Literary+terms


 * LITERARY DEVICES, Definitions and Examples**  //List courtesy of Jan Lowman//

a. **Visual:** //"Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves"// b. **Auditory/sound:** //"The deafening tic-tic-tic of the clock"// c. **Olfactory/smell:** //"Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach"// d. **Gustatory/taste:** //"And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon"// e. **Tactile/touch:** //"Soft as a child's nose"// f. **Synesthetic (synesthesia—n.):** //"She stroked molten tones"//
 * FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE**
 * 1. imagery:** descriptive language that appeals to the senses and re-creates sensory experience. **//[Note that "imagery" is a collective noun, referring to a number of images. Do not use the word "imageries."]//**


 * 2. simile:** a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two **unlike** things, using an explicit word such as //like, as, resembles, or than//.
 * //"Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due."//
 * //"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,/Stains the white radiance of Eternity"//
 * //"Oh, my love is like a red, red rose"//


 * 3. metaphor:** a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else
 * //"My thoughts no longer hover. . . resting their wings"//
 * //"Last night I plowed through a book"//

a. **mixed metaphor:** inconsistent mixture of two or more metaphors, //usually// considered bad writing · //"Let's set sail and get this show on the road"// · //"That's a very hard blow to swallow"// · //"Take arms against a sea of troubles" (Hamlet)// b. **dead metaphor:** a metaphor that is so overused that it has become trite or cliché · //"the eye of the storm"// · //"the arm of the chair"// · //"The fascist octopus has sung its swan song"// c. **extended metaphor:** a metaphor that is developed over several lines of writing or an entire poem. **//Art//** //—Hjalmar Flax// //I would like to think// //That someday I could open// //The hermetic oyster// //Where my soul sleeps.// //Sprinkle on it the bitter juice of the afternoon.// //Eat it// //And find a pearl in my mouth.//


 * 4. metonymy:** a figure of speech that substitutes something closely related for the thing actually meant
 * //Loyal citizens pay homage to the Crown.//
 * //"Just for a handful of silver he left us"//
 * //"The pen is mightier than the sword"//


 * 5. synecdoche:** a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to stand for the whole
 * //"And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England'//s //mountains green?"//
 * In __Night__, Elie Wiesel speaks of himself as //"a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach."'//
 * An old-fashioned suitor might ask for a young lady's //hand// in marriage.
 * 6. antithesis:** a figure of speech in which contrasting or opposite ideas are presented in parallel form.
 * //"Some praise at morning what they blame at night."//
 * //"I long and dread to close."//
 * //"To err is human, to forgive, divine."//
 * //"It was the best of times, it was the worst of time, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. . ."// (the beginning of Dickens's __A Tale of Two Cities__)


 * 7. hyperbole:** a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
 * //"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."//
 * "He had a zit the size of Texas!"


 * 8. personification:** a figure of speech in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics
 * //"a smiling moon"//
 * //"a jovial sun"//
 * //"Father Time"//
 * //[Note that the term prosopopoeia exists in English but is unpleasantly pedantic; it is used (rarely) to refer to situations in which the personified object or idea actually speaks.]//**


 * 9. periphrasis**: circumlocution or "beating around the bush" **//[In English, this is not generally considered a desirable or admirable literary quality, particularly in modern prose. In English, periphrasis is usually considered wordy and pompous, though some readers find that it has a poetic effect.]//**
 * //"In the course of the past several days, it has come to my attention that some certain members of the soon-to-be-graduating class have been behaving in what can only be described as an unseemly manner."//


