Transcript Slide 1
Literary and Poetic Devices Literary Devices • A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. • These are the tools that writers, such as Shakespeare, use to make their writing more complex, deep, and beautiful. Allusion • This is a reference within one work of literature (Macbeth) to another person, place, or thing outside of the literature itself (King Edward, Scottish history). Figurative Language • Language which allows the reader to more clearly and vividly imagine the things that are going on in the story. • Examples: • Simile • Metaphor • Personification Simile • A comparison using the words “like” or “as” in the sentence. • Example: “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it” Metaphor • A comparison which DOES NOT use the words “like” or “as” in the sentence. • Example: “Your face, my Thane, is a book where men may read strange matters.” Personification • Giving human like characteristics to un-human objects or things. • Example: “If chance will have me King, then chance may crown me.” • Here Chance is being spoken about as if it is a person or character Alliteration • The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words . • Example: “But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears.” Symbol • An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. • Example: Often, in Shakespeare, birds are a symbol of omens/superstition. Foreshadowing • Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. • Example: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” • This tells us that the people and actions of this story are not always as simple as they appear to be. More Poetic Devices • • • • • • Hyperbole Diction and tone Rhyme Assonance and consonance Onomatopoeia Imagery Hyperbole • Hyperbole is exaggeration or overstatement. Opposite of understatement • Example: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. He's as big as a house. Diction and tone • Diction is word choice in literature • Tone is the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective. Assonance • Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds. • Example: fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks. Consonance • Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels. • Example: lady lounges lazily , dark deep dread crept in Onomatopoeia • Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents. also imitative harmony • Example: splash, wow, gush, kerplunk • Tennyson makes us feel the heaviness of a drowsy summer day by using a series of "in" sounds in the wonderfully weighted lines: • The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees. Imagery • Descriptive language that evokes images in the mind’s eye using the 5 senses to make the image vivid. • Example: “He clasps the crag with crooked hands" from “The Eagle” by Tennyson