LITERARY DEVICES

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LITERARY DEVICES

• P-S
• PARABLE - SYNESTHESIA

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PARABLE

• A story or short narrative designed to reveal
  allegorically some religious principle, moral
  lesson, or general truth. Rather than using
  abstract discussion, a parable always teaches by
  comparison with real or literal
  occurrences--especially "homey" everyday
  occurrences a wide number of people can relate
  to.
• Examples "The Prodigal Son" and "The Good
  Samaritan."

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PARADOX

• A statement that seems to contradict itself, but
  reveals a deeper truth through its contradiction.
• Examples
• "where there is no law, there is no freedom
• (John Locke)
• "Cowards die many times before their deaths
  (Shakespeares Julius Caesar)
• "And all men kill the thing they love.
• (Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol)

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PARALLELLISM

• When the writer establishes similar patterns of
  grammatical structure and length for the purpose
  of expressing ideas that are related or equal in
  importance.
• Example
• "King Alfred tried to make the law clear,
  precise, and equitable.
• AS OPPOSED TO
• "King Alfred tried to make clear laws that had
  precision and were equitable."

5
PARODY

• A mocking imitation of another work or type of
  literature. Parody imitates the serious manner
  and characteristic features of a particular
  literary work in order to make fun of those same
  features.
• Examples
• Shakespeares Sonnet 130 (My mistress eyes
  are nothing like the sun)
• Chaucers Wife of Baths Tale

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PASTORAL

• A poem presenting shepherds in a simple, rural
  existence. It usually idealized shepherds' lives
  in order to create an image of peaceful and
  uncorrupted existence. More generally, pastoral
  describes the simplicity, charm, and serenity
  attributed to country life, or any literary
  convention that places kindly, rural people in
  nature-centered activities. Popular with
  Renaissance writers.
• Examples
• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by
  Christopher Marlowe

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PERSONAL ESSAY

• A type of informal essay. A personal essay
  allows the writer to express individual
  viewpoints on subjects by reflecting on events or
  incidents in his or her own life.
• Examples
• A Hanging by George Orwell
• A Laws of Life essay, in which you express your
  personal belief in a driving value of your life

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PERSONIFICATION

• A figure of speech in which animals, ideas, and
  inanimate objects are given human character,
  traits, abilities, or reactions/emotions.
• Examples
• Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
• Loves not Times fool, though rosy lips and
  cheeks/Within his bending sickles compass come
• hardship groaned around my heart
• Hunger tore at my sea-weary soul

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PERSUASION

• A technique used by writers and speakers to
  convince an audience to adopt a particular
  opinion, perform an action, or both. Persuasion
  often makes use of logical, emotional, and
  ethical appeal.
• Examples
• Winston Churchills speeches
• A letter you write to your parents to convince
  them you should be allowed to go to prom

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PERSUASIVE ESSAY

• A piece of writing in which the writer attempts
  to convince readers to adopt a particular view or
  perform a specific action. Persuasive essays
  often present a series of facts, reasons, or
  examples to support the position statement.
• Examples
• Of Studies by Sir Francis Bacon
• Of Marriage and Single Life by Sir Francis
  Bacon

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PERSUASIVE SPEECH

• A speech given to convince an audience to adopt a
  particular opinion, perform an action, or both.
  Persuasive speeches often makes use of logical,
  emotional, and ethical appeal and can sometimes
  use loaded languagelanguage that brings up
  strong connotations for the audience.
• Examples
• Churchills speeches
• Hitlers speeches

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PETRARCHAN (ITALIAN) SONNET

• The Petrarchan sonnet has an eight line stanza
  (called an octave) followed by a six line stanza
  (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains
  rhyming abba, abba, the first of which presents
  the theme, the second further develops it.
• In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on
  or exemplify the theme, while the last three
  bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may
  be arranged cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce.
• Examples All of Francesco Petrarchs sonnets

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PLOT

• The sequence of actions and events in a work of
  fiction. Most literary critics would agree that
  plot cannot exist without conflict.
• Example

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POETRY

• A genre of literature in which the arrangement of
  lines on the page create a form which, when
  joined with content, suggest meaning beyond the
  literal meanings of the words.
• Examples
• Poetic forms Ballad, elegy, epic, haiku,
  narrative, sonnet, etc.

