Senior English Literary Devices

alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds; e.g., "scuttling across the floors of silent seas" from the poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

allusion

indirect or passing reference to a person, place, or event; can be biblical, mythological, historical, literary, artistic, etc.; the nature of the reference is not explained because the author relies on the reader's familiarity with it; e.g., "See what a grade was seated on this brow, / Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, / An eye like Mars' to threaten and command..." from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

apostrophe

the addressing of words to an absent person as if he or she were not present or to a thing or ideas as if it could understand and appreciate the words. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star / How I wonder what you are" from "The Star" by Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor is an example.

assonance

repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) in a line or a series of lines in a poem; e.g., "Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells!" from Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Bells."

atmosphere

the general feeling of a poem; described with an adjective (e.g., happy, sad, eerie, nostalgic, etc.).

ballad

a poem that tells a story, often in a straightforward and dramatic manner and often about such universal themes as love, honour, and courage; they were once songs, and literary ones often have a strong rhythm or and plain rhyme schemes of songs; "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example.

ballad stanza

generally found as a quatrain, or four-line stanza, within a ballad.

blank verse

lines in poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (light beat followed by a heavy beat, five times per line); of all the English verse forms, it is the most fluid and comes the closest to the natural rhythms of English speech; e.g., "with some uncertain notice, as might seem / of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods" from the poem "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth.

cacophony

the use of harsh or unmusical sounds, like truncheon and cataract.

chorus

a part of a poem that is repeated.

consonance

repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words; e.g., "Now the water's low. The weeds exceed me" from Theodore Roethke's poem "Praise to the End."

couplet

two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme (i.e., with end rhyme, where the rhyming words fall at the end of each line); eg., "then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance / after your thoughts, straight back to France" from King Henry V, a play by William Shakespeare.

dissonance

harsh sounding, unusual, or impolite words used to create a disturbing effect or to disrupt the flow of words; can be emotional or intellectual; e.g., "thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides" from "To a Locomotive in Winter," a song by Walt Whitman.

elegy

a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual; "A Grammarian's Funeral" by Robert Browning are examples.

enjamblement

the continuation of a sentence or phrase from one line of poetry to the next; a line typically lacks punctuation at its line break, so the reader is carried smoothly and swiftly-without interruption-to the next line of the poem.

epic

a long poem, often about a heroic character; the writing is elevated and often represents religious and cultural ideals; "Beowulf" and "Odyssey" by Homer are examples.

euphemism

the use of a mild or indirect expression instead of one that is harsh or unpleasantly direct. "Pass away" is a means "die", "I'm not fond of her" means "I hate her."

euphony

sounds pleasing to the ear; John Keats employs this in his poem "To Autumn."

extended metaphor

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" (also known as "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?") is an example of this as a person is compared to a summer day throughout the whole poem.

free verse

a type of poem with no discernible or set rhythm, rhyme, or rules; can be rhymed or unrhymed, but where there are rhymes they are usually irregular and may not occur at the end of lines. "Apocalypse" by D. J. Enright is an example

hyperbole

a figure of speech that uses deliberate exaggeration for effect; e.g., "An hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze" from Andrew Marvel's poem "To His Coy Mistress."

image

a word or series of words that refers to a sensory experience.

imagery

words or phrases that create pictures in the reader's mind, through an appeal to at least one of the five senses; e.g., "the apparition of these faces in the crowd / petals on a wet, black bough" from "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound.

irony

when the actual meaning is the opposite of the stated meaning; can be serious or humorous; often a technique that indicates the writer's attitude to some element of the story; e.g., W. H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" is an elegy celebrating the life of a citizen, yet the state does not know the citizen at all.

juxtaposition

the deliberate contrast of elements in a poem for effect. Some common elements are light/dark, good/evil, love/hate, etc.

lyric

short poem that expresses the private thoughts and emotions of the poet; originally they were poems that were intended to be sung; retain their melodic and musical qualities; sonnets, odes, and elegies are examples

metaphor

a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two fundamentally dissimilar things; e.g., "All the world's a stage / and all the men and women merely players" from the comedy play As You Like It by William Shakespeare.

