Literary Terms Flashcards
“While the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch…”
Simile and personification
“This great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world.”
Metaphor
“He hid and sobbed and cried and kept quiet.”
Polysyndeton
She was an expert at lip reading from ten years of apprenticeship at Seashell ear thimbles.”
Hyperbole
The Mechanical Hound
Paradox
“I don’t think its social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk.”
Irony
“The orange dragon coughed to life.”
Metaphor
“A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon in his hands.”
Simile
“The parlor families are my family.”
Irony
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.”
Metaphor
“The train radio vomitted upon Montag.”
Personification
As a fireman, Montag’s life was filled with flame and heat. As a fugitive, now, he is alone and “stands shivering.”
Contrast
Montag was “going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapours for supper.”
Hyperbole
“After a long time floating on the land and a short time floating in the river.”
Contrast
“No, nor a fruitful river in the eye…”
Metaphor
“Your bait of falsehood will catch this carp of truth.”
Metaphor
“What is he to Hecuba… that he should weep for her?”
Allusion
“The morning walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.”
Personification
“A little more than kin and less than kind.”
Pun
“Thrift… the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish the marriage tables.”
Irony
“Each hair to stand on end like quills.”
Simile
“These are but wild and whirling words.”
Alliteration
“Frailty, thy name is woman!”
Apostrophe
“Brevity is the soul of wit… I will be brief.”
Irony
“The morn in russet mantle clad, walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.”
Personification
“Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.”
Pun
“O, that this too too-solid flesh would melt…”
Metaphor
“Tis an unweeded garden, that grows to seed…”
Metaphor
“Hyperion to a satyr…”
Allusion
“Till then, sit still, my soul!”
Apostrophe
“Give every man thine eat but few thy voice.”
Metonymy
“For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”
Personification
“Borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”
Personification
“I do know, when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul gives the tongue vows.”
Alliteration
“To those thorns in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.”
Metaphor
“The time is out of joint; O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.”
Rhyme
“O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!”
Allusion
“He would drown the stage with tears.”
Hyperbole
“I’ll have grounds more relative than this. The play’s the thing wherein I catch the conscience of the king.”
Rhyme
