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What Are the Different Types of Imagery?

Cynde Gregory
Cynde Gregory

Human beings have always been driven to explain the unknown, remember their history and express their emotions through artistic uses of language. Storytelling, poetry, song and drama are the vehicles by which every human experience has been captured and honored. One of the most powerful of the literary devices creates a visual picture to help express some kind of meaning. There are many types of imagery that are used literarily, including simile, metaphor and synecdoche.

At its simplest, the term "imagery" simply means a group of words that create a mental picture. Writers know that a picture truly is worth a thousand words in the minds of readers, so thy attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns that will force readers to visualize rather than intellectualize. Personifying is one way that this is accomplished. A writer who refers to a house on the block has provided information but not a picture. A writer who refers to a dilapidated, gray house squatting on a treeless lot has simultaneously created an image and suggested human traits.

Use of imagery in a poem or other work may be for the purpose of conveying to the reader a full and thorough description of something, such as a landscape.
Use of imagery in a poem or other work may be for the purpose of conveying to the reader a full and thorough description of something, such as a landscape.

Among the types of imagery that school children are taught, the first is simile. Most adults remember being drilled in the definition: a simile is the comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as." It’s a functional definition, but it misses the heart of the matter. Simile finds the same sense of being within two things that, on the surface, seem to share nothing in common. It is natural to even a young child, who might, for example, describe a garden hose as being like a water snake.

Imagery in literature will force the reader to visualize rather than intellectualize.
Imagery in literature will force the reader to visualize rather than intellectualize.

Another one of the types of imagery is the use of metaphor. Like simile, metaphor finds identification between two unlike things, but it merges them into a single entity, creating a single image that reflects qualities of both things. This type of image, too, is natural to children who delight in finding connections between things that bear little in common. A child who says “I’m eating a tree” while nibbling on a stalk of broccoli is choosing metaphor from the types of imagery to describe what is happening.

Good writers attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns.
Good writers attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns.

Synecdoche is another type of imagistic literary device. It is almost like a literary nickname, not for a person but for a thing. Synechdoche is the name given when a larger thing or idea is implied by the naming of a smaller piece of the whole. Through use and over time, synecdochic expressions can become idiomatic expressions that are used almost to the exclusion of the original name for the whole.

Poets such as Michael Drayton utilized imagery in their works.
Poets such as Michael Drayton utilized imagery in their works.

An example of this is the replacement of the term "worker" by the word "hand." A farmer might mention he’s just hired a new hand, and a ship’s captain will shout “All hands on deck!” when the seas become rough. Parts-for-whole substitution is also common for objects. A sail represents a ship, and a crown represents a king, for example.

Discussion Comments

serenesurface

@SteamLouis-- Yes, the seven types are different. They are categorized according to sensations and actions. Some are also like feelings. The seven are auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, subjective, kinesthethic and gustatory.

Visual and auditory are self explanatory. They are about vision and sounds. Tactile are things we can touch and feel the textures of. Olfactory are things we can smell, scents. Subjective are natural experiences like hunger, pain. Kinesthetic are imagery relating to movement. Gustatory is about movement.

SteamLouis

I have homework on this topic. I need to know the seven types of imagery and what they mean. Can anyone help? I think that these seven types are different than metaphor, simile, etc.

turquoise

Shakespeare must be the king of imagery. He used symbolic imagery like metaphors abundantly in his works and very intelligently.

We are reading Hamlet in class and learning about the various metaphors. They're not easy to understand. They require some thinking because the imagery is symbolic and a lot of it has to do with the time period and the types of symbols that were used in Britain at the time.

For example, flowers are apparently symbolic of virginity. That's why Ophelia carries flowers and later gives them away. The immorality of Hamlet's mother and uncle are symbolic of the degrading morals and ethics of society.

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    • Use of imagery in a poem or other work may be for the purpose of conveying to the reader a full and thorough description of something, such as a landscape.
      By: robertbohrer1
      Use of imagery in a poem or other work may be for the purpose of conveying to the reader a full and thorough description of something, such as a landscape.
    • Imagery in literature will force the reader to visualize rather than intellectualize.
      By: vpardi
      Imagery in literature will force the reader to visualize rather than intellectualize.
    • Good writers attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns.
      By: Mark Abercrombie
      Good writers attempt to combine vivid or unexpected verbs and specific nouns.
    • Poets such as Michael Drayton utilized imagery in their works.
      Poets such as Michael Drayton utilized imagery in their works.
    • Use of the metaphor, "Time is money" may evoke an image of a clock with dollar signs.
      By: ad_stock
      Use of the metaphor, "Time is money" may evoke an image of a clock with dollar signs.