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POINT OF VIEW

• The way a story gets told and who tells it the
  method of narrating a short story, novel,
  narrative poem, or work of nonfiction.
• Examples
• first-person
• third-person omniscient
• third-person limited

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PRIMARY SOURCE

• A book, document, or person that provides
  original, first-hand information about a topic.
• Examples
• Letters, wills, diaries, recordings, government
  records.
• The Paston Letters
• Shakespeares baptism record

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PROP

• (Abbreviation of property)
• Any physical object that is used in a stage
  production.
• Examples
• In Macbeth Macbeth and Macduffs swords,
  Banquos torch, the candle carried by Lady
  Macbeth

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PROSE

• Any material that is not written in a regular
  meter like poetry. Genres such as short stories,
  novels, letters, essays, and treatises are
  typically written in prose.
• Examples
• Samuel Johnsons essays Elizabeth Gaskells
  fiction Mary Shelleys gothic novel T.C.
  Boyles short stories

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PROTAGONIST

• The main character in a work, on whom the author
  focuses most of the narrative attention
• Examples
• Macbeth
• Federigo
• Beowulf
• Victor Frankenstein

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QUATRAIN

• A quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often
  rhyming in an ABAB pattern.
• Examples
• Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
• Old time is still a-flying
• And this same flower that smiles today
• Tomorrow will be dying
• Robert Herricks
• To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

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REALISM

• Any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a
  faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false
  ideals, literary conventions, or misplaced
  aesthetic glorification and beautification of the
  world. It is a theory or tendency in writing to
  depict events in human life in a matter-of-fact,
  straightforward manner.
• Realism also refers to a literary movement in
  America, Europe, and England that developed in
  the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Examples
• Charles Dickens portrayal of orphan life in
  Oliver Twist
• James Joyces short story Araby based on real
  life experiences of his childhood in Dublin,
  Ireland

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REPETITION

• A technique in which a sound, word, line or
  phrase is repeated for emphasis or effect.
• Examples
• Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who
  made thee?
• Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll
  tell thee.
• William Blakes The Lamb
• The Tyger by William Blake
• Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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RESOLUTION

• The outcome or result of a complex situation or
  sequence of events an aftermath or resolution
  that usually occurs near the final stages of the
  plot the denouement
• Examples
• Victors death and the Creatures discussion with
  Robert Walton in Frankenstein Macbeths death
  and Malcolms speech to restore order in the
  kingdom

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RHYME

• A matching similarity of sounds in two or more
  words, especially when their accented vowels and
  all succeeding consonants are identical.
• Examples
• skating/dating
• emotion/demotion
• fascinate/deracinate
• plain/stain

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RHYME SCHEME

• The pattern of rhyme. The traditional way to mark
  these patterns of rhyme is to assign a letter of
  the alphabet to each rhyming sound at the end of
  each line.
• Examples
• The glories of our blood and state
  ---------------AAre shadows, not substantial
  things -------------BThere is no armor against
  fate -------------------A Death lays his icy
  hand on kings ----------------BScepter and
  crown --------------------------------CMust
  tumble down, --------------------------------CAnd
  in the dust be equal made ------------------D
  With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ------D
• From "Of Death"
• By James Shirley

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RHYTHM

• The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
  in poetry.
• This pattern is usually notated by marking the
  meter of the line putting a diagonal line ( )
  or a macron ( - ) over stressed syllables. A
  small curving loop ( ? ) or a small x ( x ) goes
  over the unstressed syllables. This process is
  called scansion.
• Examples
• "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy."

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RISING ACTION

• The action in a play or work of fiction that
  happens just before the climax. During the rising
  action, complications arise for the main
  characters that make the conflict more difficult
  to resolve.
• Examples
• Portion B-C

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ROMANCE

• Any imaginative adventure concerned with noble
  heroes, gallant love, a chivalric code of honor,
  daring deeds, and supernatural events often
  contain faraway settings and idealize heroes.
• writers.
• Examples
• Le Morte dArthur by Thomas Mallory
• A Knights Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

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ROMANTICISM

• A literary movement of the 19th century that
  emphasized nature, an idealized past,
  imagination, and the celebration of the
  individual. Romanticism rejected the earlier
  philosophy of the Enlighten-ment, which stressed
  that logic and reason were the best response
  humans had in the face of cruelty. Instead,
  Romantics emphasized emotion and natural passions
  as a means of knowing and a reliable guide to
  ethics and living.
• Examples
• Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel
  Taylor Coleridge

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SARCASM

• A type of verbal irony saying one thing that
  sounds complimentary but meaning the statement as
  an insult or criticism
• Examples
• You have clearly proved that ignorance,
  idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for
  qualifying a legislator.
• From Gullivers Travels
• By Jonathan Swift

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SATIRE

• When a writer uses humor to point out the flaws
  of society by ridiculing a person, idea, custom,
  behavior, institution, or class in society.
• Examples
• Chaucers mocking of the clergy in the medieval
  church
• Dave Barrys Year in Review that provides a
  humorous overview of the past year

