Hyperbole in John Webster’s tragedies (the white devil and the duchess of malti)

Abstract

As a figure of speech hyperbole plays an important part in the structure and texture of Webster’s tragedies. Since The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are basically built upon the contrast between appearance and reality, as most literary scholars dealing with Webster’s plays point out, hyperbole is a literary and rhetorical device to bridge these two elements, and plays the role of mediator between them. Isolating and studying the hiperboles in these two plays new qualities, concerning primarily the definition of characters, can be revealed.