Writer's Methods & Techniques for the Unseen Poetry Question

Literary Techniques Definitions & Examples

Language & Imagery

Allegory

Alliteration

Allegory is a rhetorical device that creates a close, one-to-one comparison. An allegorical comparison of 21st-century Britain to a hive might point out that Britain and the hive have queens, workers and soldiers.

The repeating of the initial letter for aesthetic effect: "the bright, broad, blade."

Anaphora

Repetition of a word at the beginning of successive clauses.

Anataclasis

The repetition of a phrase/word but with different meanings: "put out the light, put out the light."

Aphesis

Apocope

Omission of sound/letter at the start of a word: "twas".

Omission of the final sound of the world: "cuppa".

Apostrophe

The figure of speech is sometimes represented by an exclamation. Reference to an inanimate object, sometimes God or some ethereal creature.

Assonance

The repeating of vowel sounds for aesthetic effect: "low, close, clouds."

Balanced Sentence

The sentence is made up of two equal segments, not only in length, but also in grammatical structure and meaning: "Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."

Burlesque

Satire that uses caricature.

Cacophony

A mixture of harsh and inharmonious sounds: "I detest war because cause of war is always trivial."

Catharsis

An emotional release engendered by an intense experience.

Chiasmus

The phrase repeated in reverse order urged the audience to evaluate the relationship between these two repeated phrases: "we cannot all be masters nor all masters cannot be truly followed."

Chorus

In songs a few lines that are repeated at the end of each stanza.

Colloquial

Colloquial language is the informal language of conversation.

Connotation

A word that conjures up other meanings or sparks thoughts of something else.

Declarative Sentence

Deixis

The short, punchy sentence used for emphasis.

Words that are context-bound where meaning depends on who is using them, and where and when they are being used.

Diatribe

Enjambment

An impassioned rant or angry speech of denunciation.

The flowing of a line of poetry so there is no pause at the end of the line:

Sir Thomas Wyatt: They flee from me:

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take my bread at my hand; and now they range,

Here lines 1 and 4 pause at the end of the line; lines 2 and 3 do not; they flow on.

Epistrophe

Fricative

Repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses/sentences.

The alliteration of 'f' sounds.

Hyperbole

Metaphor

The use of exaggeration for effect: 'The most daring, prodigious, death-defying feat attempted by man or woman in all human history!'

Oxymoron

Language device where two opposite words or meanings are used side by side e.g. 'sour sweet'.

A comparison that creates a direct correspondence 'society is a hive' unlike a simile.

Pathetic Fallacy

The use of setting, scenery or weather to mirror the mood of a human activity. Two people arguing whilst a storm breaks out is an example. The technique is used to make sure the feelings of readers or audience are moved.

Plosive

Refrain

The alliteration of 'p', 'b' and 'd' sounds.

Repetend

The repeating of a single line in a poem, often the last line of a stanza.

A recurring word of phrase, not necessarily as formally arranged as a refrain.

Semantic Field

The area of language from which a text draws most of its tropes.

Sibilance

The aesthetic use of the hissing 's' sound; "So many slights, so many sighs, so many sneers."

Stanza

The divisions of a poem.

Symbolism

The process of creating or detecting symbols within a work. Sometimes critics will talk of a text symbolising a larger concept or idea, irrespective of the author's intention.

Verse

The word is sometimes used to refer to poetry in general as in 'written in verse, not prose' but can be used to mean the same as stanza.

Satire

A destructive reduction of an idea, image, concept or text. It can employ exaggeration, mimicry, irony or tone

Simile

A comparison introduced with 'like' or 'as': 'society is like a hive'.

Symbol

A symbol is more independent than a metaphor and less specific than an allegory. Where both metaphors and allegories have precise meanings or are ways of explaining a complex concept, symbols are often elusive in their exact meaning.

Tricolon

A rhetorical device where three parallel phrases, clauses, or words are used in succession to create a powerful and memorable effect.

Poetic Structure & Form

Form

The type of literary expression chosen by an author.

Ballad

A word that has changed in meaning. Now it signifies an emotive song that usually involves large production and projection. In the literary world, to folklorists, a 'ballad' is a song that tells a story, whereas to poets the ballad verse form is a simple AB, AB, rhyme structure with simple rhythms. It was associated with oral culture and carried little cultural prestige.

Classical, or Neo-classical

Movements that believe all writing or art should imitate precedents and genres created by the writers or artists of the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome. In Britain, the late 17th to early 18th century, from Dryden to Johnson and Pope, was dominated by this belief.

Effusion

A word meaning a spontaneous expression. It was a concept valued by the Romantic poets.

Elegy

A poem lamenting a dead person or persons. The term elegiac meaning 'mournful' or 'conveying loss' derives from this genre.

Epic

A long poem concerned with large events of conflict. An epic is frequently seen as displaying and testing the values of the civilisation that produced it. Consequently, it has high cultural prestige. Virgil's Aeneid (19 BC) consciously tries to define what is distinctive and significant about Rome and its civilisation. Milton's Paradise Lost (1674) is the most famous English example, though this moves beyond England to discuss the relationship between god and man.

Epithalamium

A poem celebrating a wedding.

Mock-epic

A poem employs the devices of an epic to create a parody of the epic's grandeur.

Ode

A lyric address, originally sung to music.

Pastoral

An idealised depiction of rural life, sometimes set in 'Arcadia'; an Eden-like land. A concept strongly active in the visual arts as well.

Romantic

An almost impossible-to-define word, applied to movements from the late 18th century onwards that valued feelings above thought and originality above derivation.

Sonnet

Generally refers to a 14-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme. Petrarchan sonnets (post-1374) usually have the rhyme scheme a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, and either c-d-e-c-d-e, c-d-c-c-d-c, or c-d-c-d-c-d. Shakespearean sonnets (post-1600) end with a couplet: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

As it was introduced into Britain through court circles in the early 16th century, the 14-line form had high cultural prestige. As the word derives from the same root that gives the word 'song' (Latin songs), it was sometimes applied to lyric poems in the 16th century that are more than 14 lines long.

Lyric

Most narrowly 'lyric' refers to words designed to be sung; more generally a 'lyric poem' can be one in which the song-like characteristics of poetry predominate.