Poetic Devices
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
- "Harlem" by Langston Hughes
What is a Simile?
Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
What is Romeo and Juliet?
Giving human feelings or traits to animals or objects.
What is Personification?
A short narrative with a developed theme, yet shorter than a novel.
What is a short story?
A person within a novel, movie, or play.
What is a character?
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
- Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"
What is Alliteration?
OBERON
Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
TITANIA
What, jealous Oberon? [Fairies], skip hence.
I have forsworn his bed and company.
What is A Midsummer Night's Dream?
An extreme exaggeration used as a figure of speech or rhetorical device to make a point, emphasize, or evoke feelings.
What is Hyperbole?
The expression of feelings using a distinctive style, rhythm or rhyme. Either in a collective of works or standalone.
What is poetry?
The way the author wants you to feel in a story.
What is mood?
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
- Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
What is Rhyme?
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
What is Macbeth?
Animal Farm, The Lord of the Flies, and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, are all examples of this literary device where there are two meanings to the story. The literal level, and the symbolic, extended metaphor.
What is an Allegory?
A long form written narrative weaving together characters, plot, and setting to complete a story.
What is a novel?
The authors attitude toward the subject and audience conveyed through their word choice, punctuation, and sentence structure.
What is tone?
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
- "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
What is Repetition?
To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
What is Hamlet?
Interstellar, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club are all examples of this literary device, where the narrative starts in the middle of the action.
What is In Medias Res?
A story that is told through dialogue and action. Often conveyed through performance rather than the written word, creating dynamic changes between productions.
What is a play?
The central idea of the text.
What is the theme?
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.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
What is a Sonnet?
O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
And profound Solomon tuning a jig,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critic Timon laugh at idle toys.
What is Love's Labour's Lost?
The use of giving human feelings and responses to inanimate objects. Like describing a storm as angry, the sun as smiling, or the wind as shrieking.
What is Pathetic Fallacy?
A work of fiction longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel.
What is a novella?
A brief statement or account of something. Retelling the story in your own words.
What is a summary?