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. ^[1]

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.^[2]
• 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

References

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