Literary Devices

66202911	Allegory	A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities.
66202912	Alliteration	repetition of the same sound beginning several words in sequence.
66202913	Anacoluthon	lack of grammatical sequence; a change in the grammatical construction within the same sentence. *Agreements entered into when one state of facts exists -- are they to be maintained regardless of changing conditions? J. Diefenbaker
66202914	Anadiplosis	("doubling back") the rhetorical repetition of one or several words; specifically, repetition of a word that ends one clause at the beginning of the next. *Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. Francis Bacon
66202915	Anaphora	the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.
66202916	Antistrophe	repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses
66202917	Antithesis	opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction
66202918	Apostrophe	a sudden turn from the general audience to address a specific group or person or personified abstraction absent or present.
66202919	Archaism	use of an older or obsolete form. *Pipit sate upright in her chair Some distance from where I was sitting; T. S. Eliot, "A Cooking Egg"
66202920	Assonance	repetition of the same sound in words close to each other.
66202921	Asyndeton	lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words.
66202922	Cacophony	harsh joining of sounds.
66202923	Chiasmus	two corresponding pairs arranged not in parallels (a-b-a-b) but in inverted order (a-b-b-a); from shape of the Greek letter chi (X).
66202924	Euphemism	substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant.
66202925	Hysteron Proteron	("later-earlier"): inversion of the natural sequence of events, often meant to stress the event which, though later in time, is considered the more important.
66202926	Irony	expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another
66202927	Litotes	understatement, for intensification, by denying the contrary of the thing being affirmed. (Sometimes used synonymously with meiosis.) *A few unannounced quizzes are not inconceivable.
66202928	Metaphor	implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words; the word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it. Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. Shakespeare, Macbeth . . . while he learned the language (that meager and fragile thread . . . by which the little surface corners and edges of men's secret and solitary lives may be joined for an instant now and then before sinking back into the darkness. . . ) Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
66202929	Metonymy	substitution of one word for another which it suggests
66202930	Oxymoron	apparent paradox achieved by the juxtaposition of words which seem to contradict one another.
66202931	Paradox	an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it. *What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. George Bernard Shaw
66202932	Paronomasia	use of similar sounding words; often etymological word-play. ...culled cash, or cold cash, and then it turned into a gold cache. E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate Thou art Peter (Greek petros), and upon this rock (Greek petra) I shall build my church. Matthew 16
66202933	Personification	attribution of personality to an impersonal thing.
66202934	Pleonasm	use of superfluous or redundant words, often enriching the thought. *No one, rich or poor, will be excepted.
66202935	Polysyndeton	the repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses. *I said, "Who killed him?" and he said, "I don't know who killed him but he's dead all right," and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Bay and she was all right only she was full of water. Hemingway, After the Storm
66202936	Syllepsis	use of a word with two others, with each of which it is understood differently. *We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately. Benjamin Franklin
66202937	Synecdoche	Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6 I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" *The U.S. won three gold medals. (Instead of, The members of the U.S. boxing team won three gold medals.)
66202938	Zeugma	two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them. *Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.
66202939	Anapest	Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE.
66202940	Dactyl	A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry.
66202941	Denouement	The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet.
66202942	Elegy	A lyric poem that laments the dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues."
66202943	Epigram	A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre: I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
66202944	Falling meter	Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom."
66202945	Spondee	A metricalfoot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.
66202946	Tercet	A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.
66202947	Trochee	An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball.