Download Senior English Literary Devices

Senior English Poetry Terms
Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds; e.g. “scuttling across the floors of silent seas” from
the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.
Allusion: indirect or passing reference to a person, place, or event; can be biblical, mythological,
historical, literary, artistic, etc.; the nature of the reference is not explained because the author relies on
the reader's familiarity with it; e.g. “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour/England hath need of
thee” from London, 1802 by William Wordsworth.
Archaic Language - really old, antiquated, or no longer used language. Example: "thou art", "thee",
etc.
Assonance: repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) in a line or a series of lines in a
poem; e.g. “Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells!” from The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe.
Atmosphere: the mood or feeling of a poem.
Ballad: a poem that tells a story (narrative), often in a straightforward and dramatic manner and often
about such universal themes as love, honour, and courage; Ballads were once songs, and literary
ballads often have a strong rhythm or and plain rhyme schemes of songs; the Rhyme of the Ancient
Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example a of literary ballad.
Ballad Stanza: generally found as a quatrain, or four-line stanza, within a ballad.
Blank Verse: lines in poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (light beat followed by a heavy
best, five times per line); of all the English verse forms, it is the most fluid and comes the closest to the
natural rhythms of English speech; e.g. “with some uncertain notice, as might seem/of vagrant dwellers
in the houseless woods” from Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth.
Cacophony: the use of harsh or unmusical sounds, like truncheon and cataract.
Chorus: a part of a poem that is repeated
Consonance: repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words; alliteration is a form of
consonance; e.g. “Now the water's low. The weeds exceed me” from Praise to the End by Theodore
Roethke.
Couplet: two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; e.g. “then brook abridgment, and your eyes
advance/after your thoughts, straight back to France” from King Henry V by William Shakespeare.
Dissonance: harsh sound; can be emotional or intellectual; e.g. “thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and
connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides” from To a Locomotive in Winter by Walt Whitman.
Elegy: a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual; A Grammarian's Funeral by
Robert Browning and Elegy by Dylan Thomas is examples of elegy poems.
Epic: a long poem, often about a heroic character; the writing is elevated and often represents religious
and cultural ideals; Beowulf and the Odyssey of Homer are examples of epics.
Euphemism - replacing an unpleasant word, or idea, with a more pleasant one. Example: "pass away"
for die.
Euphony: sounds pleasing to the ear; To Autumn by John Keats employs euphony.
Extended Metaphor: a metaphor that is extended throughout most of or all of a poem; Shakespeare's
Sonnet 18 “Shall I Compare The To A Summer's Day?” is an example of an extended metaphor as a
person is compared to a summer day throughout the whole poem.
Free Verse: a type of poem with no discernible or set rhythm, rhyme, or rules; can be rhymed or
unrhymed, but where there are rhymes they are usually irregular and may not occur at the end of lines.
The poem Apocalypse by D. J. Enright is a free verse poem.
Hyperbole: a figure of speech that uses deliberate exaggeration for effect; e.g. “An hundred years
should go to praise/Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze” from To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvel.
Image: a word or series of words that refers to a sensory experience
Imagery: words or phrases that create pictures or images in the reader's mind, through an appeal to the
fives senses; e.g. “the apparition of these of these faces in the crowd/petals on a wet, black bough”
from In a Station of a Metro by Ezra Pound.
Irony: when the actual meaning is the opposite of the stated meaning; can be serious or humorous;
often a technique used in narratives that indicates the writer's attitude to some element of the story; e.g.
The Unknown Citizen is an elegy celebrating the life of a citizen, yet the state does not know the citizen
at all.
Jargon - a language specific to a particular trade, often scientific or technical; can include slang.
Example: an MRI, a newb, SNAFU.
Juxtaposition: the deliberate contrast of elements in a poem for effect.
Lyric: short poem that expresses the private thoughts and emotions of the poet; originally they were
poems that were intended to be sung; retain their melodic and musical qualities; Sonnets, Odes, and
Elegies are examples of Lyrics.
Metaphor: a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two fundamentally dissimilar things;
e.g. “All the world's a stage/and all the men and women merely players” from As You Like It by
William Shakespeare is a metaphor.
Metonymy: figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something closely
associated with it; e.g. using the phrase “the White House” to refer to the United States government.
