Literary Devices and Poetic Forms

alliteration

repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words

onomatopoeia

words that imitate sounds 'ding ding' 'boing'

repetition

use of a word more than once

rhythm

sound pattern created by combining stressed and unstressed syllables

rhyme

a repeating sound in two or more words, as in bat, cat, hat or row, bow

half rhyme

Words whose sounds are similar but not identical, like pans and hams, or live and love

chronological sequence

events in the order in which they occur

connotation

the feelings and associations a word evokes; can be positive or negative

denotation

the dictionary definition of a word; the direct and specific meaning

literal language

language that means exactly what it says

figurative language

language not meant to be taken literally

speaker

person that narrates the poem

tone

writer's attitude toward his or her subject (joyful, lonely, sarcastic)

hyperbole

an exaggeration

idiom

an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the literal meaning (break a leg, spill the beans)

personification

animal, object, or idea is given human qualities

simile

comparison using like or as to show a similar quality in two unlike things

metaphor

makes a comparison like a simile, but without using like or as

verbal irony

what is said is the opposite of what is meant

free verse

poetry written without rules about form, rhyme, rhythm, meter, etc.

narrative poem

tells a story in verse; similar to a short story

lyric poem

poem expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker in musical verse

concrete poem

poem is shaped to look like its subject; words create a picture on the page

stanza

a group of lines that work together to express a central idea; stanzas are like paragraphs

lines

groups of words that help create rhythm and emphasis

Caesura

a pause/stop near the middle of a line

Enjambment

the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.

end-stopped

a line with a pause/stop at the end

visual imagery

descriptive language that appeals to the sense of sight - emphasis on light, colour for example

auditory imagery

descriptive language to represent an experience pertaining to sound

gustatory imagery

descriptive language that appeals to the sense of taste

tactile imagery

descriptive language that appeals to the sense of touch

olfactory imagery

descriptive language that appeals to the sense of smell

organic imagery

internal or emotional sensation: hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, nausea

Sibilance

Repetition of the 's' sound

Ellipses

. . . Used to suggest hesitation, attempt to conceal something, unfinished thought, or difficulty expressing oneself

Semantic Field/ Lexical Field

a group of words which are related in meaning. For example: divine, cloud, heaven, radiant, iridescent.

pathetic fallacy

describing the weather or season in a way which reflects the mood of a character or create a tone

Polysyndeton

a list with deliberate use of many conjunctions (and, so, but, yet)

Metaphor

a comparison without using like or as - 'she is a lion'

Plosive alliteration

Repetition of the B or P sound E.g. "blisters beaded on his pale skin."

Fricative Alliteration

Repetition of 'f' , 'ph' and 'v' sounds

focalisation

what the focus is on /what the narrator decides to focus on

parentheses

used to not interrupt the main sentence (extra information) seperated by (brackets) or ,commas, or -dashes-

em dash

a long dash - used to create a pause, or place emphasis

Juxtaposition

Placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts

Oxymoron

words next to each other that contradict each other in meaning (as in 'deafening silence' or 'authentic fake')

word order

the order of words in a sentence - words can be placed in different positions for emphasis

parallelism/parallel structure

the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures e.g. 'we have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated'

Asyndeton

a list without conjunctions - use of commas in a list e.g. I bought apples, oranges, pears, grapes, bananas, tampons.

dichotomy

a division into two parts

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme

Trecet

3 line stanza

Vocative

direct address

declarative sentence

a sentence that makes a statement

imperative sentence

sentence used to command

exclamatory sentence

a sentence expressing strong feeling, usually punctuated with an exclamation mark

Anadiplosis

repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause

Kinesthetic imagery

descriptive language representing an experience pertaining to movement