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SCRIPTURE

• Literature that is considered sacred and is used
  in religious rituals of worship, celebration, and
  mourning.
• Examples
• The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
• Psalm 23
• To every thing there is a season, and a time to
  every purpose under the heaven
• Ecclesiastes

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SESTET

• Any six-line stanza or a six-line unit of poetry
  the last part of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet,
  consisting of six lines that rhyme with a varying
  pattern.
• Examples
• Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart
• Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea
  Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
• So didst thou travel on life's common way,
• In cheerful godliness and yet thy heart
• The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
• Wordsworth

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SETTING

• The general locale, historical time, and social
  circumstances in which the action of a fictional
  or dramatic work occurs the particular physical
  location in which it takes place
• Examples
• London, Scrooges past, present, and future in A
  Christmas Carol the arctic, Geneva Switzerland,
  and Victors lab in Frankenstein Sweden,
  Denmark, and Herot in Beowulf Scotland during
  the Anglo-Saxon and early Medieval period in
  Macbeth

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SHAKESPEAREAN (ENGLISH) SONNET

• A poem made up of 14 lines in the form of three
  quatrains and a final couplet. Its rhyme scheme
  is abab, cdcd, efef, gg
• Example
• That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
• When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
• Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
• Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds
  sang
• In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
• As after sunset fadeth in the west,
• Which by and by black night doth take away,
• Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
• In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
• That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
• As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,
• Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
• This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more
  strong,
• To love that well, which thou must leave ere
  long.

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SHORT STORY

• A brief prose tale that can be read in one
  sitting usually plot functions as the driving
  force.
• Examples
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence
• The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster

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SIMILE

• A type of figurative language that makes a
  comparison between two things, using the words
  like or as.
• Examples
• The worlds honor ages and shrinks, bent like
  the men who mold it
• as a peacock with many feathersfolds its
  feathers, so she subsided and shut herself as she
  sank down in the leather armchair

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SITUATIONAL IRONY

• When a character or the reader expects one thing
  to happen but something else happens instead
• Examples
• In O Henry's The Gift of the Magi, the wife
  cuts off and sells her beautiful long hair to a
  wig-maker for money to buy a chain for her
  husbands heirloom pocket watch. Meanwhile, the
  husband sells his heirloom watch to buy his wife
  pretty combs for her long and beautiful hair.

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SLANT RHYME

• Also called inexact rhyme or approximate rhyme,
  slant rhymes are rhymes created out of words with
  similar but not identical sounds. In most of
  these instances, either the vowel segments are
  different while the consonants are identical, or
  vice versa.
• Examples
• Heart-smitten with emotion I sink downMy heart
  recovering with covered eyesWherever I had
  looked I had looked uponMy permanent or
  impermanent images

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SOLILOQUY

• A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the
  play when the character believes himself to be
  alone. The soliloquy reveals a character's
  innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state
  of mind, motives or intentions.
• Examples
• To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps
  in this petty pace from day to day,To the last
  syllable of recorded timeAnd all our yesterdays
  have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out,
  out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a
  poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon
  the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a
  taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and
  fury,Signifying nothing.

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SONNET

• A poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic
  pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to
  certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a
  single, complete idea or thought in the first 8
  lines with a reversal, twist, or change of
  direction in the concluding 6 lines or in the
  remaining couplet.
• Examples
• The poetic works of Shakespeare, Petrarch, and
  Spenser

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SOUND DEVICES

• Also known as musical devices, sound devices are
  elements of literature and poetry that emphasize
  sound, often for a specific effect or
  emphasis.Examples
• The most common sound devices are assonance,
  consonance, alliteration, rhyme and onomatopoeia
• fastened those claws / In his fists till they
  cracked, clutched Grendel / Closer
  (alliteration, onomatopoeia, consonance)

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SPEAKER

• The narrative or voice in a poem (such as a
  sonnet, ode, or lyric) that speaks of his or her
  situation or feelings. It is a convention in
  poetry that the speaker is not the same
  individual as the historical author of the poem.
  The speaker/voice may be distant and objective,
  or intimate and involved with the subject of the
  poem.
• Examples
• The speaker of The Wifes Lament is
  passionately emotional about the loss of a
  husband the speaker of Tennysons Lady of
  Shalott seems to be neutral and objective

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SPENSERIAN STANZA

• A nine-line stanza rhyming in an ababbcbcc
  pattern in which the first eight lines are
  pentameter and the last line is an alexandrine,
  or six-foot line. The name spenserian comes from
  the form's most famous user, Edmund Spenser, who
  used it in The Fairie Queene
• Examples
• ababbcbcc

