Honors American Studies English Literary Devices

Allegory

a story in which the characters, settings, and events stand for abstract or moral concepts.

Alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds.

Allusion

reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or popular culture.

Anti-Hero

a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.

Antithesis

a contrasting of ideas made sharp by the use of words of opposite meaning in contiguous clauses or phrases (next to one another) with grammatically parallel structure. Aristotle praised antithesis in his Rhetoric "…because …it is by putting opposing conclusions side by side that you refute one of them."

Apostrophe

a figure of speech in which the speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding.

Archetype

a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology.

Assonance

the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together.

Blank Verse

poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (five metrical feet per line, each consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).

Conceit

a fanciful and elaborate figure of speech that makes a surprising connection between two seemingly dissimilar things.

Consonance

the repetition of consonant sounds. This repetition is not limited to initial consonant sounds.

Dead Metaphor

(to be avoided) common usage makes you forget that the two items being compared are really separate items.

Dialect

a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.

Diction

author's word choice.

Dissonance (cacophony)

a harsh, discordant combination of sounds. It is usually created by the repetition of harsh consonant sounds.

Double Entendre

a word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is usually risqué or indecent.

Epigram

short, condensed, polished, pointed phrases often ending in surprising or witty turns of thought.

Epigraph

a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.

Epiphany

a sudden perception (moment of understanding) that causes a character to change or act in a certain way.

Epistolary

(of a literary work) in the form of letters. As in "an epistolary novel."

Euphemism

a pleasant way of stating an unpleasant truth (usually to be avoided). The ___ is vague and less direct, especially when used in reference to death, irreligious references to God, and discreet references to body parts and functions.

Extended Metaphor

this type of metaphor is developed over several lines of writing or even throughout an entire poem.

Figurative Language

descriptions or comparisons using simile, metaphor, personification, etc.

Foil

designed to illustrate or reveal information, traits, values, or motivations of one character through the comparison and contrast of another character.

Foreshadowing

the use of "hints" of events to come.

Frame Story

a story set within a story, narrative, or movie, told by the main or supporting character.

Free Verse

poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Hyperbole

a great exaggeration.

Imagery

the sensory details appealing to the five senses (taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight).

Imagery (Visual)

appeals to or represents the sense of sight

Imagery (Tactile/Kinesthetic)

appeals to or represents the sense of touch

Imagery (Auditory)

appeals to or represents the sense of hearing

Imagery (Gustatory)

appeals to or represents the sense of taste

Imagery (Olfactory)

appeals to or represents the sense of smell

In Media Res

"in the midst of things"; refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in past details by exposition or flashback.

Innuendo

an allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one.

Irony

a contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality - between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected and what really happens, or between what appears to be true and what is really true.

Verbal Irony

the art of using words to say one thing and mean another.

Dramatic Irony

when the audience knows more than the characters.

Situational Irony

contrast between what is expected and what actually occurs.

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.

Kenning

in Anglo-Saxon poetry, a metaphorical phrase or compound word used to name a person, place, thing, or event indirectly.

Litotes

a figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement. An example from common speech is to say "Not bad" as a form of high praise.

Masculine Rhyme

Rhymes ending in a stressed syllable

Example: "mail/quail"; "compare / affair."

Metaphor

a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things without using connective words like, as, than, or resembles.

Metonymy

a closely associated idea used for the idea itself. The major effect is to communicate through abstract, intangible terms the concrete and tangible.

Mixed Metaphor (to be avoided)

combines two or more diverse metaphors that do not fit together logically.

Mood

the climate of feeling within a literary work. The author's choice of setting, objects, details, images, and words all contribute in creating a specific mood.

Motif

a recurrent device, formula, or situation.

Onomatopoeia

the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning.

Oxymoron

a paradoxical utterance that combines two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries.

Paradox

a statement which seems untrue but proves valid upon close inspection.

Pathetic Fallacy

a type of personification where human emotions are given to non-human things, especially nature

Personification

gives life to inanimate objects or makes animals human.

Pun

a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or two different words that sound alike but have different meanings.

Rhetoric

the art of speaking or writing effectively.

Rhyme

the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close together in a poem.

Approximate Rhyme (slant rhyme)

words sound similar but not exact.

End Rhyme

occurs at line endings.

Internal Rhyme

occurs within lines.

Rhythm

the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.

Satire

literature that blends ironic humor and wit with criticism for the purpose of ridiculing folly, vice, stupidity.

Simile

an expressed comparison between two distinctly different things, especially using like or as.

Synaesthesia

the deliberate mixing of the senses.

Synecdoche

a figure of speech in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.

Symbol

a word, phrase, or object in a work of literature that signifies something beyond itself.

Theme

the main idea or underlying meaning of a literary work.

Tone

an author's attitude toward his/her subject matter. It could be reverent, serious, humorous, sad, etc.

Understatement

deliberately representing something as less important than it really is.

Unreliable Narrator

a speaker or voice whose vision or version of the details of a story is consciously or unconsciously deceiving.

Verse

metrical language. All verse is not poetry; all poetry is not verse