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What poetic devices are used in the poem "Black Woman"?
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Poetic devices in Leopold Senghor’s poem“Black Woman” include repetition, extended metaphor, personification, simile, imagery, caesura, and allusion. The poet uses a Black woman’s body as an extended metaphor to represent Africa. She personifies Africa’s land and culture. Various types of imagery, including visual, tactile, auditory, and gustatory, appeal to the reader’s senses. Instances of caesura link different yet related ideas. Allusions to the Bible and Africa’s resources emphasize the poet’s exaltation of his native homeland.
Leopold Senghor’s poem “Black Woman” is a vibrant celebration of his native Africa. Originally titled “Femme Nue, Femme Noire” and composed in French, this poem contains an extended metaphor that represents Africa through the body of a Black woman. The Senegalese writer uses numerous poetic devices throughout the poem in order to highlight the richness of African land and culture.
Senghor employs repetition to begin each stanza—“Naked woman, black woman”—in order to refer and frequently return to the image of a Black woman in his description of Africa. By directly addressing a woman, he uses personification to portray the land as if it were a living being. Africa first appears “Dressed” in lively, colorful clothes like an African woman. Africa is a protective, maternal figure to the poet in his youth.
I grew up in your shadow. The softness of your hands
Shielded my eyes
A hint of...
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change appears in thesimile “your beauty strikes my heart like an eagle’s lightning flash.” The woman’s beauty is no longer soft and nurturing, but dazzling, powerful, and slightly aggressive.
In the second stanza, Africa becomes a sensuous woman to the grown poet. She is a
Naked woman, dark woman
Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark raptures of black wine,
Mouth that gives music to my mouth
Senghor uses various types of imagery to appeal different senses. The tactile images of soft hands become “firm flesh.” Readers can see the “ripe fruit” and dark black wine. The gustatory delights or “raptures” emphasize the exquisite taste of fine wine. The image of the woman’s mouth creating musical inspiration for the poet’s mouth mixes visual imagery with auditory imagery. Alliteration like “fruit with firm flesh” and “mouth that gives music to my mouth” emphasizes the sensual smoothness of the Black woman (Africa).
Caesura—a pause in the middle of a verse—creates both a break and a connection between related images. For example, the line “Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark raptures of black wine” is broken up, yet the ideas are closely linked. Within a single verse (“Savanna of clear horizons, savanna quivering to the fervent caress”), Senghor describes Africa’s physical land before personifying it as a “quivering” being. The visual imagery of vast land and horizon is juxtaposed with the tactile imagery of a shaking response to passionate fondling. The repeated line “Naked woman, dark woman” is broken in half while linking together two related ideas—and possibly the same person. Overall, these instances of caesura create a balanced rhythm, as both parts of each line are nearly symmetrical.
Additional auditory imagery includes “moaning,” “deep contralto voice,” and “spiritual song.”
Senghor also presents various allusions. He uses Biblical references like “Promised Land” in the first stanza and “the Beloved” in the second stanza. The third stanza contains allusions to resources specific to Africa:
Oil no breeze can ripple, oil soothing the thighs
Of athletes and the thighs of the princes of Mali
Gazelle with celestial limbs
Oil-rich Africa produces oil so thick that even wind cannot stir it. A different type of oil—a salve or ointment—soothes the sore thighs of athletes, recalling the incredible speed and feats of African runners. The allusion to “princes of Mali” refers to Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali Empire in West Africa; this empire was known for its wealth in the trafficking of riches like gold, copper, and ivory. Finally, graceful, long-limbed gazelles are found primarily in Africa.
The third stanza contains more imagery, such as “pearls are stars/Upon the night of your skin” and “reflections of red gold from your shimmering skin.” The first example shows a sharp yet beautiful visual contrast: white pearls against black skin. It also continues the earlier themes of jewelry and “celestial” wonder. The second example uses alliteration to create a sensual flow—"reflections of red” and “shimmering skin.”
Senghor closes the poem with one final personification; he will put the woman’s “passing beauty” (perhaps Africa’s changing history) on record
before jealous Fate reduces you to ashes to nourish the roots of life.
Fate is an active and destructive player who diminishes the woman’s body (and the memory of Africa’s history); nonetheless, the poet will preserve beauty of the woman’s body to create joy for future readers. Likewise, Senghor’s celebration of Africa will feed the knowledge of future generations.
