Imagery

Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as psychotherapy. Imagery in literature can also be instrumental in conveying tone.

Forms

There are five major types of sensory imagery, each corresponding to a sense, feeling, action, or reaction:

• Visual imagery pertains to graphics, visual scenes, pictures, or the sense of sight.
• Auditory imagery pertains to sounds, noises, music, or the sense of hearing. (This kind of imagery may come in the form of onomatopoeia).
• Olfactory imagery pertains to odors, aromas, scents, or the sense of smell.
• Gustatory imagery pertains to flavors or the sense of taste.
• Tactile imagery pertains to physical textures or the sense of touch.

Other types of imagery include:

• Kinesthetic imagery pertains to movements.
• Organic imagery / subjective imagery, pertains to personal experiences of a character's body, including emotion and the senses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain.
• Phenomenological, pertains to the mental conception of an item as opposed to the physical version.
• Color imagery is the ability to visualize a color in its absence.

Further reading

• Wells, H. G. (Herbert George) (20 July 2021). The time machine. ISBN 978-1-7225-2491-3. OCLC 1261367980.

External links

• "Imagery and Imagination". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Thomas, Nigel J.T (Winter 2011), "Mental Imagery", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, retrieved February 16, 2012
• Belyaev, Igor A. (2020), "Human-sizedness as a principle of existance [sic] for literary-artistic image, Proceedings of the Philological Readings (PhR 2019), EPSBS European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, London, 19–20 September 2019, pp. 560–567.
• What is Imagery?: Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms