Literary devices

Type of Tone

The speaker’s or narrator’s complex attitude toward a subject, character, or audience

Type of Mood

The emotional atmosphere evoked in the reader through setting, imagery, and diction

POV—Point of View

The narrative perspective governing how much information and interiority the reader receives

Imagery

Sensory language appealing to sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, movement, or internal sensation

Polysyndeton

Deliberate use of multiple conjunctions (and, or, nor) in close succession where they could be omitted

Simile

Comparison between two dissimilar things using ‘like’ or ‘as’

Asyndeton

The deliberate omission of conjunctions between a series of related clauses or phrases

Metaphor

Comparison of two unlike things without comparative words

Enjambment vs. end stop

Enjambment= syntactic unit continues past a line break without terminal punctuation

End Stop-= a line concludes with punctuation, creating pause, finality, or rhythmic control

Irony

Discrepancy between appearance and reality or expectation and outcome: verbal (saying the opposite of what is meant), situational (an outcome contrary to expectation), and dramatic (the audience knows a truth hidden from a character)

Type of Diction

An author’s deliberate word choice

Conceit

An elaborate extended metaphor comparing two vastly dissimilar things across a stanza or entire poem

Type of Syntax

Sentence structure and word order used to control pacing and emphasis

Apostrophe

Direct address to an absent person, or inanimate object, or an abstract concepts as if it were alive and able to reply

Shift

A pivotal change in tone, attitude, perspective, time, or argument within a text

Parallelism

Repetition of identical or similar grammatical structures across words, phrases, or clauses

ex: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

Contrast

Deliberate highlighting of stark differences between characters, settings, images, or ideas

Metonymy

Figure of speech substituting the name of an attribute or closely associated concept for the thing itself

ex: “The pen is mightier than the sword”

Juxtaposition

Placing two contrasting images, scenes, characters, or ideas immediately side by side without explicit commentary

Synecdoche

Figure of speech in which a physical part represents the whole, or the whole represents a part

ex: “A pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas”

Paradox

A seemingly self-contradictory or absurd statement that nonetheless expresses a profound truth upon closer scrutiny

ex: ‘Death, thou shalt die’

Allusion

Indirect reference to a well-known historical, biblical, mythological, or literary figure, event, or text

Oxymoron

Combining two adjacent, contradictory terms

Repetition

Deliberate recurrence of words, phrases, motifs, or syntactic patterns

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds in stressed syllables of nearby words

Assonance

Repetition of similar vowel sounds within nearby words with different consonants

ex: ‘From the molten-golden notes’

Consonance

Repetition of identical consonant sounds within or at the ends of nearby words with differing vowel sounds

ex: ‘all mammals named Same are clammy’

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or poetic lines

Anadiplosis

The repetition of the last word or phrase of one clause or line at the beginning of the next

ex: ‘Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.’

Hyperbole

Deliberate, extravagant exaggeration not meant to be taken literally

Understatement

Representing something as far less significant than it truly is

Euphemism

Substituting a mild, indirect, or genteel expression for one considered harsh, blunt, taboo, or unpleasant

ex: saying someone ‘passed away’ instead of ‘died’

Cacophony

Harsh, discordant, jarring combinations of sounds produced by plosive consonants and guttural clusters

ex: ‘Gas!Gas! Quick, boys!’

Euphony

Pleasant, harmonious, soothing combinations of sounds created through liquid consonants (l,r), nasals (m,n), soft fricatives (f,v,s), and open vowels

Onomatopoeia

Sounds that imitate or suggest the natural sounds they describe

Personification

Giving human emotions, agency, or traits to inanimate objects, animals, or abstract ideas