Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Definition and Examples of Hyperbole: Literary terms

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Hyperbole:

Obvious, extravagant EXAGGERATION or overstatement, not intended to be taken literally, but used figuratively to create HUMOR or emphasis. The most extreme examples of hyperbole occur, not surprisingly, in love POETRY, A CONTEXT, moreover, in which hyperbole seems psychologically believable. In Andrew Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress,” for example, the SPEAKER declares:

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow,

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze:

Hyperbole from penguin dictionary:

hyperbole (Gk 'overcasting') A figure of speech that contains an exaggeration for emphasis. for example, Hotspur's rant in Henry IV, Pt I (1, iii, 201):

By heaven methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honor from the pale fac'd moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom line could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honor by the locks.

Hyperbole was very common in Tudor and Jacobean drama, and in heroic drama (q.v.). lt is an essential part of burlesque (q.v.). There are plentiful examples in writers of comic fiction; in Dickens, especially.

Everyday instances, of which there are many, are: 'I haven't seen you for ages'; 'as old as the hills'; 'terrible weather', and so on.

Hyperbole from Oxford dictionary

hyperbole [hy-per-boli], exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a FIGURE OF SPEECH not meant literally. An everyday example is a complaint 'I've been waiting here for ages.' Hyperbolic expressions are common in the inflated style of dramatic speech is known as BOMBAST, as in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra when Cleopatra praises the dead Antony:

His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm

Crested the world.

In Andrew Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress,” for example, the SPEAKER declares:

Two hundred to adore each breast:

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.