LITERARY DEVICES Flashcards
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds, generally at the beginning of words and usually by means of consonants or consonant sound clusters in a group of words. (“The willful waterbeds help me thrall, / the laving laurel turned my tide.”)
Allusion
- In literature, this is a reference to another work. (In the Police song “Wrapped Around Your Finger”, Sting writes, “trapped between the Scylla and Charybdis” in reference to Homer’s Odyssey.)
- A reference to another event, person, place or work of
literature. The allusion is usually implied rather than explicit
and provides another layer of meaning to what is being said
Anecdote
A very short personal story that is told to make a point.
Assonance
Is the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words.
(Hear the mellow wedding bells. — Edgar Allan Poe, “The Bells” or And murmuring of innumerable bees - Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Princess
VII.203)
Consonance
is the repetition, at close intervals, of the final consonants of accented syllables or important words especially at the ends of words
(as in blank and think or strong and string or Lady lounges lazily and Dark deep dread.)
Flashback
A scene in a short story, a novel, a narrative poem, or a play that interrupts the action to show an event that happened earlier.
Foreshadowing
The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest what action is to come. Writers use foreshadowing to create interest and build
suspense.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is an exaggeration of fact used either for serious or comic effect. (“Her eyes opened wide as saucers.”)
Imagery
Imagery refers to the way words create or suggest pictures in the reader’s mind – what we see, hear, smell, feel, or taste.
Irony
A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is meant or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. The three kinds of irony are verbal irony, in which a writer or speakers says one thing and means something entirely different, dramatic irony, in which a reader or an audience knows something that a character in the story or play does not know, and irony of the situation, in which the writer shows a discrepancy between the expected result of some action or situation and its actual result. (“It was ironic when the marriage counsellor himself got a divorce.”)
Metaphor
A metaphor is a comparison that is only suggested or implied, with no clear indication of a relation between the two items. (“Her face is a wrinkled leaf.”)
Motif
A reoccurring feature, such as a name, an image, or a phrase, in a work of literature. A motif generally contributes in some way to the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play.
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the use of a word in which the sound imitates or suggests its meaning. (Hiss, clang, snap buzz.)
Oxymoron
A phrase where two or more words are diametrically opposed. (Sweet sorrow, wise fool, honest thief, short eternity)
Paradox
- A statement that reveals a kind of truth, although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue.
- An apparently self-contradictory statement, which can only be true if it is false, and vice versa.
Personification
A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human qualities.(“Grey mist on the sea’s face”)
Satire
A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. The aim of satirists is to set a moral standard for society, and they attempt to persuade the reader to set their point of view through the force of laughter.
Symbol
Any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself, such as a quality, an attitude, a belief, or a value. Such as a rose is often a symbol of love.
Simile
A figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of words “like” or “as”. (My love is like a rose)
Ambiguity
Use of language where the meaning is unclear or has two or more possible meanings or interpretations. It could be created by a weakness in the writer’s expression, but it is more likely it is a deliberate device used by the writer to create layers of meaning
Anthropomorphism
The endowment of human characteristics to something that is
not human
Pathetic Fallacy
a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions
- A pathetic fallacy can add atmosphere to a scene. It can even give clues to the reader as to what is to come, acting as a kind of foreshadowing.
Anaphora
a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis.
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written with a precise meter—almost always iambic pentameter—but that does not rhyme.
When a poem is written in iambic pentameter, it means each line contains five iambs—two syllable pairs in which the second syllable is emphasized.
Free verse
Free verse poetry is poetry that lacks a consistent rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, or musical form. While free verse poems are not devoid of structure, they allow enormous leeway for poets, particularly when compared to more metrically strict forms like blank verse.
Caesura
a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. It may be expressed by a comma (, ), a tick, or two lines, either slashed or upright.
- A caesura is a slight pause in a line of poetry. Its purpose depends on the context of the words.
- occurs in most lines of poetry to break the line into ‘chunks’ of meaning, to extend meanings, to contrast ideas to produce rhythmic effects,
Enjambment
In poetry, enjambment is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation.
Rhyme
Rhyme is a literary device, featured particularly in poetry, in which identical or similar concluding syllables in different words are repeated. Rhyme most often occurs at the ends of poetic lines. In addition, rhyme is principally a function of sound rather than spelling.
Refrain
a refrain is a line or group of lines that regularly repeat, usually at the end of a stanza in a poem or at the end of a verse in a song.
Rhythm
Rhythm can be described as the beat and pace of a poem. Rhythm is created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line or verse. Rhythm can help to strengthen the meaning of words and ideas in a poem.
Repetition
repetition is repeating words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. … Repetition is used to emphasize a feeling or idea, create rhythm, and/or develop a sense of urgency.
Dactylic Dimeter
metrical feet that have three syllables instead of two: the first stressed and the following two unstressed.
Accentual verse
Verse whose meter is determined by the number of stressed (accented) syllables—regardless of the total number of syllables—in each line.
iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet.
iambic pentameter
a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity.
Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a monologue spoken by a theatrical character that expresses the character’s inner thoughts and emotions. Soliloquies may be written in common prose, but the most famous soliloquies—including those by Hamlet and countless other William Shakespeare characters—are written in poetic verse.
- Many of the most renowned dramatic soliloquies are spoken in blank verse.
cyclical structure
In later literature, structure is often said to be cyclical when the conditions at the end are in the some way the same as they are at the beginning.
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making the voices of a narrator and characters as well; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme.
Sonnet
A sonnet (pronounced son-it) is a fourteen line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme. Often, sonnets use iambic pentameter: five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables for a ten-syllable line.
Tercets
Tercets are any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. The haiku is a tercet poem.
Quatrain
A quatrain in poetry is a series of four-lines that make one verse of a poem, known as a stanza.
Monologue
is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience.
Aside
An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience is to realize that the character’s speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. … An aside is usually a brief comment, rather than a speech, such as a monologue or soliloquy.
Epigraph
An epigraph is a literary device in the form of a poem, quotation, or sentence – usually placed at the beginning of a document or a simple piece – having a few sentences, but which belongs to another writer.
- epigraphs serve to clue readers in to some element of the work they are about to read. Sometimes authors use epigraphic quotes to set up larger themes they will explore later in their books. Other epigraph set up expository information that will help the reader understand the work.
