Conceit

Conceit:

Definition A conceit 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.

Example 1 Robert Frost:

//“And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.”//

The Conceit is fairly obvious, and it is apple picking, as an extended metaphor that represents work. The harvest of apples can be read as harvest of any human effort,- studying, manual labor, mowing lawns, etc. The conceit is seen through the great imagery that is throughout the whole poem. If it was only mentioned once, it would only be metaphor, however, it is mentioned so many times, that it actually “governs” the entire poem. The effect of course, is to create a better understanding of labor and harvest as well as the choices in life that people are ultimately responsible for what they pick, through “apple-picking”.

Example 2

HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

KING CLAUDIUS Alas, alas!

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS What dost you mean by this?

HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. Act IV Scene iii

The conceit that is seen in this dialogue is the extended metaphor of worms. Shakespeare brilliant use of complex language, satirical tone, the juxtaposition between the King and beggar, and grotesque imagery allow the reader/audience to gain a more sophisticated philosophical understanding of equality, and how in the end, everyone is equal. Hamlet explains that the fact that all men feed the earth and are therefore, worm's meat is the great equalizer. The moral of his rambling is that because a man may fish with a worm that has eaten a body of the king, and afterwards the beggar eats the fish he has caught, in theory he has eaten the king. thus the king passes through the body of a beggar, and only the worm reigns supreme. Even so, the king and the beggar are equal.

Example 2 All Conceits are metaphors, so lets revisit the garden metaphor in Hamlet.

//"'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'"// Act I Scene iv

This passage is important as it shows the concern of the state of Demark, Hamlet is not the only one is weary of its state. This extended metaphor/conceit represents Denmark is being left unattended by the King Claudius, the “gardener” As the protector of Denmark, he should make Denmark “flourish” and “grow”, instead he neglects Denmark and it begins to “wither” away and die. This metaphor creates a sense of disease and death that gives the audience an allusion of Denmark’s inevitable fate under Claudius’s rule, just like a dying garden. The visual imagery as well as the diction create a extended metaphor that helps the audience understand the comparison between the rottenness and the state of Denmark. The metaphor is seen throughout the whole book, so it is considered a conceit.