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SPRUNG RHYTHM

• Also called "accentual rhythm," sprung rhythm is
  a term invented by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
  to describe the metrical system in which the
  major stresses are "sprung" from each line of
  poetry. The accent falls on the first syllable of
  every foot and a varying number of unaccented
  syllables following the accented one, but all
  feet last an equal amount of time when being
  pronounced.
• Examples
• Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow, and
  ploughAnd all trades, their gear and tackle and
  trim.
• From Hopkins Pied Beauty

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STAGE DIRECTIONS

• Sometimes abbreviated "s.d.," the term in drama
  refers to part of the printed text in a play that
  is not actually spoken by actors on stage, but
  which instead indicates actions or activity for
  the actors to engage in. In Shakespeare's day,
  these instructions were often given in Latin.
• Examples
• Exit / Exeunt

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STANZA

• An arrangement of lines of verse in a pattern
  usually repeated throughout the poem. Typically,
  each stanza has a fixed number of verses or
  lines, a prevailing meter, and a consistent rhyme
  scheme. A stanza may be a subdivision of a poem,
  or it may constitute the entire poem stave.
• Examples
• A quatrain, an octave, or a sestet, especially
  within a longer poetic work

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STEREOTYPE

• A character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that
  the character seems like an oversimplified
  representation of a type, gender, class,
  religious group, or occupation a stock character
• Examples
• the absent-minded professor the merciless
  villain the rejected lover

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STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

• Writing in which a character's perceptions,
  thoughts, and memories are presented in an
  apparently random form, without regard for
  logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often
  such writing makes no distinction between various
  levels of reality--such as dreams, memories,
  imaginative thoughts or real sensory perception.
• Examples
• James Joyce and Virginia Wolff are known for
  their stream of consciousness style of writing

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STRUCTURE

• The way in which the parts of a work of
  literature are put together. The structure may be
  made up of paragraphs, chapters, acts, scenes,
  lines, and stanzas, depending upon the genre
  form
• Examples
• The numbering of T.S. Eliots sections to his
  poem Preludes, which allows him to shift time
  and place

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STYLE

• The author's words and the characteristic way
  that writer uses language to achieve certain
  effects
• Examples
• Emily Dickinsons distinctive use of the em-dash
  (long dash) at the end of her poetic lines
  Charles Dickens distinctively long descriptions
  of various scenes throughout his novels.

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SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS

• Traits that make up a supernatural tale ghostly
  beings, power, or phenomena that go beyond the
  realm of reality
• Examples
• The Green Knight who picks up his head after it
  is chopped off the Ghost of Christmas Future who
  takes Scrooge on a journey to his potential
  future

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SUPERNATURAL TALE

• A story that goes beyond the bounds of reality,
  known forces, or laws of nature.
• Examples
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with the
  emphasis that Dickens wanted to create a ghost
  story
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, with the emphasis
  that Shelley wanted to create a blood-curdling
  tale about a monster

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SURPRISE ENDING

• A totally unexpected and unprepared-for turn of
  events, one which alters the action in a
  narrative and occurs at the end of the story
• Examples
• In Sixth Sense, when Bruce Willis finds out that
  he is one of the dead people that Haley Joel
  Osmend sees In The Others, when Nicole Kidman
  finds out that the strange noises and incidents
  have not been caused by ghosts, but by the live
  people living in the same house she and her
  children occupy in the spiritual realm.

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SUSPENSE

• The tension or excitement readers feel as they
  are drawn into a story and become increasingly
  eager to know the outcome of the plot. Suspense
  is created when a writer purposes leaves readers
  uncertain or apprehensive about what will happen.
• Examples
• The feeling that the Creatures threat was not
  meant for Victor a scene in a movie when the
  audience is uncertain about whether a train will
  go off the end of a bridge or not

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SYMBOL

• A word, place, character, or object that means
  something beyond what it is on a literal level
• Examples
• The falcon in Federigos Falcon, with the idea
  that it comes to represent the love between Mona
  and Federigo Herot in Beowulf, with the idea
  that it means heart and stands for the
  brotherhood and loyalty of the warriors

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SYNECDOCHE

• A figure of speech in which the name of a part is
  used to refer to a whole
• Examples
• The use of wheels to refer to a car
• Eliots use of muddy feet to refer to
  early-morning crowds of people heading to work
• The use of Twenty eyes watched our every move
  to mean that ten people were watching

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SYNESTHESIA

• The use of one sensory image to describe another
• Examples
• the cold smell of potato mold
• a heavy silence fell across the crowd
• the scent of roses rang clearly throughout the
  garden