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.
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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.
A symbolic reading needs contextual evidence; repetition is one possible clue.
Imagery, in the CED's usage, means...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.