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    Literary Devices, Techniques and Figures of Speech

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    Joice Dela cruz
    The document discusses 25 common literary techniques and figures of speech that authors use to convey meaning and add depth to their writing. Some of the most useful techniques underlined include metaphor, simile, imagery, irony, motif, personification, and allusion. Metaphors directly compare two things without using "like" or "as", similes use "like" or "as" to compare two things, imagery uses language to create sensory impressions, irony emphasizes contrasts between expectations and realities, motifs are recurring themes, personification gives human traits to non-humans, and allusions reference other works. Understanding these techniques can help when analyzing authors' uses of language.

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    Literary Devices, Techniques and Figures of Speech

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    Joice Dela cruz
    377 views3 pages
    The document discusses 25 common literary techniques and figures of speech that authors use to convey meaning and add depth to their writing. Some of the most useful techniques underlined include metaphor, simile, imagery, irony, motif, personification, and allusion. Metaphors directly compare two things without using "like" or "as", similes use "like" or "as" to compare two things, imagery uses language to create sensory impressions, irony emphasizes contrasts between expectations and realities, motifs are recurring themes, personification gives human traits to non-humans, and allusions reference other works. Understanding these techniques can help when analyzing authors' uses of language.

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    The document discusses 25 common literary techniques and figures of speech that authors use to convey meaning and add depth to their writing. Some of the most useful techniques underlined include metaphor, simile, imagery, irony, motif, personification, and allusion. Metaphors directly compare two things without using "like" or "as", similes use "like" or "as" to compare two things, imagery uses language to create sensory impressions, irony emphasizes contrasts between expectations and realities, motifs are recurring themes, personification gives human traits to non-humans, and allusions reference other works. Understanding these techniques can help when analyzing authors' uses of language.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    377 views3 pages

    Literary Devices, Techniques and Figures of Speech

    Uploaded by

    Joice Dela cruz
    The document discusses 25 common literary techniques and figures of speech that authors use to convey meaning and add depth to their writing. Some of the most useful techniques underlined include metaphor, simile, imagery, irony, motif, personification, and allusion. Metaphors directly compare two things without using "like" or "as", similes use "like" or "as" to compare two things, imagery uses language to create sensory impressions, irony emphasizes contrasts between expectations and realities, motifs are recurring themes, personification gives human traits to non-humans, and allusions reference other works. Understanding these techniques can help when analyzing authors' uses of language.

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    Literary Devices, Techniques and Figures of Speech

    Reading passages (both long and short) include questions about the authors’ use of literary
    techniques and figures of speech—tools authors use to convey meaning or to lend depth and
    richness to their writing.

    The following list contains 25 common literary techniques and figures of speech. The most useful
    ones have been underlined:

    Alliteration: The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants, at the beginning of words. For
    example, Robert Frost’s poem “Out, out—” contains the alliterative phrase “sweet-scented stuff.”

    Allusion: A reference within a literary work to a


    historical, literary, or biblical character, place, or
    event. For example, the title of William Faulkner’s
    novel The Sound and the Fury alludes to a line
    from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

    Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words. For example, the line
    “The monster spoke in a low mellow tone” (from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lotos-
    Eaters”) contains assonance in its repetition of the “o” sound.

    Caricature: A description or characterization that exaggerates or distorts a character’s prominent


    features, usually for purposes of mockery. For example, a cartoon of a gaunt Abraham Lincoln
    with a giant top hat, a very scraggly beard, and sunken eyes could be considered a caricature.

    Cliché: An expression, such as “turn over a new leaf,” that has been used and reused so many
    times that it has lost its expressive power.

    Epiphany [ih-pif-uh-nee]: A sudden, powerful, and often spiritual or life changing realization that a
    character experiences in an otherwise ordinary moment. For example, the main character in
    James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has an
    epiphany during a walk by the sea.

    Foreshadowing: An author’s deliberate use of hints or suggestions to


    give a preview of events or themes that do not develop until later in
    the narrative. Images such as a storm brewing or a crow landing on a
    fence post often foreshadow ominous developments in a story.

    Hyperbole [hi-pur-buh-lee]: An excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration of fact. “I’ve


    told you that a million times already” is a hyperbolic statement.

    Idiom: A common expression that has acquired a meaning that differs from its literal meaning,
    such as “It’s raining cats and dogs” or “That cost me an arm and a leg.”

    1
    Imagery: Language that brings to mind sensory impressions. For example, in the Odyssey, Homer
    creates a powerful image with his description of “rosy-fingered dawn.”

    Irony: Broadly speaking, irony is a device that emphasizes the contrast between the way things are
    expected to be and the way they actually are. A historical example of irony might be the fact that
    people in medieval Europe believed bathing would harm them when in fact not bathing led to the
    unsanitary conditions that caused the bubonic plague.

    Metaphor: The comparison of one thing to another


    that does not use the terms “like” or “as.” A
    metaphor from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Life is but
    a walking shadow.”

    Simile [sim-uh-lee]: A comparison of two things


    through the use of the words like or as. The title of
    Robert Burns’s poem “My Love Is Like a Red, Red
    Rose” is a simile.

    Motif: A recurring structure, contrast, or other device that develops a literary work’s major
    themes (see below). For example, shadows and darkness are a motif in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of
    Two Cities, a novel that contains many gloomy scenes and settings.

    Onomatopoeia: The use of words like pop, hiss, or boing, in which the
    spoken sound resembles the actual sound.

    Oxymoron: The association of two terms that seem to contradict each


    other, such as “same difference” or “wise fool.”

    Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory on the surface but


    often expresses a deeper truth. One example is the line “All men
    destroy the things they love” from Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad
    of Reading Gaol.”

    Personification: The use of human characteristics to describe


    animals, things, or ideas. Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago”
    describes the city as “Stormy, husky, brawling / City of the Big
    Shoulders.”

    Pun: A play on words that uses the similarity in sound between two words with distinctly different
    meanings. For example, the title of Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest is a pun on
    the word earnest, which means serious or sober, and the name “Ernest.”
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