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Personification

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Personification attributes human emotions, actions, or traits to nonhuman entities, animating abstract concepts or inanimate objects for expressive effect.

Explore this topic in depth (2)

Nature Poetry — Nature poetry is not simply poetry with scenery in it. Across centuries and cultures, poets have used birds, weather, gardens, oceans, seasons and stars to test what it means to be human—and to meet a world that may not be human-centred at all.

Gothic Poetry — Gothic poetry turns shadows, ruins, storms and supernatural suggestion into ways of exploring human fear, longing, guilt and uncertainty. More than a collection of frightening images, it is a flexible tradition concerned with what reason cannot comfortably explain.

Detailed Definition
Personification is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas, animals, or inanimate objects are endowed with human qualities, emotions, or actions—such as “Justice weeps” or “the wind whispered”—to create vivid imagery, emotional resonance, and symbolic depth in poetic expression.
Example
Example in poetry:
Personification: Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”: “the viewless wings of Poesy”; Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death— / He kindly stopped for me”; modern example: Tracy K. Smith’s “The United States Welcomes You” personifies bureaucracy as interrogator; personification gives human traits to abstractions or objects; it’s common in allegory and lyric; this device creates emotional connection.
Additional Notes
Personification: Attributing human qualities to non-human entities (e.g., “the wind whispered”); a type of metaphor; animates nature and abstract concepts in poetry.
Other Meanings of “Personification”
Also Known As
Human qualities given Object animation Thing personified Anthropomorphism Ethopoeia
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