Imagery is
visual
The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (th ...
symbolism, or
figurative language
Literal and figurative language is a distinction within some fields of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics.
*Literal language uses words exactly according to their conventionally accepted meanings or denotatio ...
that evokes a
mental image
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
or other kinds of
sense
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system re ...
impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as
psychotherapy.
Forms
There are five major types of sensory imagery, each corresponding to a sense, feeling, action, or reaction:
* ''Visual imagery'' pertains to graphics, visual scenes, pictures, or the sense of sight.
*''
Auditory imagery'' pertains to sounds, noises, music, or the sense of hearing. (This kind of imagery may come in the form of
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
).
*''Olfactory imagery'' pertains to odors, aromas, scents, or the sense of smell.
*''Gustatory imagery'' pertains to flavors or the sense of taste.
*''Tactile imagery'' pertains to physical textures or the sense of touch.
Other types of imagery include:
*''Kinesthetic imagery'' pertains to movements.
*''Organic imagery / subjective imagery'', pertains to personal experiences of a character's body, including emotion and the senses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain.
*''
Phenomenological'', pertains to the mental conception of an item as opposed to the physical version.
*''Color imagery'' is the ability to visualize a color in its absence
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
* Belyaev, Igor A. (2020)
"Human-sizedness as a principle of for literary-artistic image Proceedings of the Philological Readings (PhR 2019), EPSBS European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, London, 19–20 September 2019, pp. 560–567.
Fiction
Style (fiction)
Literature
Narrative techniques
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