Metre: a generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Metrical Poetry: poetry written in regular, repeating rhythms; rhymes are also regular and are often
found at the end of lines.
Mood: the atmosphere of a poem; the way the poet orders the elements of the poem, like symbol and
imagery to create a dominant emotion or pattern of emotions
Motif: a recurring theme, idea, incident, image, symbol etc. found in poems.
Narrative: a poem that tells a story
Octave: an eight-line poem or stanza; can also refer to the first eight lines in an Italian (Petrarchian)
sonnet.
Ode: a poem expressing lofty emotion; often celebrate an event or are addressed to nature, a person,
place, or thing; e.g. Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats.
Onomatopoeia: words that imitate the sounds they refer to, such as buzz, bang, or hiss.
Oxymoron: a combination of two contradictory terms, usually expressed as a paradox, like living dead;
an oxymoron is like a metaphor that expresses some truth in words that cannot be understood literally.
Parallelism: making two or more lines of poetry similar in form to create a pattern and suggest
corresponding meaning between them.
Paradox a situation or event that contradicts itself; a seemingly absurd statement that, upon reflection,
proves true. Examples: "I must be cruel to be kind." (Hamlet); "Deep down, you're really shallow."
Pastoral: a type of poem that deals in an idealized way with shepherds and rustic lives; e.g. The
Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe.
Personification: attributing human qualities to inanimate objects; e.g. “When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils” from I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud by William Wordsworth.
Pun: a humorous expression that depends on a double meaning, either between different senses of the
same word or between two similar sounding words; e.g “Santa's helpers are sub-ordinate clauses.”
Quatrain: a stanza of four lines, usually with alternating rhymes.
Refrain: a word, line, phrase, or group of lines repeated regularly throughout the poem, usually at the
end of each stanza; e.g. And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas.
Repetition: the act of repeating something that has already been written.
Rhyme: the repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear closely to one another in a
poem; e.g. “there's a girl who'll push but not shove/And she's desperate for her father's love from
Vicious Cabaret by Alan Moore.
Rhyme Scheme: the pattern of rhyme in a poem.
Sarcasm: the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
Satire - to make fun of or ridicule something or someone; often to expose absurdity, hypocrisy, folly
(being foolish) to provoke change. Example: Think of political cartoons.
Sestet: a six line poem or stanza; can also refer to the last six lines in an Italian (Petrarchian) sonnet.
Simile: a comparison between two things using like, as, or than; e.g. “my luve's like a red, red rose”
from A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns.
Sonnet: a lyric poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter; the English (Shakespearean) sonnet
traditionally consists of three quatrains and a couplet all written to a strict end rhyme scheme of abab
cdcd efef gg. The development of the poet's thoughts are also highly structured, with each quatrain
expressing a different point and the couplet being the resolution; see Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
Stanza: a stanza is a segment within the formal pattern of a poem, can consist of any groupings of
numbers of lines, and is distinguished from other stanzas by clearly indicated divisions.
Style: a poet's characteristic way of writing determined by their choice of words (diction), the
arrangement of words n lines, and the relationship between the lines.
Synecdoche: when part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “many hands make light
work” where hands represent people.
Symbol: anything that stands for or represents something else other than itself; in poetry it is commonly
a word, object, place, or person that has some further significance associated with it; a common
example is a red rose representing love. Symbols can be universally recognized, like flags or corporate
logos, but they can also be more complicated and may suggest more than one meaning; e.g. snow can
symbolize goodness because of its cleanliness, but it can also symbolize cruelty because of its coldness.
Symbols are often contained in titles, in characters, places, classical, literary, and historical allusions,
and in images or motifs.
Symbolism: the use of symbols to represent ideas and create meaning in poems.
Theme: a general idea or insight about life in general the poet wishes to express in a poem.
Tone: a particular way of speaking or writing, but can also describes the the general feeling of a piece
of work, or the attitude the poet takes to the subject of the poem; tone can include thoughtful, formal,
morose, tragic, or silly; tone can also be a complex mixture of attitudes; different tones can leave
readers with such varying emotions as pity, fear, horror, or humour.
Understatement: the presentation of something as being smaller, less good, or of less importance than
it really is; opposite of hyperbole.
Wit: the capacity for inventive thought and quick, keen understanding – often with the intent of
producing humorous responses; cleverness.