We explain what personification or prosopopeia is and various examples in poetry. Also, metaphor, hyperbole, and comparison.
What is personification?
The prosopopeia or personification is a Literary figure which consists of attributing to a animal, object or inanimate entity properties human, such as speak, act, react or feel, in order to better express an idea about it. It is a kind of metaphor ontological, that is, a Figure of speech to beautify, enhance or give originality to what has been said.
The prosopopoeia is considered a fictional stylistic resource, since it confers human properties on those who lack them, often as an excuse to "dialogue" or "confront" said referents. For example, it is used in poems or songs in which you speak to love, to destiny or to death, As if they were persons with which you can debate.
It is a very common resource in the poetry, songs and in general in literary fiction. It is also possible to speak of personification when creating symbols or characters that represent or symbolically embody a nation or to an idea, like Uncle Sam of the Americans, that represents the country.
Examples of personification
The following are examples of the use of personification in the literature (in italics the prosopopoeia is indicated):
- From “Spain, take that chalice away from me” by César Vallejo (Peru):
"Children of the world, this
mother Spain with her belly piggyback;"
- From “A un olmo seco” by Antonio Machado (Spain):
“The centennial elm in the hill
that licks the Duero!”
- From "The country of the sun" by Rubén Darío (Nicaragua):
"How is that
you harmonious sister do sing to the gray sky, your aviary of nightingales, your formidable music box? "
- From "Chess" by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina):
"When the players are gone,
when time has consumed them,
the rite will certainly not have ceased ”.
Metaphor
Metaphors are a set of rhetorical or literary figures that have in common a working principle: that of assigning properties or characteristics of another thing directly to one thing, in order to establish a relationship of similarity that is eloquent, beautiful or original.
It is a resource widely used in songs and poems, which operates in a way very similar to the simile or comparison, with the exception that it does not use a nexus between the compared terms.
For example:
- "He carried his loneliness on his back." To indicate that loneliness hurt or tormented him, the comparison with a weight that he carries on his back is used.
- "He showed him the pearls of his mouth." To indicate the whiteness and beauty of the teeth of the character, they are compared to pearls.
Comparison
The simile or comparison It is also a rhetorical figure, very similar to metaphor in the sense that it compares or compares two referents in order to attribute to one characteristics of the other, but in this case said comparison is evident and indirect, since it requires a link that makes it explicit: "like", "similar to", "similar to", "which", etc.
For example:
- "He had jet black eyes." To indicate the degree of blackness of those eyes, they are compared to jet black by a nexus ("like").
- "The man fled, like a recently released bird." To indicate the way in which the man fled, a comparison by means of a nexus ("which") is used, thus comparing it with the situation of the recently released bird.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a type of metaphor, that is, a rhetorical figure, in which a comparison is carried out between two referents, thus establishing an exaggerated proportion, which must be interpreted not literally, but figuratively. In other words, it is an exaggeration that is carried out for expressive purposes.
For example:
- "Pedro was tall as a Mountain”. To indicate that Peter was very tall and stout, he is compared to a mountain, which is literally impossible, but figuratively valid.
- “That was a change from heaven to Earth”. To indicate that it was a radical change, it is compared with two radically opposite things, whose relationship is extreme, exaggerated.