Personification is an artistic technique quite often used in literature, the essence of which is to transfer personality characteristics to inanimate objects. With its help, figurative speech is ensured. This artistic technique is a variation. With its help, you can create original semantic structures that add color to the text. For example, “the reeds whisper” (which in real life can only be done by humans).
You can also find the name “personification”, which is a synonym. Wikipedia writes that personification is a term that is used in psychology when a person mistakes their qualities and emotional reactions attributes to another person(this mechanism is called projection, which underlies this process). In sociology, personification is used to shift responsibility for bad events onto another person.
Functions of personification in art
This artistic technique is used to solve various problems.
- Adding playful aspects to children's learning. For example, fables are full of personifications of various kinds. Animals are endowed human qualities, making it more interesting for the child to perceive the plot and find the moral of the work.
- Creating an emotional tone of the text. Personification can be used to attract the reader's attention to the work. It can find application not only in fiction, but also popular science. Personification is often used as one of the marketing techniques.
- Stimulate the reader’s imagination, give him the opportunity to experience what he read more colorfully.
And a number of other tasks are set by personification. This is what personification is used for.
Where is personification used?
One of the genres where personification is especially active is myth. In the texts of ancient peoples, human qualities were attributed to plants, animals, seas and oceans. Using an example, it was much easier to explain the essence of things, the reasons for the origin of the universe and the appearance of living beings. There were many gods who were embodied in inanimate objects and animals and had the same character traits as people.
Personification is also used in a fairy tale. We must draw a line between myth and fairy tale. The first is perceived as reality. That is, they believe in personification, denying that it is just an artistic device. In the case of a fairy tale, everything is clear - the characters are fictional. It does not aim to explain incomprehensible things like the origin of life on Earth.
Personification can also be used V scientific literature , although its quantity is significantly less than in fiction. Most often it is used in the form of stable expressions such as “it is raining”, which are used everywhere. That is, personification in scientific texts is used unconsciously, without the goal of creating colorfulness. Personification manifests itself most actively in art, not science.
How to find an avatar?
It is not difficult to find personification in prose or poetry. To do this, you need to start from the definition. Personification is when not a person endowed with human qualities. Example - the sun has set. Thus, in the famous poem by A. S. Pushkin “By the Lukomorye there is a green oak” from the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” there are the following lines:
And day and night, the learned cat keeps walking around the chain. He goes to the right - he starts a song, to the left - he tells a fairy tale.
Obviously, a cat cannot sing or tell a story; only humans can do this. This technique is called personification or personification.
What is the difference between personification and allegory?
Very often one can confuse personification and. Well, indeed, in both cases certain qualities are embodied in specific objects or living beings. However, there is a difference between these concepts. Personification is a type of metaphor and is a simple associative artistic device.
conclusions
Personification is good tool, which will help add expressiveness due to a successful comparison. It is used in a huge number spheres, starting with myths and ending scientific texts. This is a powerful technique that must be used carefully and in moderation.
Personification is called the endowment of inanimate objects with signs and properties of a person: Star speaks to star. The earth sleeps in a blue radiance (L.); The first morning breeze without a rustle... ran along the road (Ch.). Artists of words made personification the most important means of figurative speech. Personifications are used to describe natural phenomena, things surrounding a person that are endowed with the ability to feel, think, and act: Park swayed and groaned (Paust.); Spring wandered along the corridors with a light draft wind, breathing her girlish breath into her face (Paust.); Thunder muttered sleepily... (Paust.).In other cases, the objects around us “come to life,” as in the scene described by M. Bulgakov.
Margarita struck the keys of the piano, and the first howling sound echoed throughout the apartment. Becker's innocent cabinet instrument screamed frantically. The instrument howled, hummed, wheezed, rang...
Margarita floated out the window, found herself outside the window, swung lightly and hit the glass with a hammer. The window sobbed, and fragments ran down the marble-lined wall.
Personification- one of the most common tropes not only in fiction. It is used by politicians (Russia was knocked out from the shock of Gaidar’s reforms), personification is often found in scientific style(X-ray showed that air heals), in the journalistic (Our guns began to speak. The usual duel of batteries began. - Quiet.). The technique of personification enlivens the headlines of newspaper articles: “The ice track is waiting,” “The sun lights the beacons,” “The match brought records.”
