Figures of Speech and Poetic Devices Questions and Answers

Answer: D

"Cold fire" is an example of Oxymoron.

An oxymoron joins two contradictory terms for effect: fire is hot, so 'cold fire' is a deliberate paradox in two words. Romeo's speech in Act I of Romeo and Juliet piles them up: 'cold fire, sick health, still-waking sleep'.

A metaphor describes one thing as another, metonymy substitutes something closely associated ('the Crown' for the monarch), and hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration. None depends, as here, on the clash of opposites.

Answer: B

The key identifies the figure as a transferred epithet.

The lines are from T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. A transferred epithet attaches to one thing an adjective that properly describes another. It is people who are restless, not nights; the sleepless lodgers of the cheap hotels pass their restlessness to the night itself. In the same way the 'muttering' belongs to the people in the retreats rather than to the places.

Synecdoche (part for whole) and metonymy (a thing named by something associated with it) do not fit, and although the streets seem almost alive, the key treats the epithet as the governing figure rather than personification.

Answer: B

The figure of speech is Metonymy.

In these lines from James Shirley's 'Death the Leveller', the sceptre and crown stand for kings, and the scythe and spade for poor labourers. Naming a thing closely associated with something in place of the thing itself is metonymy. The point is that death makes king and peasant equal.

Prosopopoeia is personification, which the lines do not use, a dead metaphor is one so familiar it is no longer felt as a figure, and a kenning is an Old English compound such as 'whale-road' for the sea.

Answer: B

The figure of speech is an Oxymoron.

The line ends Tennyson's lyric 'Tears, Idle Tears' from The Princess. 'Death in life' joins two contradictory terms in one phrase, which is the definition of an oxymoron: the memory of the past is a living death.

Parallelism is a repeated grammatical structure, a simile compares with 'like' or 'as', and a dead metaphor is a figure so worn it is no longer felt as one; none fits 'Death in life'.

Answer: C

The figure of speech is hyperbole.

The lines are from Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress. The speaker says that, if they had time enough, he would spend a hundred years praising the lady's eyes, two hundred on each breast and thirty thousand on the rest. These absurd spans of time are deliberate exaggeration, used to flatter and to set up the poem's turn to 'Time's winged chariot hurrying near'.

Irony says the opposite of what is meant, metonymy names a thing by something associated with it, and an oxymoron joins contradictory terms. The lines rely on none of these; their force is the overstatement.

Answer: C

The key's answer is juxtaposition.

The lines are from Dryden's mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe (1682), in which the dull poet Flecknoe chooses Shadwell as his heir. The satire works by setting words of honour and praise side by side with words of dullness: 'my perfect image', 'mature', 'confirmed' and 'full' sit against 'dullness' and 'stupidity'. This placing of incongruous terms together is what the key calls juxtaposition.

A transferred epithet moves an adjective from its proper noun to another ('a sleepless night'). Synecdoche uses a part for the whole, and metonymy a related thing for the thing itself. None is the device in these lines.