argument) in the audience. What can be said about aporia? (That question itself is an example of aporia!) Aporia is a literary device used to help guide a reader through a text, speech, or argument. “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” “I hate broccoli with the white-hot hate of a thousand suns” is both hyperbole and metaphor “You’re as big as a whale” is both hyperbole and simile (and rude).ĭefinition: an expression of real or pretended doubt or uncertainty especially for rhetorical effect The difference is that hyperbole is always gross overstatement, whereas simile and metaphor aren’t always. ![]() Simile is when two things are compared using the words like or as, as in “cheeks as red as roses” or “hair like fire” metaphor is when a word or phrase that literally means something else is used figuratively in order to describe another thing, as in “drowning in debt.” Many people claim that hyperbole, simile, and metaphor can’t possibly overlap, but that’s not true. Hyperbole can often look like simile or metaphor. Hyperbole came into English in the 15th century from the Greek words hyper, meaning “over,” and ballein, meaning “to throw or cast.” When you use hyperbole, you are overshooting the target (not hyperbole). It’s not just moderate exaggeration, but extreme exaggeration: being hungry enough to eat a horse, or so angry you will literally explode, or having to walk 40 miles uphill both ways to school every day. ![]() Hyperbole is probably the one literary and rhetorical device on this list that most people have heard of. ![]()
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