Personification appears in the form of various tropes, most often these are metaphors, for example, in B. Pasternak: Separation will eat us both, Melancholy will devour the bones. The snow is withering away and sick with anemia, And you can hear in the corridor, What is happening in the open air, April talks about it in a casual conversation with a drop. He knows a thousand stories / About human grief... The branches of apple and cherry trees are dressed in whitish color. Sometimes personification is guessed in comparisons, artistic definitions: To those places, as a barefoot wanderer, the night makes its way along the fence, And behind it from the window sill, a trace of an overheard conversation (Past.); In the spring, that small grandchildren, with the ruddy sun-grandfather, Clouds play... From small torn, cheerful clouds, the red sun laughs, Like a girl from sheaves (N.); The east (P.) was covered with a ruddy dawn.
Interesting are the detailed personifications, thanks to which the author creates complete image. For example, Pushkin wrote: I brought a playful muse, To the noise of feasts and violent disputes, Thunderstorms of midnight watches; And to them at crazy feasts She carried her gifts And, like a bacchante, frolicked, Over the cup she sang for the guests, And the youth days gone by She was wildly dragged after her. And in “The Little House in Kolomna” the poet even jokingly addresses her: - Sit down, muse: arms in your sleeves, Legs under the bench, don’t turn around, playful Now let’s begin... The complete likening of an inanimate object to a person is called personification (from the Latin persona person, facto - do). To illustrate this type of personification, we present (in abbreviation) the beginning of Andrei Platonov’s fairy tale “The Unknown Flower”.
Once upon a time there lived a little flower. He grew up alone in a vacant lot. There was nothing for him to eat in stone and clay; drops of rain that fell from the sky fell on the top of the earth and did not penetrate to its root, but the flower lived and lived and grew little by little higher. He raised the leaves against the wind; specks of dust fell from the wind onto the clay; and in those specks of dust there was food for the flower. To moisten them, the flower guarded the dew all night and collected it drop by drop...
During the day the flower was guarded by the wind, and at night by the dew. He worked day and night to live and not die. He needed life and overcame his pain from hunger and fatigue with patience. Only once a day did the flower rejoice: when the first ray of the morning sun touched its tired leaves.
As we see, personification is achieved by a number of personifications: the flower lives, overcoming hunger, pain, fatigue, needs life and rejoices in the sun. Thanks to this combination of tropes, a living artistic image is created.
In a journalistic style, personification can achieve a high rhetorical sound. So. during the Great Patriotic War A.N. Tolstoy wrote in the article “Moscow is Threatened by an Enemy,” addressing Russia:
My motherland. you have had a difficult test, but you will come out of it with victory, because you are strong, you are young, you are kind, you carry goodness and beauty in your heart. You are all hopeful for a bright future, you are building it with your own big hands, your best sons die for him.
Rhetoric also highlights the opposite of personification - reification, in which a person is endowed with the properties of inanimate objects. For example: a bandit's bulletproof forehead: A traffic police sergeant with a face like a no-travel sign. Where did you dig this idiot from! This is a stump, a log! (From the gas.) - Among the reifications there are many common linguistic ones - oak, saw, mattress, hat, health is unstuck.
Writers know how to achieve vivid expressiveness of speech with the help of reification: His heart knocked and for a moment fell somewhere, then returned, but with a dull needle lodged in it (Bulg.); The head drops the leaves, feeling the approaching autumn!. Soon a fly will land on your head without any brakes: your head is like a tray, but what has been done in life! (From a magazine). Reification is often used in a humorous context, which can be confirmed by examples from the letters of A.P. Chekhov: Vaudeville stories flow out of me like oil from the depths of Baku: I kept sitting at home, going for roses... not knowing where to direct my feet, and inclining the arrow of my heart now to the north, now to the south, when suddenly - fuck . A telegram arrived.
Like personifications, reifications take the form of metaphors and similes, as can be seen from the examples given. Let us also recall the classic reifications in the form of comparisons by B. Pasternak: ...When I, in front of everyone, with you, like a shoot with a tree, Grew together in my immeasurable melancholy... She was so dear to Him, every trait, As the shores are close to the sea. The entire surf line. How the reeds flood. A wave after a storm. Sank to the bottom of his soul. Its features and forms.
In modern stylistics, the trope we described is not highlighted, and cases of its use are considered as part of metaphors and comparisons. However, rhetoric gives importance to reification as a trope appropriate to oral speech speakers.
