Hyperbole.Hyperbole is deliberate overstatement or exaggeration, the aim of which is to
intensify one of the features of the object in question to such a degree as will show its utter
absurdity. The following is a good example of hyperbole:
“Those three words (Dombey and Son) conveyed the one idea of Mr.
Dombey’s life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and
mood were made to give then light. Rivers and seas were formed to float
their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for
or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to
preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre.” (Dickens)
Another example which is not so absurd if subjected to logical analysis is this
passed from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.”
“And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
In order to depict the width of the river Dnieper Gogol uses the following
hyperbole:
“It’s a rare bird that can fly to the middle of the Dnieper.”
Like many stylistc devices, hyperbole may lose its quality as a stylistic device
through frequent repetition and become a unit of the language-as-a-system, reproduced in
speech in its unaltered from. Here are some examples of language hyperbole:
‘A thousand pardons’; ‘scared to death’, ‘immensely obliged;’ ‘I’d give
the world to see him.’
Byron says:
“When people say “I’ve told you fifty times”
They mean to scold, and very often do.”
Hyperbole differs from mere exaggeration in that it is intended to be understood as
an exaggeration. In this connection the following quotations deserve a passing note:
“Hyperbole is the result of a kind of intoxication by emotion, which
prevents a person from seeing things in their true dimensions... If the reader
(listener) is not carried away by the emotion of the writer (speaker),
hyperbole becomes a mere lie.”
V.V.Vinogradov, developing Gorki’s statement that “genuine art enjoys the right to
exaggerate,” states that hyperbole is the law of art which brigs the existing phenomena of
life, diffused as they are, to the point of maximum clarity and conciseness.
Hyperbole is a device which sharpens the reader’s ability to make a logical
assessment of the utterance. This is achieved, as is the case with other devices, by
awakening the dichotomy of thought and feeling where thought takes the upper hand
though not to the detriment of feeling.
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