Reading Sense in Verse: Synesthesia in the Poetry of Edith Sitwell and Houshang Ebtehaj

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English Language & Literature, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of English Language, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Synesthesia, among other rhetorical devices, has played a prominent role in conveying the intended messages in the realm of poetry. Nonetheless, it has not grabbed adequate attention to its nature and function. Belonging to the domain of comparative literature, this essay has benefitted from analogy studies as its methodology to render novel perspectives in the meaning and reading of the poetry of Sitwell and Ebtehaj. Here, we have attempted, firstly, to foreground the function of synesthesia and, secondly, to enrich the understanding of the mentioned poets. This paper concludes that the realization of synesthesia heavily and helpfully affects the perception of literary poems. In addition, to showcase such influence, a reasonable number of poems by Sitwell and Ebtehaj were subjected to scrutiny, indicating that a great deal of their poetry is best understood only after investigating synesthesia. This essay is merely concentrated on two poets, yet its findings can be helpful for the whole field of poetry.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies
Volume 15, Issue 1
April 2023
Pages 155-168

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