Rising from Rags to Riches
Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” poem is a piece of literature that has continued to be loved and recited by many despite being written in 1978. Metaphor criticism will be used to study how Maya Angelou used metaphors to convey her message. The metaphors in her poem were put into groups, which are nature, history, violence against her person, and expansive descriptions of herself. Speaking to people who held racial hatred in their hearts, Maya Angelou used these metaphors to confront their vision of themselves being rich and powerful by describing herself as rich with the gifts from her ancestors. Keywords: Maya Angelou, metaphors, rhetorical criticism
COMM 441, Rhetorical Criticism
Doyle Srader
10 AM – Noon