The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Hyperbole

Hyperbole: A trope employing deliberate, emphatic exaggeration, usually for comic or ironic effect. Some critics refer to hyperbole as overstatement.

EXAMPLES: Lady Macbeth’s guilty musing in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth (1606), after her husband Macbeth executes her plan to murder King Duncan: “Here’s the smell of blood still; / All the perfumes of Arabia / Will not sweeten this little hand.” Oscar Wilde commented hyperbolically on Walter Pater’s The Renaissance (1873) when he said, “the last trumpet should have sounded the moment it was written.” Hyperbole is also common in pop culture, as exemplified by the titles of Bruce Springsteen’s song “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” (1992) and Diane Stafford’s 50,001+ Best Baby Names (2004), whose cover also screams “More Names! More Lists! Better than ever!” and whose spine asserts “the very BEST baby-naming book ever.”