Even in ancient times, people endowed surrounding objects and phenomena with human characteristics. For example, the earth was called mother, and rain was compared to tears.
Over time, the desire to humanize inanimate objects has disappeared, but in literature and in conversation we still encounter these figures of speech. This figurative means of language is called personification. So what is personification?
Personification: Definition and Functions
Personification is a literary device in which inanimate objects are endowed with properties that are inherent in living beings. Sometimes this turn of phrase is called personification.
Personification is used by many prose writers and poets. For example, in Yesenin you can find the following lines: “Winter sings, echoes, the shaggy forest lulls.” It is clear that winter as a season cannot make sounds, and the forest makes noise only because of the wind. Impersonation allows you to create bright image for the reader, to convey the mood of the hero, to emphasize some action.
What personification is in literature is clear, but this turn of phrase is also used in colloquial speech. The familiar phrases “the milk has run away”, “the heart is acting up” are also personifications. Using this literary device in conversation makes speech figurative and interesting. However, we don’t even think about using this technique.
You can also give examples of personifications. For example, we often say that it's raining(although the rain clearly has no legs) or the clouds frown (it is clear that clouds cannot experience any emotions).
In general, we can say that personification is a literary turn, in other words, a language trope, in which the inanimate is endowed with the signs and qualities of the living. Personification is often confused with metaphor. It is worth understanding that a metaphor is just a figurative meaning of a word, a figurative comparison. For example - " Golden autumn" Therefore, it is not difficult to distinguish personification from other literary expressions.
Personification
Personification
PERSONIFICATION (or personification) is an expression that gives an idea of a concept or phenomenon by depicting it in the form of a living person endowed with properties this concept(for example, the Greeks and Romans depicted happiness in the form of a capricious goddess of fortune, etc.). Very often O. is used when depicting nature, endowed with certain human traits, “animated”, for example: “the sea laughed” (Gorky) or the description of the flood in “ Bronze Horseman"Pushkin: "...The Neva all night long/rushed towards the sea against the storm,/not having overcome their violent foolishness.../and it became unable to argue.../The weather became even more ferocious,/the Neva swelled and roared... /and suddenly, like a frenzied beast,/the city was rushed.../Siege! Attack! evil waves,/like thieves, climb through the windows,” etc.
O. was especially in use in precision and false-classical poetry, where it was carried out consistently and extensively; in Russian literature, examples of such O. were given by Tredyakovsky: “Ride to the Island of Love”, (St. Petersburg), 1730.
O. is essentially, therefore, a transference of signs of animation onto a concept or phenomenon and represents it as such. arr. type of metaphor (see). Trails.
Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
Personification
Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .
Personification
PERSONALIZATION Also personification(lat. persona and facio), prosopopoeia(Greek Προσωποποια), is a stylistic term denoting the depiction of an inanimate or abstract object as animate. The question of how much personification corresponds to the poet’s actual view of things goes beyond stylistics and relates to the field of worldview in general. Where the poet himself believes in the animation of the object he depicts, one should not even talk about personification as a phenomenon of style, for it is then associated not with the techniques of depiction, but with a certain, animistic worldview and attitude. The object is already perceived as animate and is depicted as such. It is in this sense that many personifications in folk poetry, when they relate not to techniques, not to the form of expression, but to the animated object itself, i.e. to the content of the work. This is especially evident in any mythological work. On the contrary, personification, as a phenomenon of style, appears in those cases when it is used as allegory, i.e., as an image of an object that stylistically transforms his. Of course, it is not always possible to establish with accuracy what order of personification we are dealing with, just as in a metaphor it is difficult to find objective signs of the degree of its real imagery. Therefore, stylistic research often cannot do without attracting data from the field of individual poetic worldview. Thus, many personifications of natural phenomena in Goethe, Tyutchev, and the German romantics should not be considered as a stylistic device, but as essential features of their general view of the world. These, for example, are Tyutchev’s personifications of the wind - “What are you howling about, night wind, Why are you complaining so madly?”; a thunderstorm that “will suddenly and recklessly run into the oak grove”; lightning, which “like deaf-mute demons, conduct a conversation among themselves”; trees that “joyfully tremble, bathing in the blue sky” - for all this is consistent with the poet’s attitude towards nature, which he himself expressed in a special poem: “Not what you think, nature is not a cast, not a soulless face. It has a soul, it has freedom, it has love, it has language,” etc. On the contrary, in such works as fables, parables, and different types allegories (see), we should talk about personification as artistic technique. Compare, for example, Krylov’s fables about inanimate objects (“Cauldron and Pot”, “Guns and Sails”, etc.)