 * 10. apostrophe:** a figure of speech in which the speaker directly and often emotionally addresses a person who is dead or otherwise not physically present, an imaginary person or entity, something inhuman, or a place or concept (usually an abstract idea or ideal)
 * //"Death, be not proud!"// (Donne)
 * //"Oh, grave, where is thy victory? Oh, death, where is thy sting?"//
 * //"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!"//

a. **verbal** irony—a writer or speaker says one thing but means another (often resembling //sarcasm//, which is NOT a literary device) · //"You're a real Babe Ruth"// (said to a bad baseball player) b. **situational** irony—a contrast between what would seem appropriate and what really happens. Alanis Morissette in "Ironic" (1995) gives these examples: · Dying the day after you win the lottery · Working up the courage to take your first airplane flight and then crashing · Finding the man of your dreams only to discover that he has a beautiful wife c. **dramatic** irony—discrepancy between character's perception & truth known by reader / audience · Romeo drinks poison because he thinks Juliet is dead, while the audience knows she is merely drugged and not dead at all.
 * 11. irony:** a contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality—between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected to happen and what really does happen, or between what appears to be true and what is really true

· //Why are you so stupid? / Why me, God? / "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"//
 * 12. rhetorical question:** any question asked for a purpose other than to obtain the information it asks


 * 13.** Imprecation: a curse **//This is not considered a literary device in English.//**


 * A Few Terms NOT on the Spanish List:**
 * oxymoron:** a figure of speech that fuses two contradictory or opposing ideas
 * //"freezing fire”, "happy grief"//, //"darkness visible"//


 * allusion:** a reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or pop culture
 * //I swear it "by Cupid's bow."//
 * //Plan ahead. It was not raining when Noah built the Ark.//
 * //The software included a Trojan horse.//
 * //as old as Mathuselah//
 * //"sons of Adam and daughters of Eve"//


 * symbol:** anything that stands for or represents something larger and more complex
 * symbolism:** the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas
 * //Joseph Conrad uses snake symbolism in __Heart of Darkness__.//
 * //Avoid the word "symbolisms," like "imageries." If tempted, consider "symbols" or "images" instead.//**

*****

**a**. **assonance:** the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds · //"What large, dark hands are those at the window?"// (Lawrence) · //"Thou foster child of silence and slow time"// (Keats) · //"Let the boy try along this bayonet **blade**// //How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of **blood**"//
 * SOUND DEVICES** //(or "**prosodic devices**" when analyzing poetry)//
 * 14. alliteration:** the repetition of initial consonant sounds, or simply the repetition of sounds in words
 * //"The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down"//
 * //"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude."//
 * b. consonance:** the repetition of consonant sounds in stressed syllables
 * [Assonance and consonance may produce effects known as half-rhyme, approximate rhyme or slant rhyme.]**


 * 15. asyndeton**: a list or sequence of words **//[Although this term does exist in English, it is extremely pompous, and the word "list" or “enumeration” actually works better.]//**
 * //"Be one of the few, the proud, the Marines."//


 * 16. polysyndeton:** abundant use of conjunctions **//[Pedantic, rarely used term in English literary analysis.]//**
 * //"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind**:** and God saw that it was good."//
 * When analyzing the effect of the accumulated "ands" in the above Biblical passage, note the sense of inevitable weight created by the repetition of the conjunction.


 * 17. repetition:** the use, more than once, of any element of language—a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a grammatical pattern, or a rhythmical pattern.
 * //"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace. . ."//
 * 18. pun** (not an exact translation of "retruécano")**:** a play on words, either using a word or a phrase that has two different meanings or two different words or phrases with the same sound
 * //What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck!//
 * The dying Mercutio: //Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a **grave** man.//
 * Lumberyard: "Come see, come saw."


