Conceit 164465 223894656 2008-07-06T11:23:43Z Lightbot 7178666 Units/dates/other {{wiktionarypar|conceit}} Aside from its common usage, signifying "excessive pride", in [[literature|literary]] terms, a '''conceit'''<ref>[[wikt:conceit|Definition of '''conceit''']] from Wiktionary</ref> is an [[extended metaphor]] with a complex [[logic]] that governs an entire [[poem]] or poetic passage. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. ==Metaphysical conceit== The term is generally associated with the 17th century [[metaphysical poets]] in contemporary usage. In the [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] conceit, metaphors have a much more purely [[concept]]ual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. Helen Gardner<ref>Helen Gardner, ''The Metaphysical Poets'' (Oxford University Press), 1961, "Introduction" p. xxiii.</ref> observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness." An example of the latter would be [[George Herbert]]'s "Praise (3)," in which the generosity of God is compared to a bottle which ("As we have boxes for the poor") will take in an infinite amount of the speaker's tears. An often-cited example of the metaphysical conceit is the metaphor from [[John Donne]]'s "The Flea," in which a flea that bites both the speaker and his lover becomes a conceit arguing that his lover has no reason to deny him sexually, although they are not married: :&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare<br>Where we almost, yea more than married are.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This flea is you and I, and this<br>Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is. When [[Philip Sydney|Sir Philip Sidney]] begins a [[sonnet]] with the conventional idiomatic expression [http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/truelove.htm "My true-love hath my heart and I have his"], but then takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of literal possibilities and extravagantly playful conceptions in the exchange of hearts, the result is a fully-formed conceit. ==The Petrarchan Conceit== The Petrarchan conceit, used in love poetry, exploits a particular set of images for comparisons with the despairing lover and his unpitying but idolized mistress. For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress "a cloud of dark disdain"; or else the lady is a sun whose beauty and virtue shine on her lover from a distance. The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron, for instance uniting peace and war, burning and freezing, and so forth. But images which were novel in the sonnets of Petrarch became clichés in the poetry of later imitators. Romeo uses hackneyed Petrarchan conceits in describing his love for Rosaline as "bright smoke, cold fire, sick health"; and Shakespeare parodies such conceits in Sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." ==History of the term== In the [[Renaissance]], the term (which is related to the word [[concept]]) indicated any particularly fanciful expression of [[wit]], and was later used pejoratively of outlandish poetic metaphors. Recent [[literary criticism|literary critics]] have used the term to mean simply the style of extended and heightened metaphor common in the Renaissance and particularly in the 17th century, without any particular indication of value. Within this critical sense, the Princeton Encyclopedia makes a distinction between two kinds of conceits: the Metaphysical conceit, described above, and the [[Petrarch]]an conceit. In the latter, human experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical [[hyperbole]]), like the stock comparison of eyes to the sun, which [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] makes light of in his sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." ==Other uses== For later literature and film, the term is sometimes used to refer to a [[Literary technique|device]] that stretches reality to take advantage of what [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] called the "willing [[suspension of disbelief]]." This usage is seldom seen in formal literary criticism. An example from popular culture is the way many cartoons feature animals that can speak to each other, and in many cases can understand human speech, but humans cannot understand the speech of animals. This conceit is seen, and sometimes exploited for plot purposes, in such films as ''[[Over the Hedge (film)|Over The Hedge]]'', the ''[[Balto (film)|Balto]]'' series, and ''[[Brother Bear]]''. ==Notes== <references/> ==References== *Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. ''More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor''. Princeton, NJ: University of Chicago Press, 1989.'' *Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan. ''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.'' ==External links== * [http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Praise3.html George Herbert, "Praise (3)"] * [[m:wikisource:The Sonnets/130|Shakespeare's Sonnet 130]], from [[Wikisource]]. [[Category:Literary concepts]] [[de:Concetto]] [[fr:Métaphore filée]] [[ru:Кончетто]]