Definition and Examples of Personification

Tags: Literary Device, figure of speech, Literary Terms, personification examples, personification definition, what is personification

Definition and Examples of Personification:

A FIGURE OF SPEECH in which human characteristics and sensibilities are attributed to animals, plants, inanimate objects, natural forces, or abstract ideas. John Updike employs personification in this short poem:

Sunday Rain

The window screen

is trying to do

its crossword puzzle

but appears to know

only vertical words. 

Personification in Penguin Dictionary:

The impersonation or embodiment of. some quality or abstraction; the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects. Personification is inherent in many languages through the use of gender, and it appears to be very frequent in all literatures - especially in poetry. This example is from Sylvia Plath's The Moon  and the Yew Tree: 

The moon is no door. lt is a face in its own right, 

White as a knuckle and terribly upset. 

lt drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet 

With the 0-gape of complete despair. I live here. 

Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky -

Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. 

At the end, they soberly bong out their names. 

Personification from Oxford Dictionary:

Personification  a FIGURE OF SPEECH by which animals, abstract ideas or inanimate things are referred to as if they were human, as in Sir  Philip Sidney's line: 

Invention, Nature's child, fled step dame Study's blows 

This figure or TROPE, known in Greek as prosopopoeia, is common in most ages of poetry, and particularly in the 18th century. It has a special  function as the basis of ALLEGORY. In drama, the term is sometimes  applied to the impersonation of non-human things and ideas by human actors. Verb: personify. 

See also: PATHETIC FALLACY, FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.

Tags: Literary Device, figure of speech, Literary Terms, personification examples, personification definition, what is personification