POETIC DEVICES

Language that changes the literal SENSE of elements

SIMILE: an explicit comparison between two different things, ideas or actions, using the words “as” or “like”: I wandered lonely as a cloud

An EPIC SIMILE is an extended comparison, typical of epic poems, that is elaborated in great detail and embellishes the narration.

METAPHOR: one thing, idea or action (TENOR) is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting something else (VEHICLE), so as to
suggest a common quality (GROUND): All the world is a stage [the world= tenor; stage = vehicle].

A CONCEIT is an elaborate and complicated metaphor. John Donne famously compared two lovers to a pair of compasses in his poem “A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”.

SYMBOL: a word or phrase which represents or signifies something else. A symbol differs from a metaphor in that its application is open as an
unstated suggestion. While in a metaphor we have a tenor that is described through a vehicle, in a symbol we only have a vehicle, without a
tenor.

METONYMY: the name of something is replaced by the name of something else closely related to it: “the bottle” for alcoholic drink; “Mozart”
for Mozart’s music, “the pen” for writing, etc.

SYNECDOCHE is a type of metonymy in which something is referred to by naming only some part or constituent of it: “hands” for manual
workers; “Moscow” for the Soviet government. Another kind is

ANTONOMASIA, in which a proper name is replaced by an epithet (“the Bard” for Shakespeare) or a proper name is applied to a person who
has a quality associated with it (“a Casanova”; “a little Hitler”).

PERSONIFICATION (PROSOPOPOEIA): animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred as if they were human or animate:
Music’s golden tongue (Keats, “The Eve of St Agnes”).

IRONY: in a general sense, a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant:

PUN (PARONOMASIA): two distinct meanings are suggested by the same word or by two similar-sounding words (Lie)
SYNESTHESIA: one type of sensation is described in terms more appropriate for another: loud yellow
HYPERBOLE (overstatement): I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum
(Shakespeare, Hamlet); the opposite is LITOTES (understatement): an affirmation is made indirectly by denying its opposite: It’s not bad.

OXYMORON: combination of two contradictory terms in a compressed paradox: cold fire.

(b) Language that changes the ORDER or creates REPETITION of elements

1. words, phrases and clauses

HYPERBATON: the normal order of the words is altered

ANAPHORA: a word or phrase is repeated in (typically at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses or sentences:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, / This earth of majesty. When the word or phrase is repeated at the end, we speak of
EPISTROPHE.

ANADIPLOSIS: a word or phrase appears both at the end of one clause, sentence or stanza, and at the beginning of the next, thus linking the
two: Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love (Shakespeare, Sonnet 154)

2. Repetition and patterns of sounds

ALLITERATION: repetition of the initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables of neighbouring words: the furrow followed free.

ASSONANCE: repetition of vocalic sounds in neighbouring words: Green as a dream and deep as death.

CONSONANCE: repetition of consonant sounds at the end of neighbouring words: hot foot; middle/muddle; wonder/wander

ONOMATOPOEIA: a resemblance between what a piece of language sounds like and what it refers to: Thou watchest the last oozings hours
by hours.

(c) Language that produces special forms of address or inquiry

APOSTROPHE: address to a dead person, to an animal or an inanimate force of nature, or to an abstraction.

RHETORICAL QUESTION: a question asked for the sake of persuasive effect (to express intense conviction) rather than as a request for
information.