head uplifted

eyes blazing sparklingly

rest submerged Satan is lying on the flood
extends long & large
over many quarter acres
the fables name of monstrous size
may be Titanian or earthborn
is supposed to have warred on Jove
was identified as the monsters
of Brieros or Typhon
or identified as the sea beast leviathan
who was the enemy of God
classical precedents
describes X in terms of Y, something
ordinary or familiar is compared to
something strange and unfamiliar
often occurs at a high point of
Definition action: a battle or a conflict
The Leviathan Simile runs into several lines offering
Appears like multiple levels of comparison
something which
may contain digressions
Milton uses it creatively to meet his own ends

created as the largest aquatic animal

steersmen who have lost their way on the
seas in the night confuse it with an island
they anchor on it looking for security but when it sleeps
when it wakes and moves they are wrecked
redirects the reader's attention in the
most unexpected ways suffusing it with
a vividness, pathos and humour
clarification or illustration of abstract ideas
a vortex of other ideas endowed with
energy that opens myriad associations
a foreshadowing of events and clues
pointing to the future
aggrandizement - ennobles the subject
by lifting it to sublimity or magnificence
the emotional value of an image or series
depends on the associations which cluster
around it and get invested in the object of
comparison through the simile
introduces the unusual, the wonderful in
order to engender appropriate emotions
Provides emotional relief in a narration
through a change
Because during the creative process, X or an
aspect of X surges in a pre-linguistic state in the
poet's mind demanding expression
But X or that aspect of X lies in the realm of
the unarticulated/the unknown
the poet is an articulating mind adept at finding
linguistic counters which represent somewhat
Epic/ Homeric Simile precisely what s/he is struggling to articulate
Why describe X Unable to find any in his/her descriptive lexicon or
Rhetorical/ not satisfied by what has been found s/he switches
Narrative in terms of Y?
to an image or a similarity
Y lies in the territory of the known and the
consonance that the poet feels between
what he is trying to express and Y makes
the match between the known and the
intellectual unknown acceptable. Something
unarticulated as yet begins to be articulated,
even if it is in approximate terms.
How does Y help
articulate X?
Functions
not exactly. perhaps known vaguely or as a
caricature- black, horns, brutish etc.
Were Satan's physical Milton's is the first detailed and psychologically
dimensions unknown consistent account of Satan
before Milton? Conveying Satan's various dimensions and his
emotional
subjectivity was Milton's challenge and that is
why he needed the Epic simile

possesses the power to please he

reader's and the poet's sense of beauty
aesthetic

Epic. Homeric Simile.mmap - 25/10/2019 - Mindjet