Literary techniques:
devices authors use to create
meaning (theme).
Most of these should be review, but
some may be new.
Not every work of literature will use
every technique;
think, did the author intend to use the
technique,
or are you finding techniques that
aren’t actually there?
The skill is not merely to find the
literary technique
(look, there it is!),
but to explain why and how the
author used it to create theme.
Figurative language:
Writers use it to go beyond the
literal meanings of the words to
make a comparison that gives the
readers a new insight into the
content; it also appeals to the
senses of the readers.
Simile:
a comparison using the words
like or as
The concert was so loud it sounded
like a freight train, horn blaring and
wheels clacking.
Metaphor:
A comparison without using like or
as: pretending one thing is another
thing to emphasize a characteristic.
She is the sun, the moon, and the
stars.
Extended metaphor:
a metaphor that continues through a
stanza, a poem, or a text
(also knows as a conceit or sustained
metaphor).
Shakespeare loves them.
From “Romeo and Juliet”:
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none
but fools do wear it; cast it off.
Imagery:
language that appeals to the senses:
auditory
olfactory
visual
tactile
gustatory
John Keats: “To the Autumn”
“Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”
Personification:
attributing human characteristics to
inanimate objects or idea
A.H. Houseman: “Loveliest of Trees the Cherry Now”
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.”
Alliteration:
repetition of consonant sounds for
emphasis
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.”
Assonance:
repetition of vowel sounds for
emphasis:
Carl Sandburg: Early Moon:
“Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is
among the oldest of living things. So old it
is that no man knows how and why the
first poems came.”
Onomatopoeia:
language in which the sound
echoes the sense
whisper
meow
boom
Hyperbole:
exaggeration to create emphasis:
William Shakespeare “Macbeth”
“Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my
hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
Symbol:
An object that represents a larger idea:
Shakespeare As you Like It:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
they have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,”
Motif:
a recurrent image, idea or a symbol
that develops or explains an idea:
Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
a recurring motif of incest: Laertes speaks to
his sister Ophelia in a way that is sexually
explicit. Hamlet shows obsession for Gertrude’s
sexual life with Claudius has an underlying tone
of an incestuous desire.
plains a theme
Anaphora (parallelism):
the deliberate repetition of the first
part of the sentence in order to
achieve an effect:
A Tale of Two Cities Charles
Dickens:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it
was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it
was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair.”
Understatement:
describing something as less than
what is intended for effect:
upon collecting 125 research
papers:
“I have a little bit of work to do this
weekend.”
Enjambment:
in poetry, ending a line mid-sentence
without a pause to emphasize a word:
The Waste Land by T.S Eliot
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.”
Litotes:
Describing something by what it is not:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to
fall out and quarrel among themselves about
the relative goodness of their masters, each
contending for the superior goodness of his own
over that of the others.”
Mood vs tone:
tone is the attitude the author
expresses in a piece of writing:
mood the atmosphere; a feeling
the reader experiences while
reading.
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
“There was no moon, and everything
beneath lay in misty darkness: not a
light gleamed from any house, far or
near all had been extinguished long
ago: and those at Wuthering Heights
were never visible…”
“The School” : Donald Barthelme:
“And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I
don’t know why they died, they just died.
Something wrong with the soil possibly or
maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn’t
the best. We complained about it. So we’ve got
thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own
little tree to plant and we’ve got these thirty
dead trees. All these kids looking at these little
brown sticks, it was depressing.”
Allusion:
a reference to something from history,
literature, or religion.
Marlowe: “Doctor Faustus”
“Learnèd Faustus, to find the secrets of astronomy
Graven in the book of Jove’s high firmament,
Did mount him up to scale Olympus’ top,
Where, sitting in a chariot burning bright,
Drawn by the strength of yokèd dragons’ necks,
He views the clouds, the planets, and the stars.”
Diction:
specific word choices to create effect.
Never say, “the author used diction.”
What is the difference between grass,
lawn, turf, sod, emerald field of
softness, pennisetum alopecuroides,
etc…
Paradox:
an apparent contradiction used to
convey truth:
George Orwell: Animal Farm:
“All animals are equal, but some are
more equal than others”.
Oxymoron:
two opposite ideas joined to
convey truth:
government intelligence
jumbo shrimp
loud silence
Juxtaposition:
placing two or more things or ideas
next to each other to provide
contrast.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare
juxtaposes Macbeth and Macduff
to show different values of loyalty.