A Few Literary Techniques
Idea (what it’s about) + Technique (how it’s written) = Effect
Allusion
Indirect reference in literature or art to another work or event with which the reader is presumed to
be familiar, e.g. Frost’s line “And steadfast as Keats’ eremite” in “Take Something Like a Star,”
alluding to a line in a Keats sonnet.
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, sentences, verses, etc.,
e.g. M.L. King’s repetition of the expression “I have a dream . . .” in his famous speech. Cf.
epistrophe.
Anastrophe
Figure of speech in which the natural syntax (word order) is inverted, as in the opening line of
Frost’s “Mending Wall”: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. Typically, anastrophe
emphasizes the inverted words.
Aposiopesis
Abruptly breaking off in the middle of a sentence, leaving it unfinished, e.g. King Lear’s “I will
have revenges on you both / That all the world shall–I will do such things–”.
Apostrophe
Addressing (i.e., speaking to or writing to) a thing, place, abstract concept, idea, or dead or absent
person as if present and capable of understanding, e.g. Mark Antony’s speech to the recently
murdered Caesar that begins, “O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?”
Asyndeton
(“without connectors”) Series of words or phrases joined together by commas without a
conjunction (and, but, or) before the final item in the series, e.g., “I was hungry, tired, disappointed,
discouraged, lost.” Cf. polysyndeton.
Charactonym
Symbolic or otherwise meaningful name for a character, a setting, etc., e.g., the name Silas,
meaning “forest dweller,” in Frost’s “Home Burial” and the name Amy, meaning “beloved,” in
Frost’s “Home Burial” and Morrison’s Beloved. A.K.A. canted name.
Epistrophe
Repeating a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, sentences, verses, etc. e.g.
Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people” in the Gettysburg address.
Hyperbole
Extravagant exaggeration, e.g. Twain’s quip “I have seen this river so wide it only had one bank”
and Frost’s “There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch” in “After Apple-Picking”.
Imagery
Irony
Vivid descriptive language engaging one or more senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch).
Litote
Understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite, generally for ironic
effect, e.g. “Shakespeare is not a bad dramatist.” Cf. meosis.
Metaphor
Comparison of two unalike things in which no word of comparison (like or as) is used, e.g. “School
is an amusement park for the intellect” or “I found myself drowning under a tidal wave of
homework.” A metaphor is an implied analogy that imaginatively identifies one thing with another.
Metonymy
Substituting the name of one thing for that of another with which it is associated, e.g., “The White
House has decided to provide a million more public service jobs.” Here, the White House
emphasizes the authority of president while de-emphasizing his or her humanity. Virginia Woolf
uses metonymy when she quips, “The family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen,”
substituting the act of being a professional writer with the sound of handwriting, characterizing the
writing process in a way that trivializes it. In Frost’s “Out, Out—,” the injured boy “swung toward
them holding up the hand / Half in appeal, but half as if to keep / The life from spilling.” Here,
Frost substitutes blood with life, maintaining focus on the consequences of the injury rather than its
gore. Cf. synecdoche.
Meosis
Dramatic understatement for rhetorical effect of the largeness, importance, or acuteness of
something, e.g. after Frost lauds the psychological and spiritual significance of swinging on birch
trees in “Birches”, he ends his 59-line poem with “One could do worse than be a swinger of
A contradiction or incongruity between appearance or expectations. There are three primary kinds
of irony: verbal irony, in which the writer or narrator says one thing but means something else,
generally the opposite of what is said; situational irony, in which reader or character expects one
thing to happen, and some other, unexpected thing happens; and dramatic irony, in which the reader
or audience understands a character’s mistakes or misunderstandings but the character him or
herself does not.
birches.” Cf. litote.
Mood
The general feeling generated in the reader or audience at a particular point in a literary or dramatic
work. Cf. tone.
