Imagery

Outline:

Imagery is a word used in literary terms to refer to mental images that are evoked by the use of descriptive language. Imagery in this sense is a series of words used to create visual picture of the experience. It helps the reader imagine the sensations described by the author, through his language. The author uses action words which bring out sensory experience by creating the mental image of the subject. Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification and assonance.

Imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that trigger the senses and help create mental images. Imagery need not be only visual; they also include the five senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell which responds to the description of the author. Examples of visual imagery can be found in the poem. Ode to A Nightingale." It is a poem in which Keats uses detailed description to contrast natural beauty and reality, life and death. In the opening verse, the writer becomes captivated by the nightingale's peaceful song. Throughout, the song becomes a powerful spell that transcends the mortal world of Keats. Interwoven throughout the poem are images that reflect his thoughts about death. It is important to note that Keats' father & mother died when he was young and his brother had recently died of tuberculosis, which probably accounts for this focus.

In the first stanza, Keats' mood is low and depressed but the nightingale's song creates a state of euphoria in him that allows him to escape reality. He is not envious of the bird's happy "lot" but is comforted by the nightingale's singing which lifts him from his unhappy mood.

              

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

 My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,  

  But being too happy in thine happiness,
 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
   In some melodious plot
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
  Singest of summer in full-throated ease

The elements in a literary work are used to evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative language, imagery is a term which can apply to any and all elements of a poem that evoke sensory experience and emotional response, whether figurative or literal, and also applies to the concrete things which are used as a image.

Imaginative language transfers the poet's impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to the attentive reader as in "The Cloud  ," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers,

  From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

  In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

 The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,

 As she dances about the sun.

 Effective imagery has the power to utilize the inner wisdom of the reader and arouse meditative and inspirational responses. It adds more concrete initial impact, when the reader is able to get an image to relate to the description.

Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a work, thus serving to create a particular effect. Images of disease, corruption, and death, for example, are recurrent patterns of Shakespeare's ‘Tempest’ .Imagery can also emphasize a theme or a thought, as do the suggestions of dissolution, depression, and mortality in John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." Imagery is used effectively by W.H.Davies to state that nothing is wonderful than “Leisure” to enjoy the beauty of life.

LEISURE

What is this life if’ full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to see in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

.

The poet states in the first two lines, the theme of the poem. Then he goes onto paint small little pictures, which we can see and enjoy. The poet could just state ‘I see this or that’ but it is possible to conjure up, much more specific images by using figures of speech such as simile, personification or metaphor. The poet compares nature to beautiful woman, sparkling water to star studded sky at night. This line is simile.

According to M.H. Abrahams, Imagery is one of the most common terms used in modern criticism. Its application ranges from the mental pictures experienced by the reader of the poem, to the totality of elements which make up a poem. C.Day. Lewis in his ‘Poetic Image’ talks of an image, as a picture made out of words and that, a poem may itself be, an image, composed from multiplicity of images. Three uses of the word imagery are frequently meant.

Imagery is used to refer to all the qualities , objects or images taken collectively in the poem or works of literature , whether by literal description or by indirect reference using figures of speech such as simile, metaphor personification. For e.g. in Wordsworth’s poem ‘She dwelt among the Untrodden’ ways

 ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy tone
Half hidden from the eye!
-- Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

The imagery in this broad sense refers to literal objects. The poem refers to (ways, maid grave) as well as the violet, and stone of the metaphor and star and sky of the simile; in the second stanza. The term image should not be taken to imply a visual reproduction of the object referred to, as some readers experience visual images on reading the passage and some do not and among those who do, the explicitness and details of the mind – pictures vary greatly. Also imagery includes auditory, tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) or kinesthetic (sensations of movement) as well as visual qualities. In his’ In memoriam’ number 101 for e.g.: Tennyson’s references are to qualities of smell and hearing, as well as to sight, in the lines

Unloved, that beech will gather brown…

         And many a rose-carnation feed

           With summer spice the humming air…

         

Imagery is used in the narrow sense, to signify only descriptions of visual in         

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

 The rock shone bright, the Kirk no less,

           That stands above the rock:

           The moonlight steeped in silentness

           The steady weathercock.

Most commonly imagery is used to signify figurative language, especially usage of metaphors and similes. In fact recent criticism has stressed imagery in this sense as an essential component in poetry and as a major clue to poetic meaning, structure and effect.

 TYPES OF VISUAL IMAGES :

SIMPLE DESCRIPTION - a  large   number  of  images  which  arise  in a poem come from simple description of visible objects or actions. . DRAMATIC SITUATION 
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE - as soon as the reader becomes aware that the poem is a dramatic monologue, he visualizes a speaker with the result that the particularity of the situation is evident. 

 DIALOGUE - has the same effect as Dramatic Monologue. 

 STORY - like description, narration causes the reader or hearer to form images.  When the reader realizes that he is being told a tale he visualizes from habit; he does not wish to miss the point of the story. 

 METONYMY - when a poet uses metonymy, he names one thing when he really  
means another thing with which the first is closely connected. e.g. Seven little foreheads stared up at me from the first row. (where "foreheads" is used for "eyes" ). 

 SYNECDOCHE - when a poet uses synecdoche, he names a part of a thing when he means whole thing  (or vice versa) or the genius for the species. 6. ONOMATOPOEIA - although imagery usually  refers to visual images, there are also aural images.  The use of words which sound like their meaning is called onomatopoeia. e.g. buzz, hiss, clang , splash, murmur, chatter, etc. 

          

The persona of the poet, which is the deep well of his poetry will be a world created from all that he has known and felt and seen and heard and thought. His image-making poetic faculty and his imagination will put together his memories and his immediate perceptions into numberless varieties of shapes and associations beauty and power. The poet will always employ images in his poetry. However hard he tries, he cannot make poetry with out imagery.