Poetry Hacks

Personification

What is it? Where non-human things – animals, ideas or objects – are referred to as if they were human; e.g. when using the expression 'fortune favours the brave', good luck (fortune, an idea) is personified , since it is referred to as if it liked being generous to (favouring, a human action) those who have courage. Also called prosopopoeia . What effect does it usually have? Personification enables poets to write about ideas in a more dramatic way, especially where ideas come into conflict with one another. What else should I look out for? Where a number of ideas — or even a whole belief system — is presented in poetry, then it is not uncommon for personification to be used; allegory is where narrative poems are constructed from characters that are, effectively, personified ideas.

An example of how it works … ‘Sonnet 64’ by William Shakespeare:

Time will come and take my love away

Here, as in many other sonnets, the speaker uses personification to express his fear that eventually, at some point in the future, he will lose his 'love'. The use of personification dramatizes the struggle between time and love, making it a battle between the two forces that the reader may visualise. As with all metaphor, the personification also creates ambiguity: is he saying that time will destroy the emotion of love? or will it remove the beloved? and is this 'taking away' to be understood as permanent or temporary?

Another example … The Prelude by William Wordsworth:

Oh Derwent, travelling over the green plains …

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