Especially in cases of the so-called. incomplete personification, it is common stylistic device, which is used not only by poetry, but also by everyday speech. Here we are dealing, strictly speaking, only with individual elements of personification, which have often become so commonplace in speech that their direct meaning is no longer felt. Wed, for example, such expressions as: “The sun rises, sets”, “the train is coming”, “streams are running”, “the moan of the wind”, “the howling of the motel”, etc. Most of these expressions are one of the types of metaphor , and the same should be said about their meaning in poetic style as about metaphor (see). Examples of stylistic personifications: “The air does not want to overcome its drowsiness... The stars of the night, Like accusatory eyes, look at him mockingly. And the poplars, crowded in a row, shaking their heads low, like judges whispering among themselves” (Pushkin); “Nozdryov had long ago stopped whistling, but there was one pipe in the barrel organ, a very lively one, that did not want to calm down, and for a long time afterwards it whistled alone” (Gogol); “A bird will fly out - my longing, sit on a branch and begin to sing” (Akhmatova). The depiction of plants and animals in the image of people, as found in fairy tales, fables, and animal epics, can also be considered a type of personification.
A. Petrovsky. Literary Encyclopedia: Dictionary literary terms: In 2 volumes / Edited by N. Brodsky, A. Lavretsky, E. Lunin, V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, M. Rozanov, V. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky. - M.; L.: Publishing house L. D. Frenkel, 1925
Synonyms:
See what “Impersonation” is in other dictionaries:
Churches. Statue of Strasbourg Cathedral Personification (personification, prosopopoeia) of the trope ... Wikipedia
Prosopopoeia, embodiment, personification, anthropomorphism, animation, humanization, metaphor, representation, epitome, expression Dictionary of Russian synonyms. personification 1. humanization, animation, personification 2. see embodiment ... Synonym dictionary
PERSONIFICATION, personification, cf. (book). 1. units only Action under Ch. personify personify. The personification of the forces of nature among primitive peoples. 2. what. The embodiment of some elemental force, a natural phenomenon in the form of a living creature. God… … Dictionary Ushakova
Personification- PERSONIFICATION is also personification (Latin: Persona and facio), prosopopoeia (Greek: Προσωποποια), a stylistic term denoting the depiction of an inanimate or abstract object as animate. The question is how much personification... ... Dictionary of literary terms
Personification, the property inherent in mythopoetic consciousness of transferring to inanimate things and phenomena the traits of living beings: human (anthropomorphism, anthropopathism) or animals (zoomorphism), as well as endowing animals with human qualities. IN … Encyclopedia of Mythology
- (prosopopoeia) a type of metaphor, transferring the properties of animate objects to inanimate ones (Her nurse is silence..., A. A. Blok) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
PERSONIFICATION, I, cf. 1. see personify. 2. what. About a living being: the embodiment of what n. features, properties. Plyushkin O. stinginess. O. kindness. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary
personification- PERSONIFY1, embodiment PERSONIFIED, embodied PERSONIFY / PERSONIFY, embody / embody PERSONIFY2, spiritualization, animation, humanization, personification, book. anthropomorphism ANIMATION,... ... Dictionary-thesaurus of synonyms of Russian speech
personification- impersonation Occurs when an object pretends to be someone or something. [Cryptographic Dictionary by Karen Isaguliev www.racal.ru ] Topics information Technology in general Synonyms impersonation EN impersonation ... Technical Translator's Guide
I; Wed 1. to Personify (1 character). and Personify. O. forces of nature. 2. Image of which l. elemental force, a natural phenomenon in the form of a living being. Dove o. peace. 3. what. The embodiment of an idea, concept, etc. properties, qualities in human... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Books
- The personification of history. Issue 2. Rich people, Daria Prikhodko. In the collection “Personification of History. Rich Men" included twelve biographical essays, the heroes of which were: one of the richest residents of the United States...
