Poetry Literary Deices

Visual Imagery

the representation through language of sense experience, specifically sense of sight

Aural Imagery

the representation through language of sense experience, specifically sense of sound

Gustatory Imagery

the representation through language of sense experience, specifically sense of taste

Tactile Imagery

the representation through language of sense experience, specifically sense of touch

Olfactory Imagery

the representation through language of sense experience, specifically sense of smell

Irony

a situation, or a use of language, involving some kind of incongruity or discrepancy

Verbal Irony

words suggest opposite of what is meant

dramatic irony

contradiction between what character thinks and what audience knows to be true

irony of a situation

event directly contradicts the expectations of characters, reader, or audience

allusion

a reference, explicit or implicit, to something [or someone] in previous literature or history

apostrophe

a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply

diction

word choice including vocabulary used, appropriateness of words, vividness of language

hyperbole

a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement