Literary Terms BY LAUREN NOLAN Imagery Imagery is

Literary Terms BY LAUREN NOLAN

Imagery � Imagery is an author’s use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to their work. � Example: A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way- “Daffodils” William Wordsworth � Example in Hamlet O, that this too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Act I scene ii

Simile � A simile is a comparison of two things using words such as “like” or “as”. � Example: “She floats down the aisle like a pageant queen” “Speak Now”- Taylor Swift � Example in Hamlet: "Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres” Act II scene ii

Metaphor � A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance. � Example: “Love is a Temple” “One” by U 2 � Example in Hamlet: "This is th' impostume of much wealth and peace, that inward breaks and shows no cause without why the man dies. ” Act IV scene iv

Personification � Personification is the attribution of human nature or character to inanimate objects. � Example: “Pocketful of sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield- “Pocketful of Sunshine” � Example in Hamlet: So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt. Act IV scene iii

Apostrophe � Apostrophe is the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically. � Example: Tom Hanks referring to the volleyball, an inanimate object, in the movie Castaway. � Example in Hamlet: “Let me not think on’t; frailty, thy name is women” Act I scene ii

Symbol � A symbol is an action, object, or event that expresses or represents a particular idea or quality. � Example: The green light in The Great Gatsby symbolizes new life. � Example in Hamlet: Yorick’s skull in Act V scene i. The skull is a symbol of death, an important motif throughout the play.

Allegory � Allegory is a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation. � Example: The Truman Show is an example of allegory. Truman makes the decision to get out of the town and not be tied to their private system of merchant law. � Example in Hamlet: The ghost in Act I represents Hamlet’s father and forces Hamlet to think about death more in depth.

Paradox � A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true. � Example: “Everyone can be super. And when everyone’s super…no one will be” The Incredibles � Example in Hamlet: “You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife. ” Act III scene iv

Hyperbole � Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. � Example: "It seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind” "Candle In the Wind" Elton John � Example in Hamlet: “O that this too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve into a dew. ” Act I scene ii

Understatement � An understatement is the presentation of something as being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is. � Example: “Cannibalism is frowned upon in most societies. ” 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ � Example in Hamlet: “With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good” Act I scene ii

Irony � Irony is a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected. � Example: “It's like rain on your weddin' day It's a free ride when you've already paid. It's the good advice that you just didn't take, And who would've thought, it figures” ‘Ironic’ Alanis Morissette � Example in Hamlet: “I am too much in the sun. ” Act I scene ii

Chiasmus � Chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a lager point. � Example: “Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things. ” - Jacquelyn Small. � Example in Hamlet: “Whether love lead to fortune, or else fortune love. ” Act IV scene iii � “To be or not to be” Act III scene i

Metonymy � Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept. � Example: Referring to royalty as the “crown” is an example of metonymy. � Example in Hamlet: “I saw him enter such a house of sale. ” Act II scene ii

Synecdoche � Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something to the whole of something or vice-versa. � Example: “Our song is a slamming screen door, sneaking out late. ” ‘Our Song’ Taylor Swift � Example in Hamlet: "So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused. " (ear stands for Denmark), Act I, scene v,

Repartee � Repartee is a conversation or speech characterized by quick, witty comments or replies. � Example in Hamlet: “One. ” “No. ” “Judgment. ” “A hit, a very palpable hit. ” “Well again. ”

Stichomythia � Stichomythia is a dialogue in which two characters speak alternate lines of verse, used as a stylistic device in ancient Greek drama. � Example in Hamlet: “Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. ” “Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. ” Act III scene iv

Stock Characters � A stock character is someone based on common literary or social stereotypes. � Example: An example of a stock character is the school diva, this is Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl. � Example in Hamlet: Polonius is a stock character. He represents the older man with former wisdom, and unknowingly through his failures provides comic relief.

Alliteration � Alliteration is repetition of a particular sound in the stressed syllables of a series of words or phrases. � Example: Sally sells seashells by the seashore. � Example in Hamlet: "With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts” Act I scene v

Assonance � Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences � Example: "I feel the need, the need for speed. ” Top Gun � Example in Hamlet: “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come” Act I scene i

Consonance � Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession. � Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers � Example in Hamlet: “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. ” Act III scene iv

Rhyme � Rhyme is correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry. � Example: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall” � Example in Hamlet: “The play's the thing � Wherein I'll catch the conscious of the King. ” � Act II scene ii

Rhythm � Rhythm is a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. � Example: In songs, the rhythm is the beat. � Example in Hamlet: Hamlet is written in iambic pentameter, which gives it rhythm

Meter � Meter is an arranged and measured rhythm in verse: rhythm that continuously repeats a single basic pattern. � Example in Hamlet: O that this too solid flesh would melt, � Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! � Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d � His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God!” Act II scene ii

End-Stopped Line � End-stopped line is a feature in poetry in which the syntactic unit corresponds in length to the line. � Example: “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. ” Sonnet 18 � Example in Hamlet: “Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts” Act IV scene v

Run-On Line � Run-on line is when there is no punctuation at the end of the line. � Example in Hamlet: “Will nothing stick our person to arraign” Act IV scene v

Caesura � Caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in musical composition. � Example: To err is human; || to forgive, divine � ~ Alexander Pope � Example in Hamlet: 'To Be, or Not To Be. . . " Act III scene i

Free Verse � Free verse is an open form of poetry, it does not use consistent meter patterns or rhyme or any other musical pattern. � Example: Some kind of attraction that is neither � Animal, vegetable, nor mineral, a power not � Solar, fusion, or magnetic � And it is all in my head that � I could see into his � And find myself sitting there. ‘Feelings Now’ Katherine Foreman � Example in Hamlet: "Indeed this counselor / Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave” Act III, Scene 4

Iambic Pentameter � Iambic Pentameter is the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. � Example: “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” Romeo and Juliet. � Example in Hamlet: “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? ” Act II scene ii

Grammatical/Rhetorical Pauses � A grammatical pause is introduced by s mark of punctuation and rhetorical pauses are natural pauses. � Example in Hamlet: “To be or not to be: that is the question: whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer” Act III scene i

Concluding Couplet � Concluding couplet is a pair of end-rhymed lines of verse � Example in Hamlet: � “Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, � Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. ” � Act I. ii