Literary Devices
Literary devices make up the body of any type of literature; writers use different devices to advance the story and engage the reader. Study, familiarize yourself, and learn the following definitions, which we will refer to often throughout the year.
Absurd, Literature of the – works of drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that the human condition is essentially absurd, and that this condition can be adequately represented only in works of literature that are themselves absurd.
Allegory – a situation presented entirely using symbolism (ex. – Animal Farm)
Atmosphere/Mood – the emotional feeling of the story, which fosters in the reader expectations about the course of events. (ex. – mystery in Harry Potter)
Blank Verse – consists of lines of iambic pentameter (five-stress iambic verse) that are unrhymed. Of all English verse forms it is closest to the natural rhythms of English speech.
Conflict: Internal/External – the conflict is the struggle or central source of tension in the story. Internal/external denotes the struggle or problem from within or outside the character’s experience.
Connotation and Denotation – Denotation of a word is its primary significance or reference, such as a dictionary defines. Connotation is the range of secondary or associated significances and feelings that it commonly suggests or implies. For example “home” denotes the house where one lives, but connotes privacy, intimacy, and coziness; that is the reason real estate agents like to use “home: in stead of “house” in their ads.
Criticism – the overall term for studies concerned with defining, classifying, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating works of literature.
Doggerel/Satire – rough or jerky verse used for comic effect or satire. Satire is the use of scorn, contempt, or ridicule to purposely diminish or degrade a subject. (ex. – using laughter as a weapon in literature)
Direct/Indirect characterization – the author directly tells the reader about the character or the author shows the character in action in order to allow the readers to draw their own conclusions about the character.
Empathy/Sympathy – empathy is identifying emotionally with a character so closely that the reader seems to participate with the character, while sympathy is identifying emotionally with the character without any participation with the character. The former is “feeling-into” the state of the character while the latter is “feeling-along-with” the character.
Fabliau – the medieval fabliau was a short comic or satire tale in verse dealing realistically with middle-class or lower-class characters. Fabliau uses rude, vulgar humor to entertain.
Figurative Language – the use of decorative patterns or sequence of words such as alliteration, allusion, ambiguity, conceit, epithet, hyperbole, understatement, irony, metaphor, paradox, personification, sensory description, simile, and symbolism.
Alliteration – the repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of words.
Allusion – a reference, without explicit identification, to a person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage.
Ambiguity – a vague expression when what is wanted is precision to a particular reference.
Conceit – a striking parallel between two very dissimilar things or situations.
Epithet – an adjective or adjective phrase used to define a distinctive quality of a person or thing.
Hyperbole – an exaggerated statement use to make a strong effect.
Understatement – representing something as much less important than it really is, or is ordinarily considered to be.
Irony – technique used to portray a meaning that is opposite to what is expected.
Metaphor – a word or comparison of one thing or action to a distinctly different thing or action.
Paradox – a statement that seems contradictory or absurd yet makes good sense.
Personification – when an inanimate object or abstract concept is spoken of as though it had life or human attributes or feelings.
Sensory description – use of the five senses to describe events or experiences.
Simile – a comparison between two distinctly different by the word “like” or “as”.
Symbolism – use of an image, object, character, or action to stand for an idea.
Flashback/Foreshadowing – any scene or episode that is inserted in the plot to show events that happened at any earlier time or that may happen later in the story.
Heroic Couplet – lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb,cc and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in epic poems and plays.
Imagery – the use of selected details to describe one thing in terms of another.
Meter – the rhythm of stresses or beats in speech that are structured into a repeated pattern. Stories written in meter are known as verse.
Monologue/Soliloquy – a monologue is lengthy speech by a single character, while soliloquy is the act of talking to oneself either silently or aloud.
Motif/Theme – an unusual element, such as an incident, device, reference, or formula, which occurs frequently in a story. Like motif, the theme is a general idea or concept meant to persuade the reader.
Objective/Subjective – an objective work is one in which the writer presents the characters and plot while remaining detached, while a subjective work is one in which the writer incorporates personal experiences within the presentation of the characters and plot.
Onomatopoeia – a word or combination of words whose sound seems to closely resemble the sound it denotes. (ex. – hiss, buzz, rattle, bang)
Persona/Tone/Voice – the expression of the narrator’s attitude toward the reader or the author’s presence in the story.
Plot – the events and actions that make up the story.
Point of View: first, third, third omniscient, and limited – the way a story is told, its perspective. First person point of view is when the author uses “I” and is a participant in the story. Third person point of view is when the author uses he/she and reports and expresses personal views about the events of the story. Third person omniscient is the point of view when the author moves within the perspective of the characters in an all-knowing perspective. Limited point of view is when the narrator tells the story in the third person, but from the perspective of one character.
Protagonist/Antagonist – the hero/main character of the story and the character or force that opposes the hero.
Purple Patch – a specific heightening of style in rhythm and figurative language that makes a section of verse or prose—especially a descriptive passage—stand out.
Prose/Verse – prose is written or spoken language that is not patterned into lines or rhyming or free verse, while verse is metered (rhyming patterns) of written or spoken language.
Rhetoric – composition whose chief aim is to persuade an audience to think or act in a particular way. Rhetoric is divided into 3 styles: 1) deliberative – to persuade an audience to approve or disapprove of a matter of public policy, and to act accordingly 3) forensic – to achieve either the condemnation or approval of some person’s actions, and 3) epideictic – ceremonial oratory; Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” is an example.
Rising Action/Climax/Falling Action/Resolution – the actions or events that increases tension and develops the conflict, the point that the crisis occurs, and actions or events that follow the crisis and lead to the resolution, or the point in the story where the conflict is resolved.
Sarcasm – is sometimes used as an equivalent to irony, but it is better to restrict it to the crude and taunting use of praise for dispraise. For example, “Oh, you’re God’s great gift to women, you are!”
Sentimentalism – composition that involves an excess of emotion or overindulgence in the tender emotions of pathos and sympathy. It is often used in Romance novels and began with Victorian era novels and dramas.
Setting – the general locale or environment, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of the story takes place.
Soliloquy – the act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud. In drama a character, alone on stage, utters her thoughts aloud. Playwrights use this device to convey information about a character’s motives and state of mind.
Sonnet – a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns of rhyme: 1) Italian or Petrarchan sonnet which falls into two main parts: an octave (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet (six lines) rhyming cdecde or some variation, such as cdccdc and 2) Shakespearean sonnetwhich falls into three quatrains and a concluding couplet: abab cdcd efef gg.
Stanza – a grouping of the verse-lines in a poem, set off by a space in the printed text. Usually the stanzas of a poem are marked by a recurrent pattern of rhyme, and are also uniform in the number and lengths of the lines.
Stream of Consciousness – a long passage of introspection, describing in detail what passes through a character’s awareness.
Surrealism – or super-realism was/is a revolt against all restraints on free creativity. In terms of writing, surrealists turned to automatic writing or writing that is unconscious or based on dreams or the states of mind between sleep and waking.
Suspense – developing a lack of certainty about what is going to happen in the plot of the story.
Tragedy – literary, especially dramatic, representations of serious and important actions that describe a disastrous conclusion for the protagonist. Tragic drama began with the ancient Greeks.
Tragicomedy – a type of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama which intermingled both the standard characters and subject matter and the standard plot forms of tragedy and comedy.
Utopia and Dystopia – utopia is class of fiction that represents an ideal but nonexistent political state and way of life. Dystopia is a class of fiction, including science fiction, that represents a very unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and technological order a projected in some disastrous future.
Wit/Humor/Comic – any element, whether a character, event, or utterance designed to amuse.