hello!! if ur having trouble with literary devices, fear not bc here’s a list of the most commonly common devices used with definitions and examples. i hope this helps :-)
ps: here is a downloadable PDF file
DEFINITION OF LITERARY DEVICES: narrative techniques that add texture, energy and excitement to the narrative, grip the reader’s imagination and convey information.
A symbolism device where the meaning of a greater, often abstract, concept is conveyed with the aid of a more corporeal object or idea being used as an example. Usually a rhetoric device, an allegory suggests a meaning via metaphoric examples.
Example: Faith is like a stony uphill climb: a single stumble might send you sprawling but belief and steadfastness will see you to the very top.
literary device where words are used in quick succession and begin with letters belonging to the same sound group. Whether it is the consonant sound or a specific vowel group, the alliteration involves creating a repetition of similar sounds in the sentence. Alliterations are also created when the words all begin with the same letter.
Example: The Wicked Witch of the West went her own way.
Events or characters from another story in her own story with the hopes that those events will add context or depth to the story she’s trying to tell.
allusions are often to very famous works such as the Bible or Shakespearean plays.
doesn’t have to specifically name the character or event it’s referring to
Example: Night after night our hero lay in bed with the flu, hacking mucus and blood and seeing behind his eyelids the angels or devils come to collect him. But one morning, like Lazarus, he was whole again… (allusion to Lazarus who famously rose from the dead)
Takes place when two or more words close to one another repeat the same vowel but start with different consonant sounds
Repetition of only vowel sounds. Assonance is the opposite of consonance, which implies repetitive usage of consonant sounds.
Example: Men sell the wedding bells.
When describing the events of her story, an author never has just one word at her disposal. Rather, she must choose from many words that have similar denotative meanings (the definition you’d find in a dictionary), but different connotative meanings (the associations, positive or negative with a given word).
Example: imagine that a child in a story comes home from school and tells his parents about his day.
· 'Tommy made fun of me, so I nicked his eye with a stick.’
· 'Tommy made fun of me, so I poked his eye with a stick.’
· 'Tommy made fun of me, so I stabbed his eye with a stick.’
· 'Tommy made fun of me, so I gouged his eye with a stick.’
words nicked, poked, stabbed and gouged all have similar denotative meanings, but notice how an author’s choosing one or the other would drastically affect how we understand how well Tommy fared.
a work where the author under the title has included a quotation from some other work; often the quotation is in italics.
Like an allusion, an epigraph is a reference to another work that an author hopes will help readers understand her own work.
Unlike an allusion, an epigraph stands apart from the text itself rather than being included in it.
Example: T.S. Eliot’s famous poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ The epigraph is from Dante’s Inferno…
If I but thought that my response were made to one perhaps returning to the world, / this tongue of flame would cease to flicker. / But since, up from these depths, no one has yet / returned alive, if what I hear is true, / I answer without fear of being shamed.
author hints at the ending of or at an upcoming event in her story without fully divulging it
Example: Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel A Farewell to Arms, a key character dies while it’s raining.
To hint at that death, Hemingway earlier in the book includes a scene where the character admits that she is afraid of the rain because sometimes she sees herself dead in it.While this is just an irrational vision, it also gives the reader an ominous detail and hints at an event that might be to come.
uses specific words and phrases that exaggerate and overemphasize the basic crux of the statement in order to produce a grander, more noticeable effect.
purpose of hyperbole is to create a larger-than-life effect and overly stress a specific point. Such sentences usually convey an action or sentiment that is generally not practically/ realistically possible or plausible but helps emphasize an emotion.
Examples: “I am so tired I cannot walk another inch” or “I’m so sleepy I might fall asleep standing here”.
When an author chooses words for their connotative associations (see the above discussion of ‘diction’), she chooses sensory details for the associations or tones they evoke
Example: Theodore Roethke’s famous poem, ‘My Papa’s Waltz,’ we see a young boy dance with his drunken father. It’s a happy memory for the boy, but also the poem hints at the father’s dangerous condition. One of the ways Roethke achieves this is through his selection of imagery.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
practice of forming a rhyme in only one lone line of verse
also known as the middle rhyme because it is typically constructed in the middle of a line to rhyme with the bit at the end of the same metrical line.
Example: The line from the famed poem Ancient Mariner, “We were the first that ever burst”.
playing around with words such that the meaning implied by a sentence or word is actually different from the literal meaning.
used to suggest the stark contrast of the literal meaning being put forth. The deeper, real layer of significance is revealed not by the words themselves but the situation and the context in which they are placed.
