PERSONIFICATION

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PERSONIFICATION. In RHETORIC, discourse in which animals, plants, elements of nature, and abstract ideas are given human attributes: ‘bask in Heaven's blue smile’ (Shelley). It has been regarded as both a figure in its own right and as an aspect of METAPHOR in which non-human is identified with human: ‘Life can play some nasty tricks’. It is common in VERSE: ‘Slowly, silently, now the moon / Walks the night in her silver shoon’ ( Walter de la Mare, ‘Silver’, 1913). The representation of the moon as female is similar to the application of she to ships, cats, countries, and certain abstractions: ‘He seems to want to destroy poetry as poetry, to exclude her as a vehicle of communication’ ( Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, 1963).

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