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Hyperbole in poetry adds exaggerated emphasis to themes and claims. It is used to heighten emotion, make a point, and is non-literal. Examples include Shakespeare, Homer, Marvell, and Eliot. Hyperbole is combined with other rhetorical devices and is used in politics and satire.
The function of hyperbole in poetry is to add extravagant exaggeration to the themes and claims of the poem. Hyperbole is a standard tactic in rhetoric and speech and is featured prominently in drama. Examples of hyperbole can be found in the speeches of Cicero and in the plays of William Shakespeare, such as “Othello” and Henry V’s speech before the battle of Agincourt. The opposite of hyperbole is understatement and bathos.
Hyperbole in poetry is used to heighten emotion and is meant to be non-literal. This means that the claims made are exaggerations, but not metaphors. For example, a poet may wish to declare his undying love for a woman. In the poem, he might mean that he loves her more than anyone he knows, but he will use hyperbole to say, “I love you more than anything in the world.” The poet clearly hasn’t experienced everything in the world or met every girl in the world, so he can’t be entirely sure.
Aristotle believes that poetry is about emotions. The hyperbole in the poem elicits not only love, as seen above, but also hate, heroism and prowess. It is also used to make a point in a satirical or political poem.
This latter idea of using hyperbole in poetry to make a political point comes from rhetoric and discourse. Hyperbole is used in orations to convey a specific point. In speech and poetry, hyperbole is combined with onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance and rhyme. Rhetoric and poetic rhetoric have been well used by certain politicians whose voices alone are enough to win the trust of voters. Examples include Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
Homer’s epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” are prime examples of the use of hyperbole in poetry. Set during and after the Trojan War, the poems routinely use hyperbole to exaggerate the prowess of Achilles and the powers of the gods. For example, Homer has Mars roar “as loud as nine or ten thousand men” and exaggerates the elements by saying “two winds arose with a cry that rent the air and swept the clouds before them.”
Many other poets have employed hyperbole. Andrew Marvell, a metaphysical poet, used the hyperbole in his most famous poem, “To His Coy Mistress.” In the poem he writes “I would like you / I would love you ten years before the flood” and “My vegetable love should grow / Larger than empires”. It is not known how the lover would have responded to her “vegetable love”. TS Eliot used the hyperbole in his “A Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. In the poem, he asks if a man’s baldness would ‘disturb the universe’.
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