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What literary devices are used in "Black Woman"?
The poem "Black Woman" has lots of literary devices. For example there is repetition of the line "Naked woman, black woman" throughout the poem, although twice, there is a slight variation as "black" becomes "dark." The repetition of this line emphasizes the pride and beauty of the African woman.
There is also a metaphor in the third stanza, when the speaker says, "In your shadow I have grown up." The speaker has not literally grown up in the shadow of the speaker, but this metaphor helps to convey the idea that the speaker is in awe of the woman and the country that she personifies.
The woman addressed in the poem is the personification of Africa. Representing Africa as a beautiful, proud woman implies that Africa is likewise beautiful and proud.
In the fourth stanza, there is an example of a simile, as the speaker says that the woman's beauty strikes his heart "like the flash of an eagle." An eagle is a beautiful but also predatory bird, suggesting that the woman's beauty is not necessarily soft and gentle but rather fierce and independent.
There is also onomatopoeia in the poem when the speaker describes the music of Africa. He describes the "tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering." The repetition of the letter "t" implies a low but constant percussive rhythm.
What two poetic devices are used in "Black Woman"?
This poem's most abundantly employed poetic devices are metaphor (including simile) and imagery. When the speaker lays eyes on the woman he speaks of, he sees her as many things beyond merely human, and, inspired by her presence, he even paints a picture of a landscape surrounding her.
"Black Woman" contains many instances of metaphor, starting off strong in the very second line, "Clothed with your color which is life" (line 2). This one line packs a double punch: the speaker characterizes the woman's skin color as clothing and also as life itself—quite a lofty significance for a color (or a garment). Similarly, in line 3, her form "is beauty"—her form is not simply beautiful, it is the entire concept of beauty. Later, this beauty stuns the speaker "like the flash of an eagle" (line 10). This simile, a device which can be categorized within the greater term "metaphor," turns the aforementioned beauty into an eagle. Again, with devices layered doubly, the woman's form has become beauty, which has become so striking that it "strikes" (line 9) the speaker's heart as an eagle might.
The strike of the eagle is a scene that emerges vividly in the mind's eye, which brings us to the other most prominent literary device of the poem: imagery. A following stanza brings us into "Savannah stretching to clear horizons" (line 14), expanding our mental image into a vast landscape as far as the mind's eye can see. Other sensory elements are brought in, such as taste and perhaps smell, when fruit and wine become part of the same scene (stanza 6). This deepens and sharpens the reader's imagined experience of the poem, all of which begins with the observation of a single woman, who represents to the speaker an entire homeland and even the heavens: "pearls are stars on the / night of your skin" (lines 24–25). These lines are another example of simultaneous metaphor and imagery, in which we are given a stunning visual of the night sky, whose stars also exist as jewelry on the titular woman's skin.
"Black Woman" is absolutely rife with examples of metaphor/simile and sensory imagery; these are a few key examples, but there are plenty more to be found if you look for them.
What literary devices are used in the poem "Black Woman"?
"Black Woman" was written by Léopold Sédar Senghor (9 October 1906–20 December 2001), a Senegalese poet and first president of Senegal (1960–80) who, prior to his involvement in politics, had a distinguished academic career as a literary and cultural theorist. The poem is written in French, with the original title "Femme noire," and is considered a central poem in the literary movement of "Négritude," a movement devoted to self-affirmation of black people. As Frost famously said, poetry is "what is lost in translation," and not all literary devices of the original French may be conveyed in English.
The poem is written in free verse, verging on prose poetry at points and lacking regular metrical patterns. It is written in stanzaic form, using short stanzas or verse paragraphs of irregular length. The main poetic device used in the poem is repetition. The first and final stanzas begin with the line "Femme nue, femme noire," while the second and third stanzas begin with a variation of that line, "Femme nue, femme obscure." This line uses the rhetorical technique of apostrophe or direct address, in which the narrator talks to the black woman of the title in the second person.
The poem makes extensive use of metaphor, a figure of speech involving implicit comparison not using such explicit comparative terms as "like" or "as." An example of metaphor is the comparison of the black woman to delicious fruit and to the Savannah.
Another significant technique is use of evocative sensuous imagery. Rather than making general statements about his feelings about the black woman and her importance in African culture, the poet vividly evokes her in images that resonate with the African experience of the natural beauty of the land.
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