Definition and Examples of Image and Imagery – Literary terms

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Definition and Examples of Image and Imagery – Literary terms

Image:

Language referring to something that can be perceived through one or more of the senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, the sense of motion, or the sense of heat or cold. The following lines from John Masefield's “Sea Fever" contain images referring to sight, touch, hearing, and motion:

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,

And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking.

An image may simply name something; it may describe it literally, or it may invoke it figuratively, as in a METAPHOR, SIMILE, or PERSONIFICATION. An image can also be a SYMBOL.

Imagery:

The making of “pictures in words," the pictorial quality of a literary work achieved through a collection of IMAGES. In a broader sense, imagery is often used as synonymous with FIGURE OF SPEECH or FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (SIMILE, METAPHOR, or SYMBOL). Imagery appeals to the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and touch, and to internal feelings, as well as to the sense of sight. It evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicates MOOD, TONE, and meaning. It can be both figurative and literal, as these lines from Elinor Wylie's “Puritan Sonnet” demonstrate:

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,

Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves;

That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,

Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,

Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,

And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

See also:

METAPHOR,

PERSONIFICATION,

SIMILE,

SYMBOL.

Tags: imagery examples, imagery examples, imagery definition, types of imagery, imagery in poetry, imagery meaning