The meaning of the word PERSONIFICATION in the Literary Encyclopedia
PERSONALIZATION
[or personification] - an expression that gives an idea of a concept or phenomenon by depicting it in the form of a living person endowed with the properties of this concept (for example, the Greek and Roman depiction of happiness in the form of a capricious goddess of fortune, etc.). Very often O. is used when depicting nature, endowed with certain human traits, “animated”, for example: “the sea laughed” (Gorky) or the description of the flood in Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman”: “...Neva all night /rushed to the sea against the storm,/not having overcome their violent foolishness.../and argue
284 it became impossible for her... / The weather became more ferocious, / the Neva swelled and roared... / and suddenly, like a frenzied beast, / rushed towards the city... / Siege! Attack! evil waves, / like thieves, climb through the windows,” etc. O. was especially in use in precision and false-classical poetry, where it was carried out consistently and extensively; in Russian literature, examples of such O. were given by Tredyakovsky: “Riding to the Island of Love,” [SPB], 1730. O. is essentially, therefore, a transference of signs of animation to the concept or phenomenon and is represented as such. arr. type of metaphor (see). See "Trails". L.T.
Literary encyclopedia. 2012
See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what PERSONIFICATION is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:
- PERSONALIZATION in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
- type of trope: depiction of inanimate objects, in which they are endowed with the properties of living beings (the gift of speech, the ability to think, feel, experience, act), ... - PERSONALIZATION in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
(prosopopoeia) a type of metaphor, transferring the properties of animate objects to inanimate ones (“Her nurse is silence...”, A. A. ... - PERSONALIZATION in big Soviet encyclopedia, TSB:
prosopopoeia (from the Greek prosopon - face and poieo - I do), personification (from the Latin persona - face, personality and facio - ... - PERSONALIZATION V Encyclopedic Dictionary:
, -I, Wed. 1. see personify. 2. what. About a living being: the embodiment of some. features, properties. Plyushkin - o. stinginess. ABOUT. … - PERSONALIZATION in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
PERSONIFICATION (prosopopoeia), a type of metaphor, transferring the properties of animate objects to inanimate ones (“Her nurse is silence...”, A.A. ... - PERSONALIZATION in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, personification, ... - PERSONALIZATION in the Dictionary of Linguistic Terms:
(Greek prosopopoieia, from prosopon - face + poieo - doing). A trope consisting of attributing signs and properties to inanimate objects... - PERSONALIZATION in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
- PERSONALIZATION in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
‘expression in a specific object of any abstract qualities’ Syn: ... - PERSONALIZATION in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
expression in a specific object of any abstract qualities Syn: ... - PERSONALIZATION in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
Wed 1) The process of action according to meaning. verb: to personify, personify. 2) a) The embodiment of smb. elemental force, natural phenomena in the form of living things... - PERSONALIZATION in Lopatin’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
personification... - PERSONALIZATION in the Complete Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language:
personification... - PERSONALIZATION in the Spelling Dictionary:
personification... - PERSONALIZATION in Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
<= олицетворить олицетворение (о живом существе) воплощение каких-нибудь черт свойств Плюшкин - о. скупости. О. … - PERSONALIZATION in the Modern Explanatory Dictionary, TSB:
(prosopopoeia), a type of metaphor, transferring the properties of animate objects to inanimate ones (“Her nurse is silence ...”, A. A. ... - PERSONALIZATION in Ushakov’s Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
personifications, cf. (book). 1. units only Action according to verb. personify-personify. The personification of the forces of nature among primitive peoples. 2. what. The embodiment of some. ... - PERSONALIZATION in Ephraim's Explanatory Dictionary:
personification cf. 1) The process of action according to meaning. verb: to personify, personify. 2) a) The embodiment of smb. elemental force, natural phenomena in the form... - PERSONALIZATION in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
Wed 1. process of action according to Ch. personify, personify 2. The embodiment of some elemental force, natural phenomenon in the image of a living being. Ott. ... - PERSONALIZATION in the Large Modern Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
Wed 1. process of action according to Ch. personify, personify 2. The result of such an action; embodiment, concrete, real expression of something. Ott. Incarnation... - FEMINISM in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary.
- TRIMURTI in the Dictionary Index of Theosophical Concepts to the Secret Doctrine, Theosophical Dictionary:
(Sanskrit.) Lit., “three faces”, or “triple form” - Trinity. In the modern Pantheon these three are Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; And …