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'.