Saturday, June 9, 2007

Apostrophe (NOT punctuation)

Definition:
  • a form of personification and direct address in which the absent or dead are spoken to as if present, and the inanimate as if animate
Example:
  • "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: / England hath need of thee!" (Wordsworth, "England, 1802")

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Moonlight in the summer sky, look down upon my love..."(Wells, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood")

Anonymous said...

"You did right to hold fast to each other," I said: as if the monster-splinters were living things, and could hear me.
(Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, page 281)

Anonymous said...

"O! O! you say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again? You say you are Syi Wang Mu, Queen Monster of the Western Skies, now come back to give me the answer! Good, good, I am listen...
"Thank you, Little Queen. Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Pg. 239

Anonymous said...

"To destroy a man is difficult almost as difficult as to create one: It has not been easy, nor quick, but you germans, have succeded." (There are no germans present)
Primo Levi - Survival in Aushwitz (Page 150)

Anonymous said...

"Oh, heart, stop fluttering and trying to pop out of my chest and fly away."

It Happened to Nancy edited by Beatrice Sparks page 9

Alison Terry Kirkpatrick said...

“I’ll be back,” I tell the tree, and the leaves rustle again in the wind.
–from The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams