Literary Devices

Literary Devices Learn to be a Wordsmith (-Kind of like a blacksmith without all of the fire and tools and such-)

Imagery • Definition: Language that appeals to the 5 senses - Example: “Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.” A Christmas Carol, Dickens

Simile • Definition: Comparison of two things using the words “like,” “as,” or sometimes “than” • Example: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” -Forrest Gump

Metaphor • Definition: Comparison of two dissimilar things without the use of the words “like,” “as,” or sometimes “than” • Example: “Friendship is a sheltering tree.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Personification • Definition: Giving human qualities to nonhuman objects. • Example: “The daisies danced in the breeze.” • Anthropomorphism: A specific type of personification which refers to giving human characteristics to animals or objects. • Example: “the fog comes in on little cat feet” - Carl Sandberg

Allusion • Definition- A reference to a statement, person, place, event or thing that is known from literature, history, religion mythology, politics, sports, science, or popular culture. Example: “Math is my Achilles’ heel. I never do well with numbers.” - Mrs. Cowan

Apostrophe • Definition: A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding. • Example: “Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus,Through windows, and through curtains call on us?” - John Donne

Hyperbole • Definition: An excessive exaggeration for literary effect. - Example: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” -Shakespeare (Macbeth)

Oxymoron • Definition: a combination of words which are apparently contradictory - Example: deafening silence, bittersweet, jumbo shrimp

Paradox • Definition: A statement which seems contradictory but is actually true. • Example: In Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, • “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time…”

Alliteration • Definition: The repetition of identical consonant sounds at the beginning of successive or nearly successive words - Example: “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out.” - Shel Silverstein

Anachronism • Definition: Persons, objects, or events which are placed in the wrong period of time. - Example: A reference to a striking clock in the play Julius Caesar

Literary Devices