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- Allegory. An allegory is a story, poem, or other written work that can be interpreted to have a secondary meaning. Aesop’s Fables are examples of allegories, as they are ostensibly about one thing (such as “The Ant and the Grasshopper”) but actually have a secondary meaning.
- Alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of a sound or letter at the beginning of multiple words in a series. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…”
- Allusion. An allusion is an indirect reference to something. “The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit them hardest.” - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Apostrophe. An apostrophe is a poetic device where the writer addresses a person or thing that isn’t present with an exclamation. “O stranger of the future!
Jul 9, 2024 · Poetic devices are literary devices used specifically in poetry. They can add meaning, and enhance mood. learn how to use poetic devices.
- Allegory. An allegory is a story that is used to represent a more general message about real-life (historical) issues and/or events. It is typically an entire book, novel, play, etc.
- Alliteration. Alliteration is a series of words or phrases that all (or almost all) start with the same sound. These sounds are typically consonants to give more stress to that syllable.
- Allusion. Allusion is when an author makes an indirect reference to a figure, place, event, or idea originating from outside the text. Many allusions make reference to previous works of literature or art.
- Anachronism. An anachronism occurs when there is an (intentional) error in the chronology or timeline of a text. This could be a character who appears in a different time period than when he actually lived, or a technology that appears before it was invented.
- Alliteration
- Allusion
- Anaphora
- Assonance
- Blank Verse
- Chiasmus
- Consonance
- Enjambment
- Epistrophe
- Imagery
Hearkening back to the days when poetry was mostly sung or read out loud, this literary device uses repeating opening sounds at the start of a series of successive words, giving them a lovely musical quality. The “Wicked Witch of the West” is an example of alliteration. So are “political power play” and “false friends.” “Cold cider” is notan exampl...
Allusion is where the poet makes an indirect reference to something outside of the poem, whether that’s a real person, a well-known mythological cycle, or a struggle that’s happening in the world we know. Sometimes this is simply to draw a parallel that the reader will easily understand, but often allusions are used to hint at something that it wou...
Anaphora is the act of beginning a series of successive sentences or clauses (sentence fragments) with the same phrase. It’s an older literary device that many writers instinctively still use today, knowing that it lends a unique emphasis and rhythm even if they don’t know the specific term for it. You may have even used it yourself without realizi...
Also called “vowel rhyme,” assonance is a poetic device that repeats vowel sounds in a word or phrase to create rhythm (we’ll talk about rhythm a little more later on). “Go slow down that lonely road” is an example of well-balanced assonance: we hear similar sounds in the “oh,” “go,” and “slow,” and then later in “lonely” and “road” (there’s also a...
Blank verse is poetry that’s written in a regular meter, but with unrhymed line. It falls somewhere between formal and free verse poetry. While blank verse never has a formal rhyme scheme, it does have a formal meter (you’ll read more about meter a bit further on). Most blank verse is written in iambic pentameter, which was popularized by Shakespea...
A chiasmus (a word that brings to mind the word “chimera”, coincidentally enough) is a stylized literary device that plays with the reversal of words or ideas. Sometimes the words might be used together in a different way—“Never let a Fool Kiss You, or a Kiss Fool You”—or sometimes it may be the concepts of the idea that are presented in reflection...
Compared to assonance, consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in a word or phrase. Repeated consonants can occur at the beginning, middle, or ending of a word. You may recognize this from classic children’s tongue twisters like “Betty Botter bought some butter but she said the butter’s bitter”… the repeated B’s and T’s add a jig-and-reel ...
Enjambment, from a Middle French word meaning “to step over,” is a poetic device in which a thought or an idea in a poem carries over from one line to another without pause. For example, T. S, Eliot’s The Waste Landsays, “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire.” Instead of ending his lines on...
Unlike to anaphora, epistrophe is a literary device in which successive sentences or sentence fragments end with the same phrase. Our ears naturally attune to the landing point of any given word grouping, and so writers and speakers can use this tool to draw particular attention to a word or idea. One famous example is Abraham Lincoln’s speech, “A ...
Imagery one of the most important poetic devices—it’s how you make the big ideas in your poem, as well as the poem’s meaning, come alive for the reader. Poets will make the most of their limited space by using strong visual, auditory, olfactory, and even tactile sensations to give the reader a sense of time and place. It’s popular in both poetry an...
Jun 7, 2019 · Like other forms of literature, poetry is written to share ideas, express emotions, and create imagery. Poets choose words for their meaning and acoustics, arranging them to create a tempo known as the meter.
Literary devices and terms are the techniques and elements—from figures of speech to narrative devices to poetic meters—that writers use to create narrative literature, poetry, speeches, or any other form of writing.
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This is a list of terms for describing texts, with an emphasis on terms that apply specifically to poetry, that appear most frequently in literary criticism, or for which dictionary definitions tend to be unenlightening.
