Scribd
Upload
9 views20 pages

Literary Devices

The document explores various literary devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, and imagery, providing definitions and examples for each. It also discusses different poetry genres including lyric, ballad, sonnet, ode, elegy, and eulogy, highlighting their characteristics and functions. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of understanding and analyzing texts through their literary elements and the transformative power of literature.

Uploaded by

sheila
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
9 views20 pages

Literary Devices

The document explores various literary devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, and imagery, providing definitions and examples for each. It also discusses different poetry genres including lyric, ballad, sonnet, ode, elegy, and eulogy, highlighting their characteristics and functions. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of understanding and analyzing texts through their literary elements and the transformative power of literature.

Uploaded by

sheila
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

Who seeks

shall find.
Sophocles
Exploring the
…….. world of literary
devices
Simile: a comparison with ‘as’ or
‘like’
Example:

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud


BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
Metaphor : Direct comparison

Examples:
The light of my life
All the worlds a stage… men and
women merely players
Personification: The attribution of a personal
nature or human characteristics to something
nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract
quality in...
A figure intended to represent an abstract
quality.

Examples:
The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.
The run down house appeared depressed.
The first rays of morning tiptoed through the
meadow.
Transferred Epithet: A figure of speech in
which an epithet (or adjective) grammatically
qualifies a noun other than the person or
thing it is actually describing. Also known as
hypallage.

Examples:
"cheerful money," "sleepless night," and
"suicidal sky."
Imagery :creating words pictures that
can be categorised by the five senses
Examples:
Visual Imagery
The shadows crisscrossed the rug while my cat
stretched languidly in one of the patches of sun.
Auditory
"....Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box"
Imagery cont….
Kinesthetic
"The clay oozed between Jeremy's fingers as he let out a
squeal of pure glee."
Olfactory
"Gio's socks, still soaked with sweat from Tuesday's P.E.
class, filled the classroom with an aroma akin to that of
salty, week-old, rotting fish"
Tactile
'The bed linens might just as well be ice and the clothes
snow.' From Robert Frost's "The Witch of Coos"
Alliteration :is the repetition of first
letters that are consonants. The words
don't all have to be next to each other.

Example:
Carrie's cat clawed her couch, creating
chaos.
The sea shore was swished with soft
silky waves or froth
Other types:
Eulogy
Genres: Elegy
narrative
Mock Heroic
Lyric Post modern
Ballad Impressionistic
Sonnet Metaphysical
Ode Pastoral
epic Lament
Satire
Lampoon/parody
Lyric:a short poem of songlike quality,
High in emotional content, and
normally about beauty and love

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and
more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And
summer's lease hath all too short a date.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt


More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
Ballad :A narrative poem, often of folk origin
and intended to be sung, consisting of simple
stanzas and usually having a refrain.
2. A popular song especially of a romantic or
sentimental nature.
Example of ballad:
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his


chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the
thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Narrative poetry : a form of poetry which tells a
story, often making use of the voices of a narrator
and characters as well; the entire story is usually
written in metred verse.
I remember the night my The peasants came like
mother swarms of flies
was stung by a scorpion. Ten and buzzed the name of
hours God a hundred times
of steady rain had driven him to paralyse the Evil One.
to crawl beneath a sack of
rice. With candles and with
lanterns
Parting with his poison - flash throwing giant scorpion
of diabolic tail in the dark shadows
room - on the mud-baked walls
he risked the rain again.
Sonnet : a fourteen line poem that raises
an issue and finally resolves it
That Hometown House
But soon a turn of life- new trend
It was in that house a home born and lived arrived
Old and young and kids all happily lived Taste for life abroad- the youths
But the old for some years only survived wished and vied
They passed away one by one, home deprived One by one all fled away as conceived
But with the rest of the folks home well thrived Soon the home became empty, nil,
Next line of youths grown strong and old deceived
revived House was left locked homeless
All was well and they all happily lived bereaved and grieved
Lovingly the two generations lived It was in that house a home born and
lived
Ode : a poem dedicated to a particular subject

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from


whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from
an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark
wintry bed -

Elegy : funeral song of praise


He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the
airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The
mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we
have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his
illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant
river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
Eulogy : laudatory speech or a tribute
"Sorrow comes in great waves...but it rolls over
us, and though it may almost smother us.it
passes and we remain." - Henry James
My Grandpa was a humble man; he never liked
to be the center of attention. In life and now in
death, he wouldn't want us to focus on him. He
wouldn't want us to focus on the sadness of his
death, but instead focus on the happiness in
our lives. He would want us to appreciate each
other and our future.
Impression : The impressionist style of fiction writing
often centers on the mental life of the characters by
observing their impressions or sensations instead of
interpreting their experiences. Impressionistic poetry
often implies a response to an event or subject rather
than describing the actual feelings that are evoked.

“I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my


own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then
suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my
eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, – the
bush was swarming with human limbs in movement,
glistening, of bronze colour. The twigs shook, swayed,
and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the
shutter came to.”
Heroic couplet : traditional form for English poetry,
commonly used in epic and narrative poetry; it refers to
poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of
lines in iambic pentameter.

Example :
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not
dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Mock heroic : imitating the style of heroic
poetry in order to satirize an unheroic subject,
as in Pope's The Rape of the Lock

Sol thro' white Curtains shot a tim'rous Ray,


And op'd those Eyes that must eclipse the
Day;
Now Lapdogs give themselves the rowzing
Shake,
And sleepless Lovers, just at Twelve, awake:
Points to remember :

• A text need not be purely of one genre


• Even if it belongs clearly to a particular
kind ,there might be words and phrases
that create a particular form of imagery
that can be discussed.
• Explore words and ideas , compare texts
What is wonderful about great literature is
that it transforms the man who reads it
towards the condition of the man who
wrote.
E. M. Forster

You might also like