Symbolic Language

Egon: I'm worried. It's getting crowded in there and all my data points to something big on the horizon.

Winston What do you mean, big?

Egon: Well, let's say this twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning's sample, it would be a twinkie... thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

Winston: That's a big twinkie.

— Ghostbusters

"She Walks in Beauty" is counted among the best known of Byron's lyrics and is the most famous of the verses published in his 1815 volume, Hebrew Melodies. While critics have admired the poem for its gracefulness, lyricism, and masterful use of internal rhyme--William Dick, for example, writing in Byron and His Poetry, calls it a work of "peculiar sweetness and beauty"; in his essay "George Gordon, Lord Byron," Northrop Frye remarks on the work's "caressing rhythm"; and Thomas L. Ashton in Byron's Hebrew Melodies points out that it is the "most enjoyed" of all the verses in that early volume--commentators have generally regarded it as a pleasing "mood" piece of no particular intellectual interest. Frye, writing about Byron's lyrical poetry in general, claims that it "contains nothing that 'modern' critics look for: no texture, no ambiguities, no intellectualized ironies, no intensity, no vividness of phrasing, the words and images being vague to the point of abstraction." The poetic emotion in Byron's lyrics, according to Frye, is made out of "worn," "ordinary" language, and he singles out "She Walks in Beauty" for its "flat conventional diction" whose strength lies in its musicality and not its language or ideas. Herbert Read, in Byron, offers a similar criticism of the poem, claiming that Byron uses words that are apt to express his thoughts but which lack "originality of . . . application . . . or collocation" and hence do not produce "an essentially somatic thrill of appreciation." Read points out that the poem's references to "cloudless climes" and "starry skies" are obvious clichés, and concludes from this that Byron "was not in the fundamental sense poetic," and certainly not on a par with other "major" English poets.

While it is easy on the one hand to see why these critics regard the poem as they do--it is, after all, a work much of whose charm lies in its simplicity of diction, gentle musical rhythms, and singularity of concern as its offers lavish praise of a beautiful woman--on the other hand, they do not do justice to the subtle complexity of the piece. They overlook the fact that, with his straightforward hymn of adulation to a beautiful woman, Byron might be saying much more--for example, about the nature of art, reality, and immortality--than at first would be suspected. The critics ignore, too, that the poem manifests the impulse, common among romantic writers, to avoid didacticism, or overt instructional intent, and to communicate human concerns not in the language of reason but of feeling. It is not that the poem does not convey subtle and complex ideas, but rather this is done not in intellectual terms but by calling upon the emotional responses of the reader. Thus it seems unfair and incorrect to regard Byron as "unpoetic" because of the simplicity of expression used in these verses. Although the poem is certainly set forth in the words of plain speech, it can be argued that what Byron does in "She Walks in Beauty" is present in simple, immediate form a wealth of ideas that could not be done justice to in more ambiguous, intellectualized, intense, or vivid language.

The poem, as is well known, was written by Byron after seeing for the first time his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. John Wilmot, at a party. She appeared in a black mourning gown decorated with spangles. The verses, written by Byron the next day, describe and praise a beautiful woman, shrouded in the beauty of the starry night, in idealized, other-worldly terms. It is not just her physical beauty that is exalted, but her "nameless grace," or inner beauty, that is glorified. In the poem, she is associated immediately with a more exotic locale than England, a place of "cloudless climes." The most intense image in the poem is that of light, but it is a different sort of light than is normally associated with heavenly beauty; it is muted or "tender," not the light of "gaudy day," but a light that is fused with darkness. Byron overturns the reader's expectations by associating beauty with darkness rather than light and also by showing how light and darkness merge to create a perfect harmony. The woman's dark hair "lightens o'er her face," and the poet suggests that if she contained within her more darkness or more light, she would be "half impaired," or less than perfect as she is now. She also exudes a nameless grace or indescribable inner loveliness that matches her exterior perfection.

