Poetic Devices and Rhetorical Strategies

Definition: The dictionary definition of a word, referring to the thing it names, describes, or narrates.
Characteristic: Generally considered in a detached, scientific manner, rather than evaluative.

Definition: Supplements denotation by indicating attitudes and values, or by adding flavor or wit to the bare meaning.
Example: Edwin A. Robinson's “Credo”
- "I cannot find my way: there is no star
  In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;"

Definition: The recreation of objects perceived by the senses through words. While often associated with "pictures," it involves all senses, not just sight.
Broader Reference: Also refers more generally to the descriptive effects achieved through figurative language, especially metaphor and simile.
Example 1: W.B. Keats's “The Eve of St. Agnes”
- "A casement high and triple-arched there was,
  All garlanded with carven imag’ries
  Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
  And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
  Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
  As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings;
  And in the midst, ‘mong thousand heraldries,
  And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
  A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings."
Example 2: Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”
- "The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
  Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
  Through living roots awaken in my head.
  But I’ve no spade to follow men like him.
  Between my finger and my thumb
  The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it."

Definition: A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unrelated things or actions without using "like" or "as."
Effect: Fuses the separate qualities of two things, creating a new idea.
Example: Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"
- "Let slip the dogs of war"
- Explanation: This line fuses the idea of war with the qualities of ravening bloodlust associated with hunting dogs.

Definition: A figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between a particular subject and an object or idea.
Signal: Always uses "like" or "as" to indicate the connection.
Example 1: Dorothy Parker’s “Love Poem”
- "My own dear love, he is strong and bold
  And he cares not what comes after.
  His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
  And his eyes are lit with laughter.
  He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
  Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
  My own dear love, he is all my world,—
  And I wish I’d never met him."
Example 2: Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness”
- "Before you know what kindness really is
  you must lose things,
  feel the future dissolve in a moment
  like salt in a weakened broth."

Definition: To make a non-human entity human.
Effect: Can make disembodied ideas more dramatic and understandable.
Example: Louis MacNeice’s “Prognosis” (May 1940)
- "Goodbye, Winter,
  The days are getting longer,
  The tea-leaf in the teacup
  Is herald of a stranger.
  Will he bring me business
  Or will he bring me gladness
  Or will he come for cure
  Of his own sickness?
  With a pedlar’s burden
  Walking up the garden
  Will he come to beg
  Or will he come to bargain?"

Definition: A figure of speech meaning "change of name," where a writer refers to an object or idea by substituting the name of another object or idea closely associated with it.
Examples:
- "crown" for monarchy
- "the press" for journalism
- "the pen" for writing
- Louis MacNeice: "All we want is a bank balance and a bit of a skirt in a taxi."

Definition: A specific type of metonymy where the writer uses the name of a part of something to signify the whole.
Examples:
- "sail" for ship
- "hand" for a member of the ship’s crew
- Dylan Thomas: "The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
  Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
  Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;"

Definition: A reference, either explicit or implicit, to a well-known literary work, person, place, or event.
Example: Dylan Thomas
- "…it was all
  Shining, it was Adam and maiden…"

Definition: More than just a figure of speech; an object or event that signifies something, or has a range of reference, beyond its literal self.
Example: Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
- "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  Old time is still a-flying;
  And this same flower that smiles today
  Tomorrow will be dying."

Definition: Intellectual stratagems distinguishing them from figure- or image-making maneuvers.

Definition: A deliberate and often outrageous exaggeration of word meanings used to achieve particular effects.
Example: Shakespeare – "As You Like It"
- "Hark, how my fair Celia, with the choice
  Music of her hand and voice
  Stills the loud wind;"

Definition: The opposite of hyperbole.
Effect: Magnifies the matter discussed by implying that words are inadequate to express its full significance.
Characteristic: Usually ironic.
Example: Lord Byron – "Don Juan"
- "We know, too, they are very fond of war,
  A pleasure—like all pleasures—rather dear;"

Definition: Commonly known as "double meaning"; an opening of language to multiple interpretations.
Effects: Can produce humor, enrich meaning, or reflect the writer’s perception of life's complexity.
Example: "Hamlet"
- Hamlet: “Whose grave’s this, sirrah?”
- Gravedigger: “Mine, sir.”
- Hamlet: “I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.”

Definition: A statement that is either apparently self-contradictory or at odds with normal experience, yet reveals a hidden truth.
Example: Richard Lovelace – “To Althea, from Prison…”
- “Stone walls do not a prison make,
  Nor iron bars a cage;”

Definition: A special kind of paradox that associates opposite terms in a single expression.
Purpose: Usually to reflect a mixture of attitudes towards an event.
Example: Juliet says that “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Definition: Often understood as meaning one thing while saying another, but also any way of being oblique rather than straightforward.
Example: A. E. Housman - “To an Athlete Dying Young”
- "Smart lad, to slip betimes away
  From fields where glory does not stay…
  Now you will not swell the rout
  Of lads that wore their honours out,
  Runners whom renown outran
  And the name died before the man."