Images and Imagery
IntroducedAn image can be literal
- An image can be literal, or it can be a form of comparison that represents something in a text through associations with the senses.
- So an image is not automatically a metaphor.
- A described room is an image; so is a room used to stand for something else.
A red chair can simply be furniture; not every object is secretly applying for a symbolic role.
An image is always a form of comparison.
The CED says an image can be literal, or a comparison working through the senses.
Sensory imagery comes from description
- Descriptive words, such as adjectives and adverbs, contribute to sensory imagery.
- The senses are the mechanism: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.
- Naming which sense an image works through is a concrete first move that always has evidence behind it.
Imagery, in the CED's usage, means...
It names the pattern, not one picture.
Imagery is a collection
- A collection of images, known as imagery, may emphasize ideas in parts of or throughout a text.
- So imagery is a plural noun in the CED's usage — it names the pattern, not one picture.
- Analysing imagery therefore means showing that several images belong together.
One image, a joined group, or an unjoined list?
Sort each set by whether it is imagery in the CED's sense.
Select all the things that contribute to sensory imagery.
The CED names adjectives and adverbs as examples of descriptive words.
Imagery is a collection, so three unrelated images are not imagery. The CED calls it a collection of images that emphasizes ideas — which means the analysis has to show what joins them. A list of vivid pictures with nothing in common is a list.
Three images are a pattern only if something ____ them.
A shared sense, a shared field, or a shared source.
Show why the images belong together
- Three images are a pattern only if something joins them: the same sense, the same field, the same source.
- Salt, tide, rope, rust belong together; salt, birdsong, brick probably do not.
- Naming the join is what makes it imagery rather than a list.
Put the imagery pass in order.
Grouping before naming is what keeps you from asserting a pattern that is not there.
An imagery pass
- List the images and mark which sense each works through.
- Group any that share a sense, a field or a source.
- Name the idea the group emphasises, and where in the text it operates.
Salt, tide, rope, rust. Four images, joined by a single field — the sea, and specifically what the sea does to things left near it. Together they emphasise an idea no one of them carries alone: that staying is itself a form of damage.
An image can be literal or a sensory comparison. Descriptive words contribute to sensory imagery — name the sense. Imagery is a collection of images that emphasizes ideas, so the analysis must show what joins them: a shared sense, field or source.