Personification

Anything, excluding humans, described as possessing human features and charateristics, for example:

The wind blew the flowers as if they had sneezed.

The paint was a flesh toned color.

Obviously, sneezing is something that flowers cannot do, but humans can. Therefore, the flowers and paint have been personified through a human-like characteristic.

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Literary Terms

Works Consulted

• Chapin, Chester Fisher. Personification in Eighteenth Century English Poetry. New York, New York: 1974.
• Paxson, James S. The Poetics of Personification. Cambridge, England/ New York, New York: 1994.