Hypallage (; from the el, ὑπαλλαγή, ''hypallagḗ'', "interchange, exchange") is a

figure of speech A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...

in which the syntactic relationship between two terms is interchanged, or – more frequently – a modifier is syntactically linked to an item other than the one that it modifies semantically. The latter type of hypallage, typically resulting in the implied

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

of an inanimate or abstract noun, is also called a transferred epithet.

Examples

* "On the idle hill of summer/Sleepy with the flow of streams/Far I hear..." ( A.E. Housman, '' A Shropshire Lad'') — "Idle", although ''syntactically'' modifying "hill", ''semantically'' describes the narrator, not the hill. * "Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time" —

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by ...

, "

Dulce et Decorum Est "Dulce et Decorum est" is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. The Latin title is taken from Ode 3.2 (''Valor'') of the Roman poet Horace and means "it is sweet and fitting". It is followed by ...

" * "Restless night" — The night was not restless, but the person who was awake through it was. * "Happy morning" — Mornings have no feelings, but the people who awaken to them do. * "Beside the clock's loneliness" - The clock is not lonely, but the poet is; from

Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...

' "The Thought Fox". *"While he's waiting, Richard pops a nervous handful of salted nuts into his mouth." ( A. M. Homes, ''This Book Will Save Your Life'') *"Flying over the sleeping countryside" — The countryside is not sleeping, the people living there are. * "Corruption reaps the young ..." (

Theodore Roethke Theodore Huebner Roethke ( ; May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation, having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book ''The Wa ...

, first line of "Feud," in ''Open House'' (1941). Subject and object are interchanged: corruption does not reap the young, the young reap corruption (because of the feud).

In other languages

Hypallage may be seen in

Ancient Hebrew writings The earliest known precursor to Hebrew, an inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, is the Khirbet Qeiyafa Inscription (11th–10th century BCE), if it can be considered Hebrew at that early a stage. By far the most varied, extensive, and his ...

. Examples may include

Book of Job The Book of Job (; hbo, אִיּוֹב, ʾIyyōḇ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and is the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scholars ar ...

21:6, where "my flesh seizes trembling" seems to mean "trembling seizes my flesh" and

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...

116:15, where "precious in the eyes of the LORD is ''death'', as to his faithful ones" seems to mean "the ''life'' of his faithful ones is precious in the eyes of the LORD," so he does not lightly let them die. Hypallage is often used strikingly in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

poetry. Examples of transferred epithets are "the winged sound of whirling" (), meaning "the sound of whirling wings" (

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states ...

, ''

Birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

'' 1198), and

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

's "angry crowns of kings" (''iratos...regum apices'', ''

Odes Odes may refer to: *The plural of ode, a type of poem * ''Odes'' (Horace), a collection of poems by the Roman author Horace, circa 23 BCE *Odes of Solomon, a pseudepigraphic book of the Bible *Book of Odes (Bible), a Deuterocanonical book of the ...

'' 3.21.19f.).

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

was given to hypallage beyond the transferred epithet, as "give the winds to the fleets" (''dare classibus Austros'', ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...

'' 3.61), meaning "give the fleets to the winds." Literary critic

Gérard Genette Gérard Genette (7 June 1930 – 11 May 2018) was a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ''bricolage ...

argued that the frequent use of hypallage is characteristic of

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

's style.

''Fiction & Diction''
p.110
/ref>

Examples

In other languages

See also

References

Further reading