<p> Literary Devices</p><p>Allegory: When characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities; also an extended metaphor. Alliteration: Repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words. Allusion: A reference to someone, something, or some event known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, music, art, or some other branch of culture. Anachronism: Out of time; placing something in a time where it doesn’t belong. Analogy: A comparison between two unlike things. Antihero: A protagonist who is particularly graceless, inept, stupid, or dishonest. Aphorism/Maxim: A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life. Apostrophe: Addressing an absent person or a personified abstraction. Archetype: A blocked off memory of our past or of pre-human experience; a type of struggle or character to which a character relates without prior knowledge. Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants, in the stressed syllables of adjacent words. Character: A person, animal, or natural force presented as a person in a literary work. Dynamic: undergoes change. Static: does not undergo change. Flat: Exhibits one personality trait. Round: Exhibits various, often contradictory, personality traits. Chorus: group of singers or one character distinct from the main performers. Can introduce setting and action. Conceit: A type of metaphor that is strikingly odd and thoughtful. Consonance: repetition of similar consonant sounds in neighboring words whose vowels are different. Controlling Image: An image or metaphor which runs throughout the work. Detail: Specifically described items placed in a work for effect and meaning. Deus Ex Machina: Literally, AGod in the Machine,” a Greek idea from when a god would be lowered or brought on stage to rescue the hero; now it applies to any time the hero is saved by a miraculous or Aout-of-the-blue,” unexpected event. Diction: A writer’s choice of words. Connotation: All of the emotions associated with a word. Denotation: The dictionary definition of a word. Epiphany: A sudden understanding or realization which prior to this was not thought of or understood. Epithet: adj./adj. phrase used to define a characteristic quality or attribute a o person or thing. Common in historical files (Catherine the Great). Homer used compound adj. repeatedly for the same thing/person (rosy-fingered dawn”) Euphemism: A device where being indirect replaces directness to avoid unpleasantness. Flashback: A scene in a literary work that interrupts the action to show an event that happened earlier. Foreshadowing: The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest coming action. Hamartia: Greek word for error or failure. Used to designate the false step that leads the protagonist in a tragedy to his/her downfall. Often referred to as the “tragic flaw.” Hubris: extreme pride/ arrogance of the protagonist in a tragedy in which he/she defies moral laws or the prohibition of the gods. Hyperbole (Overstatement): The use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect to reveal some truth. ex. His eloquence would split rocks. Must be used with restraint and for a calculated effect. Imagery: Words or phrases that appeal to one of the five senses. In Media Res: “In the midst of things,” starting a story in the middle of the action. Later, the first part will be revealed. A familiar example of this would be The Odyssey. Invocation to the Muse: appeal to the muse/deity for help composing a poem Irony: A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. Verbal: A writer or speaker says one thing and means something entirely different. Dramatic: A reader or audience perceives something that a character does not know. Situational: The outcome of a situation is contrary to what is expected, and is meaningful. Juxtaposition: To place side by side purposefully so as to permit comparison or contrast. Metaphor: An implied comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common: David is a lion. Metonymy: Substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant; ex. crown for royalty, White House for president; Rome for the Pope, brass for military officers; pen for writers. Motif: A simple device that serves as the basis for an expanded narrative; the motif is a recurring feature in the work. Natural Setting: All setting that is produced through nature including weather and light / darkness. Ode: elaborately formal lyric poem; serious and elevated in tone. Onomatopoeia: Use of words whose sound echoes the sense. Oxymoron: The yoking of two terms that are ordinarily contradictory, usually seen when the adjective contradicts the noun it modifies; ex. sweet pain, thunderous silence, BUT may also be a phrase: conspicuous by her absence, make haste slowly. Paradox: An apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth; ex. “Art is a form of lying in order to tell the truth.” -Pablo Picasso; “But the essence of that ugliness is the thing which will always make it beautiful.” -Gertrude Stein, “How Writing Is Written” Personification: Investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities or abilities. Puns: Generic name for those figures which make a play on words. Ex. Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest; Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat minor. Recognition: also called anagnorisis. Turning point in a drama at which the character recognizes the true state of affairs, having previously been wrong or ignorant. Reversal: also called peripeteia. Sudden reversal of a characters circumstances/ fortunes, usually involving the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy and usually comes with recognition. Rhapsode: singer of tales through memorization and improvisation. Simile: An explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common: uses like or as; ex. David is like a lion. David is as brave as a lion. Sonnet: A 14 lined lyric poem. Last two lines are a rhymed couplet. Symbol: Something concrete that represents an abstraction. Synecdoche: substitution of a part for the whole, or the whole is used for a part. Ex. Part used for whole: “head” to mean cattle, “wheels” to mean car, “suit” for businessman. Whole used for part: “the police” to mean a handful of officers Synesthesia: Figure of speech juxtaposing one sensory image with another image that appeals to an unrelated sense; ex. loud green shirt, bitter sweet success, golden touch, cool blue eyes. Understatement: Saying less than one means for effect; ex. calling the Battle of Gettysburg a “skirmish.”</p>