Literary Devices
Identify the literary device used in the following line: "Her smile was like sunshine breaking through clouds."
What is a simile?
The difference between a word’s dictionary definition and its implied meaning.
What is connotation?
A poem that follows a specific rhyme scheme and meter, such as a sonnet.
What is a closed poem?
This American author is known for bringing in the detective in literature in Auguste Dupin.
What is Edgar Allan Poe?
This punctuation mark is often used to indicate a pause or break in a line of poetry, often used to create emphasis or rhythm.
What is a comma?
This device gives human qualities to non-human things, such as in the phrase, "The wind whispered through the trees."
What is personification?
Identify a connotation of the word "rose" in romantic poetry.
What is love or beauty?
A poem with no set rhyme or meter is an example of this type of poetry.
What is free verse or an open poem?
This famous Victorian poet became famous for characterizing the dramatic monologue.
(reminder of that: a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.)
What is Robert Browning?
A repeated image or theme in a poem is referred to as this.
What is a motif?
This term refers to a reference to a well-known person, place, event, or work of art.
What is an allusion?
A word with this connotation might evoke warmth and comfort, like "hearth" or "home."
What is a positive connotation?
This poetic form contains three quatrains and a couplet, typically in iambic pentameter.
What is an English (or Shakespearean) sonnet?
Identify the philosophical movement that emphasized self-reliance, the connection between humans and nature, and the importance of intuition over reason, flourishing in the early 19th century.
What is Transcendentalism?
Identify the poetic term for words that recreate or mimic the sounds they represent, like "crash" or "whisper."
What is onomatopoeia?
Identify the device used in the phrase, "She sells seashells by the seashore."
What is alliteration?
This word connotes a sense of darkness or dread, often used in Gothic poetry. (Hint: Think of our adjectives and adverbs.)
What is "ominous"?
Name one difference between an open and a closed poem.
What is "open poems do not follow a strict structure, while closed poems adhere to set forms"? -- or something along those lines.
This Shakespearean tragedy, often referred to as the "Scottish Play," explores themes of ambition, power, and guilt, and features the famous line, "Out, out brief candle!"
What is Macbeth?
This literary technique involves providing detailed descriptions of a character’s physical appearance, personality, and behaviors to reveal deeper aspects of their nature.
What is characterization?
In poetry, this device places two contrasting ideas side by side, such as in the phrase, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
What is juxtaposition?
In the line, "The light danced on the waves, inviting dreams of distant shores," which word is least likely to have a figurative meaning?
A) Light
B) Danced
C) Waves
D) Distant
Answer: What is Distant?
Please read the following verse by E.E. Cummings & identify if it's open or closed:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
This 19th-century writer, known for works like The Scarlet Letter and The Minister's Black Veil, explored themes of guilt, sin, and the human condition.
Who is Nathaniel Hawthorne?
The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.
What is enjambment?