Literary trails: species, distinctive features, use

Every word in Russian has a nominative meaning. This helps to relate speech to reality and express thoughts. In addition to the main meaning, most words are included in a certain associative series and have an additional symbolic meaning, which is most often portable. Such a lexical property is actively used by poets and writers to create works of art, and a similar phenomenon in Russian has been called the figure of speech and literary paths. They give the text expressiveness and help more accurately convey their thoughts.

Types of artistic and visual means

Among the tropes, epithets, comparisons, metaphors, personifications, metonymy, periphrasis, synecdoche, litote, hyperbole are distinguished. The ability to see them in the text of a work of art makes it possible to understand the author's ideological intent, to enjoy the richness of the magnificent Russian language. And the use of tropes in his own speech is a sign of a person who is literate, cultured, who can speak accurately and expressively.

How can you identify in the text and learn how to use literary paths yourself?

Table with examples from art works

Let's see how recognized poets and writers do this.

Thus, literary paths - the table fully reflects their essential signs - can be identified even by a person who does not have a special education. It is necessary only to understand their essence. To do this, let us examine in more detail those means of expressiveness, which usually cause the greatest difficulties.

Metaphor and personification

Unlike comparison, in which there are two objects or phenomena - the original and the one that is taken for comparison, these literary paths contain only the second. In metaphor, similarity can be expressed in color, volume, form, purpose, etc. Here are examples of such use of words in a figurative sense: "the moon is a wooden clock ," " noon breathes ."

Avatar differs from the metaphor in that it represents a more developed image: " Suddenly the rising wind rushed and moaned all night ."

Metonymy, synecdoche, periphrasis

These literary trails are often confused with the metaphor described above. To avoid such errors, it should be remembered that the manifestation of contiguity in metonymy can be as follows:

• Content and what includes it: " eat a plate ";
• The author and his work: " I remembered all Gogol well ";
• Action and instrument for its commission: "the villages were doomed to swords ";
• The object and material from which it was made: " porcelain at the exhibition ";
• Place and people in it: "the city no longer slept ."

The synecdoca usually implies a quantitative relationship between objects and phenomena: " here everyone is aiming at the Napoleons ."

Perifraz

Sometimes writers and poets, for greater expressiveness and creation of imagery, replace the name of an object or phenomenon by indicating its essential sign. Peripheral helps also to exclude repeats and to link sentences in the text. Consider these literary trails with examples: " shining steel " - a dagger, "the author of" Mumu "- I. Turgenev," an old woman with a scythe "- death.