At first reading, it might seem that the poem is merely a beautiful tribute to a lovely woman, a poem that is perhaps exceptional because of the interesting use of the images of darkness and light, the harmony of inner and outer beauty, and the rhythmic musicality of the lines, but which does not offer much else of intellectual interest. But, upon closer examination and especially when considered in the context of the volume of verses in which it first appeared, another interpretation suggests itself that shows the poem to be far richer and subtler than most critics have allowed.

Byron certainly thought of the work as significant in some way, as he requested of the songwriter Isaac Nathan, who composed the musical accompaniment for the verses in the Hebrew Melodies, that it be the opening poem in any edition of the volume. The Hebrew Melodies were not a project that Byron conceived of himself, but the poet was asked by his friend Douglas Kinnaird to collaborate on a volume of verses set to "ancient" Jewish melodies that Nathan would arrange for contemporary performance. "She Walks in Beauty" was actually written in the summer of 1814, some months before Byron was commissioned to write the pieces for Nathan's volume, and its subject matter is certainly not biblical in any way. But, for some reason, Byron considered the poem to be a fitting overture to the volume of poems. One possible reason for this, suggested by Frederick W. Shilstone in Byron and the Myth of Tradition, is that Byron considered the Hebrew Melodies to be more than simply a work about the history of the Jews, but also about the mystical power of music and, ultimately, of art. The poems in that volume, according to Shilstone, are very different, some treating biblical and other purely secular themes, but what they have in common is a concern with earthly life, immortality, and art--especially how poetry takes the materials of the real and physical world and renders them immortal.

If Byron considered "She Walks in Beauty" to be so central to the Hebrew Melodies that he insisted it be the lead poem in every edition of the work, it seems reasonable to suppose that he thought it embodied many of that volume's most important ideas. And, if Shilstone is correct and a concern with the power of art is at the heart of the work, this suggests an interpretation that in describing the idealized "she" of the poem, Byron was not merely honoring a beautiful woman but also offering a hymn of praise to a personification of art, and of poetry in particular. That is, Byron, in praising and describing the lovely Mrs. Wilmot, is also praising and describing what he thinks of as the power of art and poetry. This is certainly supported by the text itself if art (or poetry) is thought of as being something that is not only bright and illuminating but also dark and mysterious. Poetry is not only beautiful for what it shows but for what it hides, as it casts light on certain ideas but also leaves some things up to the imagination of the reader. Poetry too can be thought of as having the internal and external beauty that is mentioned in the poem as well as a perfect balance of what is revealed (light) and what is concealed (darkness) to convey meaning. It has a "nameless grace" that would be impaired if the combination of illumination and concealment of ideas were different than it is. All art has an inner quality that cannot be described and that would be impaired if the artist were to have made any part of it differently. If art and poetry are seen in this way, they clearly fit in with and may be seen as being personified by the beautiful woman of Byron's poem.

In his description of Mrs. Wilmot, Byron takes a character from real life and, with his words, elevates her until she becomes immortal. He describes her in terms that are not of this world, declaring that "all that's best" of dark and bright meet in her person, that she displays a perfect balance of darkness and light, that her mind is pure and at peace, and that her heart is innocent. This, then, is the power that poetry has, as it takes something from the earthly world and renders it immortal. A mortal woman is described in the words of the poet and is elevated to a divine status. In the same breath, Byron uses the poem in which the woman is immortalized by poetry to offer his own hymn to poetry.

According to this reading of "She Walks in Beauty," most critics have been too dismissive of the lyric as being one-dimensional when it can be seen to have considerable depth of meaning. Some might complain that the reading presented here is not plausible, and that to see the poem as being a praise of poetry itself is not suggested by the simple language and thoughts presented in it. However, if it is remembered that one of the goals of the romantic poets was to convey ideas not only through rational means but by conveying feelings and moods, offering insights into the world of nature and art through the most simple aspects of human experience, it seems entirely possible that with his straightforward, plainly written poem, Byron was calling upon the emotional response and imagination of the reader to see beyond the description of other-worldly beauty and recognize the force that renders such things immortal. Indeed it is by using the simplest of words and ideas, unhindered by intellectualized concerns, that the poet can convey such pure emotion and invite the reader to move beyond the overt description of the poem and recognize its other possibilities.

