Download Personification, Onomatopoeia and Oxymoron With Ballad, Limerick

POETRY
Personification, Onomatopoeia and Oxymoron
With Ballad, Limerick and Sonnets
LITERARY DEVICES
 We are going to look at three different type of literary devices and
how they relate to poetry.
• Personification
• Onomatopoeia
• Oxymoron
PERSONIFICATION
 Personification gives human characteristics to inanimate objects,
animals, or ideas. It is widely used in many forms of literature,
especially poetry.
 The idea is to write a poem that is about an inanimate object,
animal or idea – like a spoon, or a dog – and give it human
characteristics.
PERSONIFICATION
EXAMPLE
“Hey Diddle Diddle”
Hey diddle, Diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
 In this example, the dog laughed (human characteristic) and the dish and the
spoon ran away together (human characteristic).
ONOMATOPOEIA
 Onomatopoeia is defined as a word, which imitates the natural sounds
of a thing.
 It creates a sound effect that mimics the thing described, making the
description more expressive and interesting.
 For instance, saying, “The gushing stream flows in the forest” is a
more meaningful description than just saying, “The stream flows in the
forest.” The reader is drawn to hear the sound of a “gushing stream”
which makes the expression more effective.
EXAMPLES OF
ONOMATOPOEIA
 The buzzing bee flew away.
 The sack fell into the river with a splash.
 The books fell on the table with a loud thump.
 He looked at the roaring sky.
 The rustling leaves kept me awake.
 The sounds are used to emphasize the action that is taking place.
ONOMATOPOEIA POEMS
 “The Marvellous Toy” by Tom Paxton
It went zip when it moved and bop when it stopped,
And whirr when it stood still.
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.
 “Cynthia in the Snow” by unknown
The snow softly falling as it hushes and shushes the cars that drive in the street.
The snow flitter-twitters around in the girl’s mind, before it whitely whirs away.
She even personifies the snow, describing it as it laughs.
OXYMORON
 Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined
to create an effect.
 The common oxymoron phrase is a combination of an adjective
proceeded by a noun with contrasting meanings e.g. “cruel kindness” or
“living death” or “true lies.”
 However, the contrasting words/phrases are not always glued together.
The contrasting ideas may be spaced out in a sentence e.g. “In order to
lead, you must walk behind.”
OXYMORON EXAMPLES
 Open secret
 Tragic comedy
 Seriously funny
 Awfully pretty
 Foolish wisdom
 Original copies
 Liquid gas
OXYMORON POEM
 “134th Sonnet” by Sir Thomas Wyatt
I find no peace, and all my war is done
I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,
I flee above the wind, yet can I not arise
 From line one - peace and war, from line two -burns and freeze,
and from line three - Above the win and not arise
BALLAD
 A Ballad is a poem that tells a story, which are often used in songs
because of their rhyme. A ballad is a poetic story, often a love story.
 It usually has four lines in each stanza (quatrain).
 It also tends to have a distinctive rhyming pattern that is constant
throughout the poem - a,b,c,b d,e,f,e, g,h,i,h j,k,l,k
LIMERICK
 Limericks usually come in two forms: a five-line stanza, or a fourline stanza.
 Traditionally, the first, and last lines ended in the same word – but
they do not always have to.
 Thus in a five line stanza the rhyming pattern has to be aabba, and
if there is a second stanza the rhyming pattern would be ccddc.
FIVE LINE LIMERICK
“Nantucket” by Anonymous
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket;
But his daughter named Nan
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
 Note line one and five are the same words, and the rhyming pattern is aabba.
FIVE LINE LIMERICK
There was a young lady of Lynn
Who was so excessively thin
That when she essayed
To drink lemonade
She slipped through the straw and fell in.
FOUR LINE LIMERICK
 The other form is a four-line stanza.
 The 3rd and 4th lines are combined, but there is now an internal rhyme.
“Old Man” By: Edward Lear
There was an old man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!"
SONNET
 A sonnet has 14 fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter.
 It has a specific rhyme pattern.
 We will focus on the English Sonnet (Shakespearian)
 There are 14 lines in the stanza, it is written in iambic pentameter
and the rhyme patter is abab cdcd efef gg.
ASSIGNMENT
 You are to choose two of the types of poems (Ballad, Sonnet or
Limerick) and write a poem about anything you like.
 In each of the poems one line needs to have one of the three
literary devices studied today (Personification, Onomatopoeia or
Oxymoron); you can use more if you so choose.
 Example:
• Poem #1 – you are writing a Limerick and will use a personification
• Poem # 2 – you are writing a Sonnet and will use an oxymoron