Motif
Recurring theme, idea, or image in a literary work. Motifs are the “unifying threads” woven
throughout the work, deepening our understanding of particular characters or themes or helping to
create an overall mood. E.g., in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is constantly coming
into conflict with the “civilized” world; this conflict becomes a motif throughout the novel. In
Hamlet, characters often make reference to make-up and prostitution, creating motifs that illustrate
Hamlet’s conflicting feelings about women, his frustration with false appearances, and his
obsession with mortality.
Oxymoron
From the Greek meaning “pointedly foolish,” pairs of words that are apparently contradictory and
often paradoxical, e.g., Romeo’s attempt to convey the anguish of love as “sick health,” “bright
smoke,” “feather of lead,” “cold fire,” and so on in his opening dialogue with Benvolio in Act 1,
Scene 1. Cf. paradox.
Paradox
Statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but which expresses a possible (generally
profound) truth, e.g., Frost’s “Men work together whether they work together or apart” in “The Tuft
of Flowers”. Cf. oxymoron.
Personification
Kind of metaphor in which abstractions, ideas, and inanimate objects are endowed with human
form, traits, or sensibilities, e.g. “The sea trembled,” “The trees flailed their limbs in agitation,” or
“My English homework glared at me from my desktop”
Polysyndeton
(“many connectors”) Repetition of conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might
be omitted, e.g. “He ran and jumped and laughed for joy”. Cf. asyndeton.
Pun
A play on words that capitalizes upon a similarity in spelling and/or pronunciation between words
that have different meanings. Alternately, a pun may employ one word that has multiple meanings.
The works of Frost and Joyce abound with puns.
Simile
Comparison of two unalike things in which a word of comparison (like or as) is used, e.g. Frost’s
reference to his rock-carrying neighbor in “Mending Wall” as being “like an old-stone savage
armed.”
Symbol
Something that, although interesting in its own right, stands for or suggests something larger and
more complex—often an idea or a range of interrelated ideas, attitudes, and practices. Within a
given culture, some images are understood to be symbols, e.g. the dove as a symbol for peace in
Western culture. Authors, of course, develop unique symbols within a work, such as Morrison’s
depiction in Beloved of scars on Sethe’s back—which are likened by characters to a “chokecherry
tree”—to symbolize the oppression of slavery.
Synecdoche
Often regarded as a special type of metonymy, synecdoche is a substitution of a part of something
for the whole, or (sometimes) the whole for the part, such as Homer’s use of “1,000 sails” to
represent the 1,000 ships sent to retrieve Helen, the wife of King Menalaus, from Troy. Jorge Luis
Borges uses synecdoche when a character states, “…I had to flee from Captain Madden. His hands
and his voice could call at my door at any moment.” Here, body parts of Captain Madden represent
the man himself, emphasizing the narrator’s constant listening for the knock declaring Madden’s
dreaded arrival and accusations.
Tone
The attitude conveyed by the author or narrator toward the reader, audience, or subject matter. Cf.
mood. Note that when Robert Frost uses the term tone, he refers to tone of voice, such as the rising
and falling of emotions barely discernable through a closed door.
Transferred
Epithet
Use of an adjective (or other modifier) that does not “logically” modify the noun to which it refers
but which nonetheless illuminates that term, creating a new phrase with expanded (and perhaps
metaphoric) meaning, e.g., Macbeth’s lament that “All our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way
to dusty death.” Death is not literally dusty, but the transferred epithet “dusty” conveys
connotations of disuse, decay, and inactivity as well as echoing the associations of dust in “Ashes to
ashes; dust to dust,” transferring these associations to death.
Trope
Any literary or rhetorical device, such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that uses
words in other than their literal sense
A Few Sound Techniques
Ideas (what it’s about) + Techniques (how it’s written) = Effect
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr1 gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax2 strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow . . .
from An Essay on Criticism (lines 362-371)
Alexander Pope, 1711
Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds in a sequence of nearby words, especially at the beginning of words
or of stressed syllables within words, e.g., “go gladly together, or Pope’s “The sound must seem an echo to
the sense.”
Assonance: Closely recurring vowel sounds in stressed syllables, as in Sir Thomas Gray’s “The lowing herd winds
slowly o’er the lea.”
