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Aside from its common usage, signifying "excessive pride", in literary terms, a conceit[1] is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire poem or poetic passage. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter An extended metaphor, also called a conceit, is a Metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and Inference. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison.

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Metaphysical conceit

The term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets in contemporary usage. The metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them In the metaphysical conceit, metaphors have a much more purely conceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 ( l conceptum - something conceived but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle Helen Gardner[2] observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness. " An example of the latter would be George Herbert's "Praise (3)," in which the generosity of God is compared to a bottle which ("As we have boxes for the poor") will take in an infinite amount of the speaker's tears. George Herbert ( April 3, 1593 &ndash March 1, 1633) was a Welsh Poet, Orator and a Priest.

An often-cited example of the metaphysical conceit is the metaphor from John Donne's "The Flea," in which a flea that bites both the speaker and his lover becomes a conceit arguing that his lover has no reason to deny him sexually, although they are not married:

   Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare
Where we almost, yea more than married are. John Donne (pronounced like done, dʌn 1572 – 31 March 1631 was a Jacobean poet preacher and a major representative of the Metaphysical poets
   This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is.

When Sir Philip Sidney begins a sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression "My true-love hath my heart and I have his", but then takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of literal possibilities and extravagantly playful conceptions in the exchange of hearts, the result is a fully-formed conceit. Sir Philip Sidney ( November 30, 1554 &ndash October 17, 1586) became one of the Elizabethan Age's most prominent figures The sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in Lyric poetry from Europe.

The Petrarchan Conceit

The Petrarchan conceit, used in love poetry, exploits a particular set of images for comparisons with the despairing lover and his unpitying but idolized mistress. For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress "a cloud of dark disdain"; or else the lady is a sun whose beauty and virtue shine on her lover from a distance.


The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron, for instance uniting peace and war, burning and freezing, and so forth. But images which were novel in the sonnets of Petrarch became clichés in the poetry of later imitators. Romeo uses hackneyed Petrarchan conceits in describing his love for Rosaline as "bright smoke, cold fire, sick health"; and Shakespeare parodies such conceits in Sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. "

History of the term

In the Renaissance, the term (which is related to the word concept) indicated any particularly fanciful expression of wit, and was later used pejoratively of outlandish poetic metaphors. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 ( l conceptum - something conceived but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle Wit is a form of intellectual Humour. A wit (person is someone skilled in making witty remarks

Recent literary critics have used the term to mean simply the style of extended and heightened metaphor common in the Renaissance and particularly in the 17th century, without any particular indication of value. Literary criticism is the study discussion evaluation and interpretation of Literature. As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar Within this critical sense, the Princeton Encyclopedia makes a distinction between two kinds of conceits: the Metaphysical conceit, described above, and the Petrarchan conceit. Francesco Petrarca ( July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374) known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar In the latter, human experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical hyperbole), like the stock comparison of eyes to the sun, which Shakespeare makes light of in his sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Hyperbole (haɪˈpɝːbəli hye-PER-buh-lee; "HYE-per-bowl" is a mispronunciation comes from Greek "υπερβολή" (meaning exaggeration and is a William Shakespeare ( baptised "

Other uses

For later literature and film, the term is sometimes used to refer to a device that stretches reality to take advantage of what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief. A literary technique or literary device is an identifiable Rule of thumb, convention or Structure that is employed in Literature Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( 21 October 1772 &ndash 25 July 1834) was an English Poet, Critic and philosopher Suspension of disbelief or "willing suspension of disbelief" is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people's relationships to art " This usage is seldom seen in formal literary criticism.

An example from popular culture is the way many cartoons feature animals that can speak to each other, and in many cases can understand human speech, but humans cannot understand the speech of animals. This conceit is seen, and sometimes exploited for plot purposes, in such films as Over The Hedge, the Balto series, and Brother Bear. Over the Hedge is a 2006 computer-animated film based on the characters from United Media comic strip of the same name. Balto is a 1995 Animated / live action film produced by Steven Spielberg 's Amblimation animation studio distributed by Brother Bear is a 2003 Academy Award nominated traditionally-animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released

Notes

  1. ^ Definition of conceit from Wiktionary
  2. ^ Helen Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets (Oxford University Press), 1961, "Introduction" p. xxiii.

References

External links

Dictionary

conceit

-noun

  1. (uncountable) Overly high self-esteem; vain pride; hubris.
  2. (countable) Something conceived, especially a novel or a fanciful idea.
  3. (countable) In literature and poetry, a device of analogy consisting of an extended metaphor.
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