Figures of speech:- 4. Apostrophe - (1) Apostrophe is a form of personification. (2) Dont confuse the Apostrophe which is a Figure of speech and the apostrophe which is a punctuation mark. (3) Apostrophe is an exclamatory figure of speech (4) By this figure a writer addresses some inanimate ( lifeless ) thing, idea, or dead or an absent person as if it were present. (5) That means, the author breaks off from addressing the audience (in a play ) and directs speech to a third party. This addressee is a personified imaginary object. To get rid of any confusion, lets go through some examples : (1.) In William Shakespeares Julius Caesar, , Mark Antony addresses the corpse of Caesar in the speech that begins- O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of Earth........ ( In literature, Apostrophe is a figure of speech sometimes represented by the exclamation O. ) (2.) In his play Macbeth, Shakespeare makes use of an Apostrophe like this, Macbeth has a strange vision of a dagger and talks to it as if it were another person. (3) Twinkle twinkle little star... (written by Jane Taylor, is a childs address ( speaking ) to a star, is a classic example of an Apostrophe. (4) John Donne comes up with the use of an apostrophe in his poem , Death be not proud. ( The poet talks to death, an abstract idea as if it were a person capable of comprehending his feelings.) English literature is replete with ( full of ) instances of Apostrophes. Most famous poets including Words worth, Lord Byron, John Keats, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman and so many others have used Apostrophe ( a rhetorical device ) in their writing.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 05:52:15 +0000
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