Kukathas, Uma. "Critical Essay on 'She Walks in Beauty'." Poetry for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 14. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Oct. 2014.

Hyperbole Understatement Litotes

Literary Techniques

An English teacher's heart will go pitter-pat whenever he or she sees close engagement with the language of the text.

That means reading every word: it's not enough to have a vague sense of the plot. Maybe that sounds obvious, but few people pay serious attention to the words that make up every work of literature. Remember, English papers aren't about the real world; they're about representations of the world in language. Words are all we have to work with, and you have to pay attention to them.

The problem's most acute in poetry. Here, for instance, is the opening of Gray's famous “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard”:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

The surface-level meaning is something like this: “At evening, when the curfew bell rings, the cows and the plowman go home and leave me in the dark.” Many students read passages like this, “decode” them into something they can understand, and then ask, “Why didn't he just say that?”

That's usually a dismissive rhetorical question, with the implication, “Why is that nasty old author making my life difficult when he could have said it simply?” But in fact “Why didn't he just say that?” can be a great question, and you should learn to take it seriously. Why did he say it in the denser way? Answer that, and you're on your way to a good thesis. (Hint: with good writers, the answer is almost never “Because he had to rhyme” or “Because he couldn't do it any better.”)

(https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/EngPaper/close.html)

Archetypes

Synechdoche and Metonymy

Water: birth-death-resurrection; creation; purification and redemption; fertility and growth.

Sea/ocean: the mother of all life; spiritual mystery; death and/or rebirth; timelessness and eternity.

Rivers: death and rebirth (baptism); the flowing of time into eternity; transitional phases of the life cycle. . . .

Sun (fire and sky are closely related): creative energy; thinking, enlightenment, wisdom, spiritual vision.

Rising sun: birth, creation, enlightenment.

Setting sun: death.

Colors:

Red: blood, sacrifice, passion; disorder.

Green: growth, hope, fertility.

Blue: highly positive; secure; tranquil; spiritual purity.

Black: darkness, chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, wisdom, evil, melancholy.

White: light, purity, innocence, timelessness; [negative: death, terror, supernatural]

Yellow: enlightenment, wisdom.

Serpent (snake, worm): symbol of energy and pure force (libido); evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction.

Numbers:

3 - light, spiritual awareness, unity (the Holy Trinity); male principle.

4 - associated with the circle, life cycle, four seasons; female principle, earth, nature, elements.

Wise old Man: savior, redeemer, guru, representing knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, intuition, and morality.

Garden: paradise, innocence, unspoiled beauty.

Tree: denotes life of the cosmos; growth; proliferation; symbol of immortality; phallic symbol.

Desert: spiritual aridity; death; hopelessness

Seasons:

Spring - rebirth; genre/comedy.

Summer - life; genre/romance.

Fall - death/dying; genre/tragedy.

Winter - without life/death; genre/irony.

Freud's symbolism/archetypes:

Concave images (ponds, flowers, cups, vases, hollows): female or womb symbols.

Phallic symbols (towers, mountain peaks, snakes, knives, swords, etc.) male symbols.

Dancing, riding, or flying: symbols of sexual pleasure.

Types of Imagery

Recognizing a Symbol at Work

Does the object keep appearing in the text?

Does the object receive a fair amount of description?

Does the object receive a lot of notice from characters?

Does the object appear or disappear at a key moment in the text?

Does the object parallel the main character’s journey in some way?

Does the object appear in the opening or closing paragraph of the text?

Is the object referenced in the title?

Imagery: language that creates a sense-impression of a concrete object

Symbol: something that stands for something else and, in literature, has further significance that may gather according to differing interpretations. Symbols can be specific to one work or more commonly used (an archetype).

Metaphors and Similes: directly tell the reader what the object stands for

Allegory: an image that stands for just one defined quality or interpretation (symbols tend to be more open-ended)

Motif: an image, idea or incident that is repeated throughout a work or literature in general

one way to do this: look out for commonly used literary techniques

Symbolic language