Synaesthesia is a rhetorical device or figure of speech where one sense is described in terms of another.[1] This may often take the form of a simile.[2] One can distinguish the literary joining of terms derived from the vocabularies of sensory domains from synaesthesia as a neuropsychological phenomenon.[3]

Panchronistic tendencies

It has been suggested that, in the tradition of Romantic poetry, the sensory transfer consisting in the synaesthesic metaphor tends to be from a lower (less differentiated) sense to a higher sense. In this respect, the sequence of senses from low to high is generally taken to be touch, taste, smell, sound, then sight.[4] This observation was named a panchronistic tendency by Stephen Ullmann since he saw the lowest levels of sense having the poorest vocabulary.[4] Upwards transfers are thought to have strong emotional effects, but downwards transfers generally witty effects.[3]

Rhetorical synaesthesia as simile

Examples of synaesthesic simile:

Rhetorical synaesthesia as transmodal modification

When a modifier which would normally apply to one sense is used collocating a noun evocative of another sense, this is known as transmodal modification.[2] Examples include:

Rhetorical synaesthesia as transmodal predication

When a noun evoking one sense is linked with a predicate evoking another, this is known as transmodal predication.[2] Examples include:

  • "My nostrils see her breath burn like a bush." (Dylan Thomas, When all my Five and Country Senses See)[2]
  • "the silence that dwells in the forest is not so black" (Oscar Wilde, Salome)[2]

Synaesthetic polysemy

When a linkage of two senses depends upon a pun, this is known as synaesthetic polysemy.[2] Examples include:

"the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music"

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant[2]

References

  1. ↑ Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence. p. 32.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Anderson, Earl R. (1998). A Grammar of Iconism. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 199.
  3. 1 2 Tsur, Reuven (Spring 2007). "Issues in Literary Synaesthesia". Style. 41 (1): 30–52.
  4. 1 2 Ullmann, Stephen (1957). The Principles of Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.


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