Example: Writing a sentence such as, “Oh! What fine luck I have!”. The sentence on the surface conveys that the speaker is happy with their luck but actually what they mean is that they are extremely unhappy and dissatisfied with their (bad) luck.
literary device wherein the author places a person, concept, place, idea or theme parallel to another.
two directly or indirectly related entities close together in literature is to highlight the contrast between the two and compare them. This literary device is usually used for etching out a character in detail, creating suspense or lending a rhetorical effect.
Example: A woman giving birth on a battle field in the middle of a war would be juxtaposition. This scene would compare the beauty of life beginning to the gore of lives ending by force.
one of the most extensively used literary devices. A metaphor refers to a meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another. In a metaphor, one subject is implied to be another so as to draw a comparison between their similarities and shared traits. The first subject, which is the focus of the sentences is usually compared to the second subject, which is used to convey a degree of meaning that is used to characterize the first. The purpose of using a metaphor is to take an identity or concept that we understand clearly (second subject) and use it to better understand the lesser known element (the first subject).
Example: “Henry was a lion on the battlefield”. This sentence suggests that Henry fought so valiantly and bravely that he embodied all the personality traits we attribute to the ferocious animal. This sentence implies immediately that Henry was courageous and fearless, much like the King of the Jungle.
one of the most commonly used and recognized literary devices. It refers to the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals.
Example: “The raging winds” “The wise owl” “The warm and comforting fire”
words whose very sound is very close to the sound they are meant to depict. In other words, it refers to sound words whose pronunciation to the actual sound they represent.
Example: Clack, Clack, the gunshots went off during a drive by in Compton!!
use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together hold significant value on several levels. The uniqueness of paradoxes lies in the fact that a deeper level of meaning and significance is not revealed at first glance, but when it does crystallize, it provides astonishing insight.
Example: High walls make not a palace; full coffers make not a kin
Manner in which a story is narrated or depicted and who it is that tells the story.
determines the angle and perception of the story unfolding, and thus influences the tone in which the story takes place.
o Objective Point of View - writer tells what happens without stating more than can be inferred from the story’s action and dialogue. The narrator never discloses anything about what the characters think or feel, remaining a detached observer.
o Third Person Point of View
Here the narrator does not participate in the action of the story as one of the characters, but lets us know exactly how the characters feel. We learn about the characters through this outside voice.
o First Person Point of View
In the first person point of view, the narrator does participate in the action of the story. When reading stories in the first person, we need to realize that what the narrator is recounting might not be the objective truth. We should question the trustworthiness of the accounting.
o Omniscient and Limited Omniscient Points of View
A narrator who knows everything about all the characters is all knowing, or omniscient.
o A narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character, either major or minor, has a limited omniscient point of view.
Practice of rhyming words placed at the end of the lines in the prose or poetry.
Order in which particular words rhyme.
Practice of making fun of a human weakness or character flaw.
Inclusive of a need or decision of correcting or bettering the character that is on the receiving end of the satire. In general, even though satire might be humorous and may “make fun”, its purpose is not to entertain and amuse but actually to derive a reaction of contempt from the reader.
Referring to the practice of drawing parallels or comparisons between two unrelated and dissimilar things, people, beings, places and concepts.
Using similes a greater degree of meaning and understanding is attached to an otherwise simple sentence. The reader is able to better understand the sentiment the author wishes to convey.
Key words: ‘as’ or ‘such as’ or ‘like’.
Contains several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight, and is representative of several other aspects, concepts or traits than those that are visible in the literal translation alone.
is using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning.
Example: The phrase “a new dawn” does not talk only about the actual beginning of a new day but also signifies a new start, a fresh chance to begin and the end of a previous tiring time.
uses a part of something to refer to the whole or vice versa. It is somewhat rhetorical in nature, where the entire object is represented by way of a fraction of it or a fraction of the object is symbolized by the whole.
Example: “Weary feet in the walk of life”, does not refer to the feet actually being tired or painful; it is symbolic of a long, hard struggle through the journey of life and feeling low, tired, unoptimistic and ‘the walk of life’ does not represent an actual path or distance covered, instead refers to the entire sequence of life events that has made the person tired.
actual way in which words and sentences are placed together in the writing. Usually in the English language the syntax should follow a pattern of subject-verb-object agreement but sometimes authors play around with this to achieve a lyrical, rhythmic, rhetoric or questioning effect. It is not related to the act of choosing specific words or even the meaning of each word or the overall meanings conveyed by the sentences.
Example: The sentence “The man drives the car” would follow normal syntax in the English language. By changing the syntax to “The car drives the man”, the sentence becomes awkward.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/literary-devices-definition-examples-quiz.html
http://literary-devices.com/
http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/read/pov2.html
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