Literary Devices: Definitions and Examples
Allegory
Allegory is a prolonged correspondence of symbols or metaphors. It translates a real plane, A, to an imaginary plane, B, through an unbroken series of metaphors.
Simile or Comparison
A simile or comparison is a rhetorical figure of linking between two words to express explicitly the similarity or analogy presented by realities designated by them. That relationship is established, usually by means of particles or comparative links: as, well, as such, like, so, like, like, etc.
Personification
Personification is the solemnity of attributing human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects, as in fables, fairy tales, and allegories. In mystery plays, there are examples of personification allegory: guilt, wisdom, grace, and so on. The term also applies to the fact that it represents a quality, virtue, or vice, and using certain features of a personality that becomes a prototype. For example, Don Juan is the epitome of a seducer. Prosopopoeias are types of animation attributing qualities to inanimate objects. Animalization is attributing human characteristics to irrational beings, and objectification is attributing to the living qualities of the inanimate world.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a rhetorical figure offering a vision of reality out of proportion, amplifying or diminishing it. It is an exaggeration. The poet wants to give their words greater intensity or emotion. Hyperbole is expressed in the emphatic use of terms and exaggerated expressions. This procedure is often used in colloquial speech and propaganda. The latter produces a disproportionate, encomiastic communication in order to induce the listener’s adherence to its message that all is revealed to be exceptional, extraordinary, colossal, fantastic, and so on. For example, “Please come back soon to my side, I am bleeding to death.”
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is changing the order in a sentence. It is a procedure that affects the expressive level of syntax, and that is to reverse the grammatical order of words in the sentence and the logical thread of ideas to give more beauty to the expression (instead of writing the subject-predicate, the poet prefers to use predicate-subject). For example, “Formidable land yawn” (yawn by land formidable), verb-final, as in Latin, imitating their complaints, etc. Both in prose and, above all, in verse. With hyperbaton, the logical order in the communication of ideas also changes.
Metaphor
A metaphor is an identification of one object with another by virtue of a similarity between them, i.e., a comparison. From Greco-Roman rhetoric (Aristotle, Quintilian), metaphor has been considered an implicit comparison, founded on the principle of analogy between two realities, different in some respects and similar in others. In every comparison, there is a real word, which serves as a starting point, and a term that evoked the image is generally designated. Contemporary rhetoric, explaining the linguistic mechanisms that underlie metaphorical construction, focuses rather than on the comparative aspect, on the prior fact of resemblance. In this sense, the metaphor is not originally a literary figure, but a strictly linguistic phenomenon that affects the way of knowledge and description of things like relationships.
Antithesis or Contrast
Antithesis or contrast contrasts two ideas or thoughts; it is an association of concepts in contrast (love-hate, black and white, etc.). The contrast can be opposed to words (antonyms), phrases of opposite meaning, and so on.
Reiteration or Anaphora
Reiteration or anaphora is a repetition of words at the beginning of a verse or the beginning of sentences to emphasize an idea.
Irony
Irony is an expression opposed to what is thought so that by the context, the receiver can recognize the true intention of the issuer.
Alliteration
Alliteration is a repetition of two or more same or similar sounds in several consecutive words of one verse, stanza, or phrase. For example, “A ripping red rock ravine…”
Emphasis
Emphasis is a term of Greek origin (empha-sis of emphaino: to show) that is designated with a figure of speech that occurs when the issuer states, in an allusive and suggestive way, a message that is understood as more than what is said and whose full meaning depends on context and intensity and intonation that is usually emphasized that message.
Synesthesia
Synesthesia is a procedure consisting of a transposition of sensations, i.e., it is the description of a sensory experience in terms of another.
Sonnet
A sonnet is a poem formed by fourteen lines, divided into four stanzas: two quatrains and two tercets. Its rhyme is constant; in the quatrains, it can be of two kinds: embracing (ABBA – ABBA), or alternating or crossover (ABAB – ABAB). In the tercets, it may have two or three rhymes, variably distributed, although the most frequent types were CDC – DCD and CDE – CDE.
Epithet
An epithet is the adjective placed before the noun that expresses a necessary or inherent quality of a person or thing for cosmetic purposes.
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is imitating real sounds through the rhythm of the words. It is a variety of alliteration that mimics the sounds of nature.
Paradox
A paradox is a union of two opposites. It is an antithesis to overcome because it brings together contradictory ideas in one mind. Behind the apparent contrast, there is a deeper meaning.
Periphrasis (or Circumlocution)
Periphrasis, or circumlocution, is saying with a roundup of words that might be said with less or even with one.
Allusion
An allusion is referring to a known person or thing without naming it.
Euphemism
A euphemism is a periphrasis used to avoid a painful or fearful expression, rude or objectionable. It is a friendly form of expression to hide or conceal something unpleasant or taboo.
Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a type of metonymy based on a quantitative relationship: the all for the part, the part for the whole, the subject matter.
Apostrophe
An apostrophe is a direct, passionate call on living things or inanimate or personified things, sounding an exclamation, outside the structure of the sentence.
Diafora
Diafora is repeating the same or similar terms in form with a different meaning at the end of two or more syntactic units or verses.
Portrait
A portrait is a physical and moral description of a person.
Ethopoeia
Ethopoeia is a list of moral or spiritual qualities.
Prosopography
Prosopography is an enumeration of the qualities or physical characteristics.
Topography
Topography is a description of a place or landscape.
Symbol
A symbol is an object or attribute designated as real, but at the same time alluding to another reality different. As in the pure metaphor, an imaginary term, B, replaces the real one, A, and refers to a reality of a spiritual nature, comprehensive and complete.