Consonance: The correspondence of consonant sounds, especially at the end of a word. A kind of near-rhyme,
consonance is illustrated in phrases such as “discuss and then dismiss” and “pick and pack.”
Dissonance: A harsh or inharmonious sound. On occasion, a writer may deliberately employ a combination of
harsh-sounding words in order to create a desired effect, as in Pope’s “When Ajax strives some rock’s vast
weight to throw.”
Elision: Omitting the pronunciation of part of a word, usually to make this word conform to a metrical pattern.
Intentional elision is indicated by replacing the omitted letter or syllable with an apostrophe, e.g., o’er,
‘twas, etc. Some words, such as vegetable and business, are customarily elided in speech.
End-stopped line: A line of poetry in which a grammatical pause (such as the end of a phrase or clause) occurs at
the end of the line of verse, as opposed to enjambment.
Enjambment: A French term meaning to “stride over,” it is the running on of thought from one line, couplet (pair
of lines), or stanza to the next without a grammatical pause, as in these lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost:
But see! the angry victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven . . .
Caesura: A complete pause in a line of poetry. Initial caesura occurs toward the beginning of the line; medial
caesura occurs toward the middle of the line; terminal caesura occurs toward the end of the line.
Meter: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. These metrical units are most
commonly used in English poetry:
iamb ( ˘
′
)
trochee ( ′
˘)
anapest ( ˘
˘′)
dactyl (
′˘˘)
Each metrical unit is called a “foot,” and the number of “feet” is designated by a name: a verse of 3 feet is
called trimeter; one of 4 feet is called tetrameter; one of 5 feet is called pentameter, and so on.
Onomatopoeia: A word, or combination of words, whose sound resembles the sound it denotes, such as bowwow,
bang, buzz, cackle, moo, cuckoo, rattle, ululation, plop, hiss, whiz, etc.
Rhyme: Words having the same or similar sounds, especially their ending sounds. End rhymes, by far the most
frequent type, occur at the end of lines of verse. Internal rhymes occur within a verse-line, such as
Swindburne’s “Sister, my sister, O fleet, sweet swallow” and Coleridge’s “In mist or cloud, on mast or
shroud.”
1
2
Zephyr: the West Wind
Ajax: one of the Greek heroes of The Iliad known for his giant-like stature and strength.
LINGUISTICS CONSONANT CHART
KNOW BOLD
TERMS
Place of Articulation
Bilabial
(two lips)
Plosive
(made by a little
explosion)
p
Interdental
(lip and teeth)
(tip of tongue
between teeth)
b
Fricative
f
(from Latin rubbed
against)
Manner of Articulation
Labiodental
v
θ
(bath)
ð
(bathe)
Alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
(tip of tongue
near alveolar
ridge)
(tip of tongue
near hard palate)
(back of tongue
near soft palate)
(at the glottis)
t
d
s
z
ž
h
ĵ
(church) (judge)
m
ŋ
n
Lateral
Liquid3
l
Retroflex4
Liquid
r
Glide5
š
g
(shut) (pleasure)
č
Affricate
Nasal
k
(song)
y
w
(yes)
State of the glottis on above chart: voiceless on left; voiced on right
Sagittal section of the vocal tract
3
Lateral liquid: a lateral is a sound that can be made by blowing air laterally—on either or both sides of the tongue. A liquid is a frictionless
voiced sound made with only partial obstruction of the breath, producing a sound that can be prolonged, e.g. the l in llllllllllllove. Compare to
the short, explosive plosives b, p, t, d, k, and g.
4
Retroflex: a sound made with the tip of the tongue curled upward and back (retro, from the Latin meaning bent back.) against or near the
juncture of the hard and soft palates, making the tongue flex, e.g. the r in grrrrrrrrr.
5
Glide: a transitional sound made while one is linking two sounds next to each other, gliding from one sound to the next as the y- sound
between the i and e in quiet and the w- sound between the o and ur in Howard.