Is there a term for this literary device?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been listening to the 1963 (Richard Burton) BBC Radio recording of Under Milk Wood - in fact, lately, I’ve been listening to very little else and still am not bored with it.

Anyway, a few times throughout the play, Dylan Thomas shifts the attributes of one object onto another; the best example of this is probably in the opening monologue, where we hear:

-The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles)

and a little later:

-And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards.

Clearly it’s the moles that are velvety and snouting, not the dingles(A dingle is a small wooded valley, BTW), and the dogs that have wet noses, not the yards, but in each of these cases (and there are others that are not quite so obvious, but still there), the attributes are transferred from the subject to the environment in which the subject is to be found.

So, is there a term for this device?

2

There is a type of metaphor called a “catachresis”, which is the usage of word in a context different from how it might normally be used.

3

Man. The Straight Dope is the best.

4

Thanks for that, Lib - having looked it up, I think it falls under that definition, but it seems like a special case, because catachresis looks like it can be other kinds of strained construction too.

5

I’m sure I learned that this use is a transferred epithet for which Thomas was famous.

6

Check out Silva Rhetoricae, Mange. Maybe you can find what you need there.