Literary Devices Flashcards
He drowned in a sea of grief.
Metaphor
She is fishing in troubled waters.
Metaphor
Success is a bastard as it has many fathers, and failure is an orphan, with no takers.
Metaphor
As cute as a kitten
Simile
As happy as a clam
Simile
I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.
Allusion
Chocolate was her Achilles’ heel.
Allusion
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Personification
The avalanche devoured everything in its path.
Personification
Aporia
A figure of speech wherein a speaker purports or expresses to be in doubt or in perplexity regarding a question (often feigned) and asks the audience how he/she ought to proceed.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”
Aporia
“Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?”
Aporia
Is rain wet?
Rhetorical Question
A parent is arguing with a child about the importance of good grades. The parent says “Do you want to live at home in the basement for the rest of your life?”
Rhetorical Question
Chiasmus
A rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures in order to produce an artistic effect.
Love as if you would one day hate,
and hate as if you would one day love.
Chiasmus
When religion was strong and science weak, men
mistook magic for medicine;
Now, when science is strong and religion weak, men
mistake medicine for magic.
Chiasmus
Litotes
A figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite expressions.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others.
Litotes
You are not as young as you used to be.
Litotes
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Synesthesia
The word would fill her mind for a few minutes with a single color: not an unpleasant sensation but still an intrusion… Patriarch: Brown, she thought, a temple of a word, a shiny red-brown, like the surface of a chestnut.
Synesthesia
Juxtaposition
A literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts.
When the cat’s away the mice will play.
Juxtaposition
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Juxtaposition
Antithesis
A rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness
Antihesis
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n
Antithesis
Paradox
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or silly but may include a latent truth.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others
Paradox
The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is Rainbow in her womb;
Paradox
Polysyndeton
A stylistic device in which several coordinating conjunctions are used in succession in order to achieve an artistic effect.
And Joshua, and all of Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.”
Polysyndeton
Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly–mostly–let them have their whiteness.
Polysyndeton
Asyndeton
A stylistic device used in literature and poetry to intentionally eliminate conjunctions between the phrases and in the sentence, yet maintain the grammatical accuracy.
This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you completely…….
Asyndeton
Call up her father.
Rouse him. Make after him, Poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets. Incense her kinsmen,
And, though he in a fertile climate dwell.
Asyndeton
Apostrophe
Direct adress to someone not there.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
Apostrophe
Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.
Apostrophe
Hyperbole
A figure of speech that involves an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis.
Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Hyperbole
He cried all night, and dawn found him still there, though his tears had dried and only hard, dry sobs shook his wooden frame. But these were so loud that they could be heard by the faraway hills …
Hyperbole
I have to have this operation. It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.
Understatement
“Deserts are sometimes hot, dry and sandy” while describing deserts of the world.
Understatement
Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect.
I find no peace, and all my war is done
I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,
I flee above the wind, yet can I not arise.
Oxymoron
The channel was repeating the old news again and again.
Oxymoron
We do not hire mentally challenged people.
Euphemism
You are becoming a little thin on top.
Euphemism