 * 19. ellipsis:** three periods (or dot-dot-dot) used to show a pause in dialogue due to hesitancy, perhaps, or to show that words or sentences have been left out
 * //Why is it . . ., Ozu suddenly thought one day, that I'm always worrying about him? . . . I'm a student at P. University now, and I've got my own life to live. . . .//


 * 20. anaphora:** repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive lines or sentences. **//[Pedantic! Instead, use the simpler, more general terms "parallel structure" or "repetition."]//**
 * //"To raise a happy, healthy, and hopeful child, it takes a family; it takes teachers; it takes clergy; it takes business people; it takes community leaders; it takes those who protect our health and safety. It takes all of us."//


 * 21. parallelism:** use of grammatically similar constructions, often repetition, to accentuate ideas or images.
 * //See the Dickens example in **antithesis.**//
 * //"Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind."//


 * 22. onomatopoeia:** The use of words whose sounds imitate or suggest their meanings
 * //Crackle, pop, fizz, click, zoom, chirp / Tic-tic-tic / Thump-thump-thump//
 * //"Suck was a queer word. The sound was ugly. Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that: suck. Only louder"// (Joyce).

*

RHETORICAL DEVICES 23. inversion OR hyperbaton (anastrophe): //[the latter terms are considered pompous – do not use]// **Reversal, transposition or inversion of word order**


 * **//"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!" (Winston Churchill)//**
 * //"High on a throne of royal gold...Satan exalted sat"//

24. syllepsis: a combination of grammatical parallelism and semantic incongruity occurring when **a single word that governs or modifies two or more others must be understood differently with respect to each of those words.** //[Warning: this term is pretentious in English! If you notice an example, just describe it and note the effect. Avoid the word!]//

25. ellipsis**: Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.** // [Please note that this is the same word, but not the same meaning as #19. Its definition as a rhetorical term does exist in English, but, once again, it is bombastic and affected. Avoid it!) //
 * **Rend your heart, and not your garments. (Joel 2:13)**
 * **You held your breath and the door for me (Alanis //Morissette//)**

26. paradox: **a statement that seems to be contradictory but that actually presents a truth**
 * //"The average person thinks he isn't."//
 * // John forgives Mary and Mary, John. //

27. pleonasm (or periphrasis): ** speaking or writing that is unintentionally and unnecessarily wordy and roundabout. When used intentionally, periphrasis provides emphasis or creates a comic effect. **[//Just say "wordiness" or, if you want to show off, "prolixity" instead of using these over-the-top (in English) terms.]//
 * //"//**//Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore/My love was infinite, if spring make it more."// (Donne)**
 * **//"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"//**

FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF THE ART OF THE NOVEL 28. plot: ** the sequence of events in a literary work [Gustav Freytag, of Freytag's Pyramid fame, enumerated a typical sequence of plot events: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and catastrophe (now often termed denouement). Some variations of plot include flashbacks and "flash forwards." Story is the raw material of which plot is constructed. According to E.M. Forster, "the king died and the queen died" is a story, whereas "the king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot because it emphasizes causality. //Hmmmm?// **
 * **//"Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves."// (Shakespeare's __Much Ado about Nothing__)**

29. theme: ** not simply the subject of a literary work, but rather a statement that the text seems to be making about that subject. So the subject of a novel might be suffering; the theme, depending on the view of the individual author, might be that suffering is in God's plan and should therefore simply be accepted. English teachers make use of many synonyms for theme: main idea, gist, central concept, message, moral, lesson or perspective (to name few). **

30. motif: ** a unifying element in an artistic work, especially any recurrent image, symbol, theme, character type, subject or narrative detail. //(//Not to be confused with //motive.)// **

31. setting: ** that combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that provides the general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. **
 * **Specific colors such as green and white serve as motifs in Fitzgerald's __The Great Gatsby__.**

32. narrator: ** speaker through whom author presents a narrative, often but not always a character in the work **

33. style: ** the way in which a literary work is written, the devices the author uses to express his or her thoughts and convey the work's subject matter **
 * point of view/perspective: **the vantage point from which a narrative is told**
 * first person ("I")
 * third person (omniscient or limited)
 * reliable
 * unreliable

34. tone (voice): ** the attitude of the author toward the reader or the subject matter //(comic, ironic, tragic, etc.)// **
 * syntax
 * structure

35. mood/atmosphere: ** the general feeling created in the reader by a work at a given point **

ADJECTIVES USED TO DESCRIBE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE section – coming soon! **