英语修辞与写作·10.1 Personification
10.1 Personification
10.1A Personification的含义与形式
1） Personification译作“拟人法”，它实际上也是一种比喻，尤其是隐喻。其形式是通过把原属于人所特有的品质、行为、情感等赋予大自然其他有生命或无生命的东西，使它们具有类似人的特征，因此，也有人把拟人法叫做“静物动化”的一种修辞技巧。例如：
The sun kissed the green fields.
The thirsty desert drank up the water.
Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.
（Walter Savage Landor）
There has been, after all, something in the talk of American innocence. No doubt it is a false innocence, fabricated by a myth-charged education: the lady who was “once a beauty of magnificence unparalleled” nourished her complexion on genocide and slavery. Yet her beauty existed in the eyes of her children, especially her adopted, immigrant children.
（Conor Cruise O'Brien）
2） 拟人法虽然本质上是一种隐喻，但有两个特点：一是与人相联系，包括人特有的形象、动作、情感等，二是通常用动词、形容词、副词或副词性短语，利用这类具有动态或描述性的词语“移花接木”，达到借物喻人的目的，若用名词，则会变成了simile或metaphor。例如：
The little goat was so fussy that he often cried for wolf. — personification
The little goat was like the shepherd who often cried for wolf. — simile
The little goat became a shepherd who often cried for wolf. — metaphor
10.1B Personification的使用
1） 利用拟人法借物寓情，把人的喜怒哀乐之情渗透到所描写的客观对象之中，从而起到烘托人物的作用。例如：
The youth were singing, laughing and playing the music instruments.The trees and flowers around them danced heartily as if touched by merry mood.
（Y. Miyashita）
The interview was over. Mary Thompson said good-bye to the manager, turned back and stepped out merrily and light-heartedly. The gate smiled after her and the sun stretched out her arms to greet her.
（J. Wooten）
The night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand at our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face up to hers, and, though she does not speak, we know that she would say and lay our hot, flushed cheek against her bosom and the pain is gone.
（Jerome K. Jerome）
2） 利用拟人法借物喻人，不论影射时政，或是鞭挞小人，皆可收到戏剧性的效果。例如：
There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect. It is slack-jawed, with leering eyes and loose, wet lips, with heavy feet and ponderous cunning hands; now and then when something tickles it, it guffaws, and when it is angry it snarls; and it can be aroused more easily than it can be quieted. Mike Fink and Yankee Doodle helped to father it, and Judge Lynch is one of its creations; and when it comes lumbering forth it can make the whole country step in time to its own irregular pulse beat.
（Bruce Catton）
Besides, the Kettle was aggravating and obstinate ... it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very idiot of a kettle.
（Dickens）
3） 拟人法能使抽象的概念具体化，使之具有人的某种形貌、声音、性格、行为等。下述前三例皆涉及人生命运，十分感人；第四例讲社会变化，其中rank and fashion代表贵族，他们车轮滚滚到西区，trade代表新兴资产者，他们蹑手蹑脚，但迅速扩展地盘，完全把社会的变动形象化了。
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
（Milton）
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
（Shelley）
Ignominy, Want, Despair and Madness have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.
（Dickens）
As London increased, however, rank and fashion rolled off to the west, and trade, creeping on at their heels, took possession of their deserted abodes.
（Washington Irving）
