Figurative language A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words Examples Hyperbole exaggeration Simile metaphor ID: 708833
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Slide1
Literary Devices
Figurative language and types of poemsSlide2
Figurative language
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words.
Examples:
Hyperbole
exaggeration
Simile
metaphorSlide3
Literal language
A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words mean.
When you say that is cold you mean it is cold in temperature.
The comedian died on the stage. (literal meaning - he actually died)Slide4
Stanza
A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem.
The stanza is like a prose paragraph. Slide5
Symbol
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
A rose, for example, has long been considered a symbol of love and affection. Slide6
Imagery
an author's use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to their work
.
Examples
He fumed and charged like an angry bull.
He fell down like an old tree falling down in a storm.
He felt like the flowers were waving him a hello.
The eerie silence was shattered by her scream.Slide7
Connotation
a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. T
he emotional meaning.Slide8
Denotation
is the literal meaning,
the dictionary meaning of a word. Slide9
Meter
The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse.Slide10
Rhythm
The
audible pattern
of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:
I
said
to my
ba
by,
Ba
by take it
slow
....
Lu
lu said to
Leo
nard
I
want
a
dia
mond
ring
Another example is Edgar Allen Poe’s the BellsSlide11
Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells! Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that over sprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
The Bells
in the rhythm of Ms. Jefferis high school choir.Slide12
Rhyme
The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.
The following stanza of "Richard Cory" employs alternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second:
Whenever Richard Cory went down
town
,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to
crown
Clean favored and imperially slim.
A
rhyme scheme
is usually the pattern of end rhymes in a stanza, with each rhyme encoded by a letter of the alphabet, from
a
onward (ABBA BCCB, for example). Rhymes are classified by the degree of similarity between sounds within words, and by their placement within the lines or stanzas
Slide13
End rhyme
,
the most common type, is the rhyming of the final syllables of a line. See
“Midstairs”
by Virginia Hamilton Adair:
And here on this turning of the
stair
Between passion and
doubt,
I pause and say a double
prayer,
One for you, and one for you;
And so they cancel
out.
Slide14
Internal rhyme
is rhyme within a single line of verse When a word from the middle of a line is rhymed with a word at the end of the line.
I had a
cat
who wore a
hat
He looked
cool
but felt the
fool
Edgar Allen Poe ‘
The Raven’
Once upon a midnight
dreary
, while I pondered, weak and
wearySlide15
Allusion
A brief reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement.
“I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.” This refers to the story of Pinocchio, where his nose grew whenever he told a lie. It is from
The Adventures of Pinocchio
, written by Carlo
Collodi
.
Heading down the rabbit hole is an allusion to Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Slide16
Alliteration
the deliberate repetition of consonant sounds
Alliteration does not need to be every word in the line nor the same letter. I
k
eep the
c
at in a
c
age.
“We
s
aw the
s
ea
s
ound
s
ing, we heard the
s
alt
s
heet tell,” from Dylan Thomas’s
“Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed.
”
Tongue twisters are alliterated.
Amy Always answers abruptly.Slide17
Consonance
Is a type of alliteration. The repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase
. It does not have to be at the start of the word
“T was later when the summer went” by Emily Dickson:
‘T was later when the summer went
Than when the cricket
came
,
And yet we knew that gentle clock
Meant
nought
but going
home
.
‘T was sooner when the cricket went
Than when the winter
came
,
Yet that pathetic pendulum
Keeps esoteric
time
.
The M sound is repeated Slide18
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose.
I r
o
se and t
o
ld him of my w
o
e.”
Whitman's "When I Heard the
Learn'd
Astronomer”
How soon unaccountable
I
became t
i
red and sick,
Till r
i
sing and gl
i
ding out
I
wander'd
off by myself." Slide19
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration.
I am so hungry I could eat a horse.
I have a million things to do.
I had a ton of homework.
I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.Slide20
Personification
A
figure of speech
in which the poet describes, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person.
An example: "The yellow leaves
flaunted
their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.
The movie cars and planes use personification Slide21
Irony
A contrast between what is said and what is meant or a contrast between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Coleridge
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”Slide22
Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe.
Buzz
Crack
choo-choo
hiss
Most often refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the "murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.Slide23
Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as
like
or
as
.
An example is "My love is a red, red rose,”Slide24
Oxymoron
A
figure of speech
that brings together contradictory words for effect.
jumbo shrimp
deafening silenceSlide25
Simile
A comparison made with “as,” “like,” or “than.”
In “
A Red, Red Rose
,”
Robert Burns declares:
O my Love
is like
a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Love
is like
the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
Love is being compared to a rose and a melody.Slide26
Pun
is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.
I went to a seafood disco last week....and
pulled a mussel.
I work as a baker because
I knead dough
Sir Lancelot once had a very bad dream about his horse. It was a
knight mare.Slide27
Palindrome
A word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward and forward.
civic
Level
A man, a plan, a canal—Panama
The reversal can be word by word as well
as in fall leaves when leaves fall. Slide28
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate
stanza
in a poem.
Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”Slide29
Forms of poetrySlide30
Haiku
A Japanese verse form of three
unrhyming
lines in five, seven, and five syllables. It creates a single, memorable image, as in these lines by
Kobayashi Issa
, translated by Jane
Hirshfield
:
On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.
(In translating from Japanese to English,
Hirshfield
compresses the number of syllables.) Slide31
Limerick
A humorous poem of five lines rhyming AABBA.
A Clumsy Young Fellow Named Tim
There once was a fellow named Tim (A)
whose dad never taught him to swim. (A)
He fell off a dock (B)
and sunk like a rock. (B)
And that was the end of him. (A) Slide32
Lyric poem
A type of poem characterized by the expression of feeling.
The anonymous "Western Wind”
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
It expresses the feeling of the wind.Slide33
Ode
A long, stately poem in
stanzas
of varied length,
meter
, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject.
Horace's "
Eheu
fugaces
,"
but sometimes a more lighthearted work, such as Neruda's "Ode to My Socks."
Slide34
Parody
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation.Slide35
Quatrain
A four-line
stanza,
rhyming in a pattern - like ABAC, ABCB, ABBA, AABA
-AABA, the stanza of Robert Frost’s
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
A
His house is in the village though;
A
He will not see me stopping here
B
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
ASlide36
Elegy
A
lyric poem
that laments the dead. Slide37
Epic
A long
narrative poem
that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values.Slide38
Free verse
non rhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not plan it in their composition. Slide39
Blank verse
A unrhymed line of poetry or proseSlide40
Ballad
A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed (
abcb
)
quatrains
alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories with emphasis on a central dramatic event.Slide41
Concrete poetry
Verse that emphasizes physical elements, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic. Slide42
Sonnet
A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme
originating in Italy and then to England in the 16th century. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines.
The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three
quatrains
and a final
couplet
, rhyming
abab
cdcd
efef
gg
. The
Petrarchan
or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming
abba
abba
cde
cde
or
abba
abba
cd
cd
cd
.Slide43
Tone
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work.