English Literature - Poetry and Poetic Devices

English Literature
English Literature - Poetry and Poetic Devices

"She strokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end Showing her barred face identity mask". Identify the figure of speech used in the above lines from the poem "The Laburnum Top" :


Options:

  1. Transferred Epithet
  2. Chiasmus
  3. Metonymy
  4. Onomatopoeia

Right Answer: Transferred Epithet

The lines describe the goldfinch returning to her nest in the laburnum tree in Ted Hughes’s poem. In the phrase ‘her barred face identity mask’ the adjective ‘barred’ properly belongs to the markings on the bird’s plumage, yet it is attached to the compound ‘face identity mask’, and the epithet is thus shifted from the thing it literally describes to something adjacent. Such a shift of an adjective from its proper noun to a neighbouring one is a transferred epithet. The image also carries the suggestion that the bird’s markings work like a badge of identity.

This question is part of English Literature - Poetry and Poetic Devices, which has 17 practice questions with answers.

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