Thursday, February 9, 2012

Can you find the transferred epithet?

I'm suppose to know the answer but my stupid English class was being chaotic because there was a sub that I wasn't able to catch what the transferred epithet was in this following poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.



Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.



The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed - and gazed - but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:



For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodil

Can you find the transferred epithet?
I would say "lonely as a cloud" is the transferred epithet here. An epithet is a descriptive adjective, here loneliness is being transferred to the clouds who, presumably, can't feel loneliness or if they can, we don't know about it! Wordsworth's own feelings of loneliness are being transferred from him to a seemingly sympathetic foreign entity; the clouds.



P.S; please ignore the idiot below me, he doesn't know what a transferred epithet is. Crowd is a NOUN genius, we're looking for an adjective!
Reply:The transferred epithet here is the word "crowd" which normally is associated with a group of people, but the author here is using it to describe a patch of daffodils growing alongside the bay. It's a nice metaphor.
Reply:dumb substitute that is abunch of nonsense no one talks like that

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