Poetic Devices and Narrative Techniques in Literature
Poetic Licenses
Poetic licenses refer to the freedom that poets have to deviate from conventional rules of language to create specific effects. Here are some examples:
- Archaism: The use of an old or obsolete term. It is the survival of the language of the past into the language of the present or terms that do not belong to the age.
- Aphesis: The omission of an initial part of a word or phrase.
- Syncope: The omission of one or more sounds, letters, or syllables from the middle of a word.
- Apocope: The omission of the last letter or syllable at the end of a word.
- Hyperbaton: A figure of speech in which words are transposed from their usual order.
- Oxymoron: A figure of speech that combines incongruous and apparently contradictory words and meanings for a special effect.
Formal Repetitions and Poetic Deviations
Rhetorical Devices in Poetry
Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word or words of a line of verse, clause, or sentence at the beginning of the next.
Anaphora: A rhetorical device involving the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences.
Anastrophe (Hyperbaton): The inversion of the normal order of words for a particular effect. It is a figure of speech in which the normal syntactic word order (subject + verb + object) is changed.
Antimetabole (Antistrophe): A figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated, but with the order of words reversed. It means “turning about in the opposite direction,” and sums up the effect of words being repeated in reverse order.
Asyndeton: A rhetorical device where conjunctions, articles, and even pronouns are omitted for the sake of speed and economy.
Atanaclasis: The repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.
Epanadiplosis: A figure of speech by which the same word is used both at the beginning and at the end of the same line, phrase, clause, or sentence.
Epanalepsis: A figure of speech that contains the repetition of a word or words in successive lines or sentences, but in no particular position as long as there are words between the repetitions.
Epistrophe (Epiphora): The repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences. The opposite of Anaphora.
Epizeuxis: A figure of speech in which the same word or phrase is repeated emphatically to produce a special effect. We find these immediate repetitions in the same line without any intervening words.
Homeoteleuton: A series of words with the same or similar endings in a line, stanza, or poem.
Pleonasm: A redundant use of words to emphasize. It merely repeats the meaning contained in words that precede or follow it.
Ploce: An intermittent repetition of the same word or phrase in the same line with intervening words.
Polysyndeton: The repetition of a number of conjunctions in close succession, very common in poetry and prose.
Symploce: (Anaphora + Epistrophe) When a word or phrase is used successively at the beginning of a group of lines and another word or phrase is used successively at the end of the same group of lines.
Notes for Prose
Story and Discourse
In narrative analysis, it’s crucial to consider both the what (what is told) and the how (how it is told).
Story
The story consists of events (things that happen) and existents, the characters that make things happen or have things happen to them, and the setting, meaning the place where things happen.
Discourse
Discourse is the category that comprises various elements of transmission.
Story and Plot
Apart from the distinction between the two levels of story and discourse, which is part of structuralist terminology, there is an older tradition that differentiates between story and plot. A narrative can have one or more plot lines. Single-plot novels are comparatively rare; most novels develop multiple plots. These multiple plot lines are not necessarily all of the same importance; there can be a main plot line and one or more subplot lines. Some narratives are very tightly plotted; everything happens for a reason or a purpose, and one event is the consequence of another. When each plot line is brought to a satisfactory ending, one also talks of a closed structure. A tight plot generally contributes to an increase in suspense.
Techniques of Characterization
How is the character described? By whom is the character described? How is the characterization distributed throughout the text? How reliable is the source of information? What do we learn about a character’s inner life? In which arrangements of contrasts and correspondences is the character depicted?
Explicit and Implicit Characterization
The most obvious technique of characterization is when someone (in the following excerpt: the narrator) tells us explicitly what a character is like. A character is sometimes also characterized explicitly through a telling name, as for instance, Squire Allworthy, who is a worthy gentleman in all respects, in Fielding’s Tom Jones. But we also deduce character traits that are given implicitly through the character’s actions, other characters’ attitudes to him or her, etc.
Characterization by Narrator or Character
Characters can be described, implicitly as well as explicitly, either by the narrator or by another character in the narrative (also called figural characterization) or even by the characters themselves (self-characterization).
Reliability
One needs to take the reliability of the source of the characterization into consideration when assessing the information one receives about a character.
Inner Life of a Character
Depending on what sort of information is given about a character, readers will feel to a larger or smaller degree acquainted with a character. To a large extent, this depends on the penetration of inner life; the more complex the character will appear and the more ready the reader is to empathize with the character.
Character Complexity and Development
Minor characters, not surprisingly, often remain monodimensional and/or static. Major characters are more frequently multidimensional and dynamic, though not as a rule.
Narrative Voices
A distinction is made between a narrator who is also a character in the story (a homodiegetic narrator) and a narrator who is not a character in the story but in a way hovers above it and knows everything about it (a heterodiegetic narrator). If the homodiegetic narrator is also the protagonist of the narrative, it is an autodiegetic narrator.
Focalization
An external focalizer is a focalizer who is external to the story and who is thus often called narrator-focalizer because the focus of perception seems to be that of the narrator. An internal focalizer is a, usually limited, focus of perception of a character in the story, and thus also called character-focalizer.