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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Section 1
Explanation and Analysis—Books and Liquor:
In the following passage, Burke discusses the literature circulated by the Society for Constitutional Information. Using a simile, he compares the effects of this literature to the effects of alcohol, which may change when being transported long distances across the ocean:
What improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell: But I never heard a man of common judgment, or the least degree of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications circulated by that society.
Related Themes:
Section 8
Explanation and Analysis—Marie Antionette:
Over the course of several pages, Burke attempts to generate sympathy for the royals of France, humanizing them for his reading audience by dramatizing their plight. He uses pathos to establish Marie Antoinette as a sympathetic figure, describing his own encounter with her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles [...]. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!
