LITERARY
DEVICES
P-S
PARABLE SYNESTHESIA
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."
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”
(Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)
"And all men kill the thing they love.”
(Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol”)
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."
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:
Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” (“My mistress’ eyes
are nothing like the sun…”)
Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale”
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
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
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”
“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks/Within his bending sickle’s compass come”
“hardship groaned around my heart”
“Hunger tore at my sea-weary soul”
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 Churchill’s speeches
A letter you write to your parents to convince them
you should be allowed to go to prom
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
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 language—language that brings up
strong connotations for the audience.
Examples:
Churchill’s speeches
Hitler’s speeches
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 Petrarch’s sonnets
PLOT
The sequence of actions and events in a work of
fiction. Most literary critics would agree that plot
cannot exist without conflict.
Example:
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.
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
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
Shakespeare’s baptism record
PROP
(Abbreviation of property)
Any physical object that is used in a stage
production.
Examples:
In Macbeth: Macbeth and Macduff’s swords,
Banquo’s torch, the candle carried by Lady
Macbeth
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 Johnson’s essays; Elizabeth Gaskell’s fiction;
Mary Shelley’s gothic novel; T.C. Boyle’s short stories
PROTAGONIST
The main character in a work, on whom the author
focuses most of the narrative attention
Examples:
Macbeth
Federigo
Beowulf
Victor Frankenstein
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 Herrick’s
“To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”
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 Joyce’s short story “Araby” based on real life
experiences of his childhood in Dublin, Ireland
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 Blake’s “The Lamb”
“The Tyger” by William Blake
“Sonnet 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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:
Victor’s death and the Creature’s discussion with
Robert Walton in Frankenstein; Macbeth’s death
and Malcolm’s speech to restore order in the
kingdom
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
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 ---------------A
Are shadows, not substantial things; -------------B
There is no armor against fate; -------------------A
Death lays his icy hand on kings: ----------------B
Scepter and crown --------------------------------C
Must tumble down, --------------------------------C
And in the dust be equal made ------------------D
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ------D
From "Of Death"
By James Shirley
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."
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
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 d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory
“A Knight’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer
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 Enlightenment, 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
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 Gulliver’s Travels
By Jonathan Swift
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:
Chaucer’s mocking of the clergy in the medieval
church
Dave Barry’s “Year in Review” that provides a
humorous overview of the past year
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
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
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, Scrooge’s past, present, and future in A
Christmas Carol; the arctic, Geneva Switzerland,
and Victor’s lab in Frankenstein; Sweden, Denmark,
and Herot in Beowulf; Scotland during the AngloSaxon and early Medieval period in Macbeth
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.
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
SIMILE
A type of figurative language that makes a
comparison between two things, using the words
like or as.
Examples:
“The world’s honor ages and shrinks, bent like the
men who mold it”
“…as a peacock with many feathers…folds its
feathers, so she subsided and shut herself as she
sank down in the leather armchair”
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 husband’s heirloom
pocket watch. Meanwhile, the husband sells his
heirloom watch to buy his wife pretty combs for her
long and beautiful hair.
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 down
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images
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 time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The 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 tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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
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)
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 Wife’s Lament” is passionately
emotional about the loss of a husband; the speaker
of Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” seems to be neutral
and objective
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
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 plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
From Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”
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
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
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
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
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. Eliot’s sections to his poem
“Preludes,” which allows him to shift time and place
STYLE
The author's words and the characteristic way that
writer uses language to achieve certain effects
Examples:
Emily Dickinson’s 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.
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
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
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.
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 Creature’s 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
SYMBOL
A word, place, character, or object that means
something beyond what it is on a literal level
Examples:
The falcon in “Federigo’s 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
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
Eliot’s 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
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”