BRIT LIT MIDTERM LITERARY DEVICES

Foreshadowing

authors provide hints, clues, or warnings about future plot developments, creating suspense, building tension, and making later events feel more natural and earned

symbolism

the use of objects, people, places, or actions to represent deeper, abstract ideas or concepts

metaphor

a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things by stating one is the other without using “like” or “as”

Epic

a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition

• recited or sung

• contain heroic or legendary figures

Epic Hero

• larger than life character w/ bravery and wisdom

• products of the cultures from which they hail

• provide insight into a cultures values, anxieties, beliefs, etc.

in media res

starting the story in the middle

epic boast

• intro and family

• resume/ past deeds

• promise

Kenning

a compound poetic renaming of nouns

• ex: oar-steed, sky-castle, fish home

Caesura

a pause in a line of poetry, dictated by natural rhythm

Patronym

father naming, Blank’s son

litotes

two negatives make a positive

• ex: none regretted

allusion

indirect reference to a famous person, place, historical event, or another literary work, relying on the reader’s shared cultural knowledge to add deeper meaning w/o explicit explanation

assonance

repetition of vowel sounds

alliteration

repetition of sounds

epithet

adjective or descriptive phrase paired with a character

ex: infamous killer, sin stained

Chiasmus

a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order

ex: as brother born might swear to his born brother

situational irony

author sets up expectations, then thwarts/prevents them

dramatic irony

audience knows more than the characters do

verbal irony

what a character says isn’t what they mean

monologue

the character is talking to someone else

soliloquy

the character is by themself