literary devices
Agency - Agency refers to the character’s ability to make decisions and choices on his own in reaction or response to outside forces or in response to his own ideas, desires, or goals. Characters’ choices—in speech, action, and inaction— reveal what they value.
Alliteration - Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter sound at the beginning of adjacent or nearby words to emphasize those words and their associations or representations.
Allusion - Allusions in a text can reference literary works including myths and sacred texts; other works of art including paintings and music; or people, places, or events outside the text. Because of shared knowledge about a reference, allusions create emotional or intellectual associations and understandings.
Ambiguity - Ambiguity is defined as “doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention” (dictionary.com). Ambiguity in a text allows for different readings and understandings of a text by different readers.
Analogy- Analogies are more elaborate and informational than similes or metaphors, providing support for the comparisons made rather than just stating them as simple truths. EX: “Raising children requires the same dedication you would give to a garden. Nurture them, feed them, introduce them to both light and dark, and have patience; and soon you will see them grow into blooming wonders.”
Antagonist / Protagonist - The main character in a narrative is the protagonist; the antagonist in the narrative opposes the protagonist and may be another character, the internal conflicts of the protagonist, a collective (such as society), or nature. Protagonists and antagonists may represent contrasting values.
Antecedent / Referent - Antecedent is an earlier clause, phrase, or word to which a pronoun, noun, or another word refers, also known as the referent. For instance, “While giving treats to children or friends, offer them whatever they like.” In this line, children and friends are antecedents, while them and they are pronouns that refer to friends and children.
Antithesis - a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other, such as “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins”
Archetypes - Some patterns in dramatic situations are so common that they are considered archetypes, and these archetypes create certain expectations for how the dramatic situations will progress and be resolved. When a character comes to represent, or stand for, an idea or concept, that character becomes symbolic; some symbolic characters have become so common they are archetypal.
- Atmosphere / Mood - Atmosphere (also known as mood) is the feeling that readers get from a narrative, based on details such as setting, background, objects, and foreshadowing.
- Catharsis / Resolution - The resolution of the anticipation, suspense, or central conflicts of a plot may be referred to as the moment of catharsis or emotional release. Although most plots end in resolution of the central conflicts, some have unresolved endings, and the lack of resolution may contribute to one’s interpretation of the text.
- Character - The description of a character creates certain expectations for that character’s behaviors; how a character does or does not meet those expectations affects a reader’s interpretation of that character. Character changes can be visible and external, such as changes to health or wealth, or can be internal, psychological, or emotional changes; external changes can lead to internal changes, and vice versa.
- Character Complexity - Inconsistencies between the private thoughts of characters and their actual behavior reveal tensions and complexities between private and professed values. A character’s competing, conflicting, or inconsistent choices or actions contribute to complexity in a text.
- Climax - The climax is the turning point of a narrative. Climax is also used to describe the apex of tension or drama in a plot and can also refer to the climax of a film or a play.
- Coherence - Coherence occurs at different levels in a piece of writing. In a sentence, the idea in one clause logically links to an idea in the next. In a paragraph, the idea in one sentence logically links to an idea in the next. In a text, the ideas in one paragraph logically link to the ideas in the next. Writers achieve coherence when the arrangement and organization of reasons, evidence, ideas, or details is logical. Writers may use transitions, repetition, synonyms, pronoun references, or parallel structure to indicate relationships between and among those reasons, evidence, ideas, or details.
- Conceit - A conceit is a form of extended metaphor that often appears in poetry. Conceits develop complex comparisons that present images, concepts, and associations in surprising or paradoxical ways. Often, conceits are used to make complex comparisons between the natural world and an individual.
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- Conflict - Conflict is tension between competing values either within a character, known as internal or psychological conflict, or with outside forces that obstruct a character in some way, known as external conflict. A primary conflict can be heightened by the presence of additional conflicts that intersect with it.
- Dramatic Monologue - Monologue comes from the Greek words monos, which means “alone,” and Logos, which means “speech.” It is a literary device that is the speech or verbal presentation given by a single character in order to express his or her collection of thoughts and ideas aloud. Often such a character speaks directly to the audience, or to another character. Monologues are found in films and plays and also in poetry.
- Dramatic Situation /Moment - The dramatic situation of a narrative includes the setting and action of the plot and how that narrative develops to place characters in conflict(s), and often involves the rising or falling fortunes of a main character or set of characters.
- Enjambment - Enjambment is a poetic term which refers to the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. The opposite of an enjambed line of poetry is an end-stopped line: a sentence or clause whose end does fall at the end of a line of poetry. Enjambment has the effect of encouraging the reader to continue reading from one line to the next, since most of the time a line of poetry that's enjambed won't make complete sense until the reader finishes the clause or sentence on the following line or lines. Poets often use enjambment to introduce ambiguity or contradiction into an otherwise straightforward sentence: the incomplete clause might suggest something that the following line(s) reject.
- Epiphany - While characters can change gradually over the course of a narrative, they can also change suddenly as the result of a moment of realization, known as an epiphany. An epiphany allows a character to see things in a new light and is often directly related to a central conflict of the narrative. An epiphany may affect the plot by causing a character to act on his or her sudden realization.
- Evidence - Writers use evidence strategically and purposefully to illustrate, clarify, exemplify, associate, amplify, or qualify a point. Evidence is effective when the writer of the essay uses commentary to explain a logical relationship between the evidence and the claim. Evidence is sufficient when its quantity and quality provide apt support for the line of reasoning.
- Exposition - the beginning of the narrative, in which the writer establishes or introduces pertinent information such as setting, characters, dramatic situation, etc.
- Extended Metaphor - An extended metaphor is created when the comparison of a main subject and comparison subject persists beyond just an initial comparison and is expanded upon across lines, sentences, stanzas, or paragraphs.
- Fiction - Any imaginative literary work
- First-person narrator - Narrators may also be characters, and their role as characters may influence their perspective. First-person narrators are involved in the narrative; their relationship to the events of the plot and the other characters shapes their perspective.
- Flashback - Flashbacks interrupt the chronology of events in a narrative in order to show an earlier event or occurrence
- Foil Characters - Foil characters (foils) serve to illuminate, through contrast, the traits, attributes, or values of another character
- Foreshadowing - Foreshadowing is a literary device that writers utilize as a means to indicate or hint to readers something that is to follow or appear later in a story. Foreshadowing creates suspense and dramatic tension for readers. It can set up emotional expectations of character behaviors and/or plot outcomes.
Genre - As a literary device, genre refers to a form, class, or type of literary work. The primary genres in literature are poetry, drama/play, essay, short story, and novel. The term genre is used quite often to denote literary sub-classifications or specific types of literature such as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry, thriller, science fiction, romance, etc