What Is Tactile Imagery?

Tactile imagery deals with the sense of touch.

Imagery is the use of descriptive and figurative language to recreate sensory experiences. Tactile imagery appeals to the sense of touch.

Significance

Humans experience the world via their five senses. Writers recreate experiences in the mind of readers or viewers by using imagery to appeal to the five senses through the use of words evoking sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

Significance

When a writer employs tactile imagery, he depends on experiences and associations his intended audience will connect to hardness, wetness, coldness, heat, softness, roughness and other "touch" words.

Examples

Robert Frost appeals to the reader's sense of feeling when he employs tactile imagery in his poems. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "Fire and Ice" include tactile images like "snow," "fire and ice" as the poems connect the reader to the speaker's experiences.

Effect

Students who attempt to critique a poem should always examine how the poet employs tactile imagery to have an effect upon the reader or to appeal to the reader's sense of touch.

Fun Fact

Shakespeare mastered the use of tactile imagery. He also employed gustatory (taste), kinesthetic (movement) and olfactory (smell) imagery.

References

• Roane State Community College; Online Writing Lab
• Perrine's Structure, Sound and Sense; Thomas Arp; 2006