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==Description==
==Description==
In [[literature]], a '''conceit''' is an extended [[metaphor]] with a [[complex]] [[logic]] that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By [[juxtaposing]], usurping and manipulating images and [[ideas]] in surprising ways, a conceit invites the [[reader]] into a more sophisticated [[understanding]] of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in [[English]] are part of the poetic idiom of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism Mannerism], during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
In [[literature]], a '''conceit''' is an extended [[metaphor]] with a [[complex]] [[logic]] that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By [[juxtaposing]], usurping and manipulating images and [[ideas]] in surprising ways, a conceit invites the [[reader]] into a more sophisticated [[understanding]] of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in [[English]] are part of the poetic idiom of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism Mannerism], during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
==History of the term==
In the [[Renaissance]], the term (which is related to the [[word]] [[concept]]) indicated any particularly fanciful [[expression]] of wit, and was later used pejoratively of outlandish poetic [[metaphors]].
Recent [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_criticism literary critics] have used the term to mean simply the style of extended and heightened [[metaphor]] common in the [[Renaissance]] and particularly in the 17th century, without any particular indication of value. Within this critical sense, the Princeton Encyclopedia makes a distinction between two kinds of conceits: the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceit#Metaphysical_conceit Metaphysical conceit] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceit#Petrarchan_conceit Petrarchan conceit]. In the latter, human [[experiences]] are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical [[hyperbole]]), like the stock comparison of eyes to the sun, which [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare Shakespeare] makes light of in his [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_130 sonnet 130]: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."
[[Category: Languages and Literature]]
[[Category: Languages and Literature]]
