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Difficulty: Very hardPoetic Imagery and Figurative Language

Read the lines of poetry below:

"The sleepless pillow offered no relief to his restless mind,
While silent grief consumed the passing hours."

Which figure of speech is primarily exemplified in the phrase "sleepless pillow"?

  1. Transferred epithetAnswer
  2. B
    Personification
  3. C
    Metaphor
  4. D
    Oxymoron

Answer

Transferred epithet (hypallage), because the quality of being sleepless is transferred from the person suffering insomnia to the inanimate pillow.
Transferred epithet occurs when a qualifier or adjective is grammatically transferred from the appropriate noun (the sleepless person) to another associated noun (the pillow). Because sleeplessness is a human condition transferred to the object upon which the person rests, transferred epithet is the correct literary device.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the literal and contextual meaning of the phrase 'sleepless pillow'.
Identify that a pillow cannot literally experience sleep or sleeplessness; only a living person can be sleepless.
Figures of speech rely on unconventional relationships between modifiers and nouns.
2
Determine the syntactic and semantic relationship between the modifier 'sleepless' and the noun 'pillow'.
Recognize that an attribute belonging to the human subject is assigned to an associated object.
This specific grammatical shift defines transferred epithet (hypallage), distinguishing it from direct personification or metaphor.

Key Concept

Transferred Epithet (Hypallage) in Poetic Imagery
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Topics

Poetic Imagery and Figurative Language

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