metonymy

figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something closely associated with it; e.g., using the phrase "the White House" to refer to the United States government.

metre

a generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

metrical poetry

poetry written in regular, repeating rhythms; rhymes are also regular and are often found at the end of lines.

mood

the way the poet orders the elements of the poem, like symbol and imagery to create a dominant emotion or pattern of emotions for the reader.

motif

a recurring theme, idea, incident, image, symbol, etc. found in poems.

narrative

a poem that tells a story

octave

an eight-line poem or stanza; can also refer to the first eight lines in an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet.

ode

a poem expressing lofty emotion; often celebrating an event or are addressed to nature, a person, place, or thing

onomatopoeia

words that imitate the sounds they refer to, such as buzz, bang, or hiss.

oxymoron

a combination of two contradictory terms, like living dead; expresses some truth in words that cannot be understood literally.

paradox

a statement in which there is an apparent contradiction which is actually true; often used to make the reader think over an idea in an innovative way. Examples: "the more she slept, the more tired she got"; "I can resist anything but temptation" (Oscar Wilde).

parallelism

making two or more lines of poetry similar in form to create a pattern and suggest corresponding meaning between them.

pastoral

a type of poem that deals in an idealized way with shepherds and rustic lives; e.g., "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe

personification

attributing human qualities to inanimate objects; e.g., "When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils" from the poem "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" by William Wordsworth.

pun

a humorous expression that depends on a double meaning, either between different senses of the same word or between two similar sounding words; e.g., "Santa's helpers are sub-ordinate clauses."

quatrain

a stanza of four lines, usually with alternating rhymes.

refrain

a word, line, phrase, or group of lines repeated regularly throughout the poem, usually at the end of each stanza; e.g., the poem "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" by Dylan Thomas.

repetition

the act of repeating something that has already been written; used for emphasis.

rhyme

the repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear closely to one another in a poem; e.g., "I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. /I was angry with my foe:/ I told it not, my wrath did grow" from the poem "A Poison Tree" by William Blake.

rhyme scheme

the pattern of rhyme in a poem.

sarcasm

the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.

satire

a literary form of writing which uses humour to provoke change (usually socio-political).

sestet

a six line poem or stanza; can also refer to the last six lines in an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet.

simile

a comparison between two things using like, as, or than; e.g., "my luve's like a red, red rose" from Robert Burns' poem "A Red, Red Rose."

sonnet

a lyric poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter; traditionally consists of three quatrains and a couplet all written to a strict end rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. The development of the poet's thoughts are also highly structured, with each quatrain expressing a different point and the couplet being the resolution

stanza

segment within the formal pattern of a poem, can consist of any groupings of numbers of lines, and is distinguished from other by clearly indicated divisions.

style

a poet's characteristic way of writing determined by their choice of words (diction), the arrangement of words in lines, and the relationship between the lines.

synecdoche

when a part of something is used to represent the whole; e.g., "many hands make light work" where hands represent people.

symbol

anything that stands for or represents something else other than itself; in poetry it is commonly a word, object, place, or person that has some further significance associated with it; a common example is a red rose representing love. Can be universally recognized, like flags or corporate logos, but they can also be more complicated and may suggest more than one meaning; e.g., snow can be goodness because of its cleanliness, but it can also be cruelty because of its coldness. Often contained in titles, in characters, places, classical, literary, and historical allusions, and in images or motifs.

symbolism

the use of symbols to represent ideas and create meaning in poems.

theme

a general idea or insight about life in general the poet wishes to express in a poem.

tone

a particular way of speaking or writing, but can also describe the general feeling of a piece of work, or the attitude the poet takes to the subject of the poem; can include thoughtful, formal, morose, tragic, or silly; can also be a complex mixture of attitudes; different ones can leave readers with such varying emotions as pity, fear, horror, or humour.

understatement

the presentation of something as being smaller, less good, or of less importance than it really is

wit

the capacity for inventive thought and quick, keen understanding - often with the intent of producing humorous responses; cleverness.

connotation

the implied meaning of a word

denotation

the literal dictionary definition of a word

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