APOSTROPHE

Apostrophe
two definitions of Apostrophe (none in McGraw Hill Glossary of Poetic Terms ) 1. Turning one's speech from one audience to another. Most often, apostrophe occurs when one addresses oneself to an abstraction, to an inanimate object, or to the absent. 2. A digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea, as “O Death, where is thy sting?”

Poem:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

—Shakespeare, //Julius Caesar// 3.1.254-257

Antony addresses Julius Caesar's corpse after his assassination. He talking to a dead corpse, which is an inanimate object and is absent from so life, so it is an apostrophe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pusU90ov8pQ&feature=related

This video of Macbeth "seeing" and talking to himself about the imaginary knife is a perfect showing of an apostrophe. Macbeth is addressing himself to an abstraction of his imagination, which is an inanimate object, and is absent to the real eye.

