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Sylvia's Similes: A Stylistic Approach to Sylvia Townsend Warner
Author(s) -
Swaab Peter
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12206
Subject(s) - simile , townsend , queer , psychology , literature , natural (archaeology) , human sexuality , excellence , stress (linguistics) , psychoanalysis , art , linguistics , sociology , philosophy , epistemology , history , gender studies , metaphor , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
This essay notes the prevalence and analyses the excellence of similes in the writing of Sylvia Townsend Warner. Discussing instances from different genres and periods of her work, it argues that the author's imagination, humour and critical intelligence are especially evident in her similes. It goes on to illustrate how and to what ends these similes are often drawn from the natural world, and how they express a range of attitudes to sexuality and homosexuality. The essay proposes that Warner's similes are characteristically what grammarians term ‘catachretic’ and not ‘illustrative’, and that they often function to complicate the stories and disconcert or shock the reader. It suggests that Warner's might be thought a queer practice of simile. The essay concludes that the propositional force of similes, asserting relations of likeness, gives us a window onto the views and perspectives of Warner's narrators.