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Common Literary Devices

Reading through A Tale of Two Cities made me want to revisit some AP English notes, so here you go:

  • Allusion: an indirect reference to an existing work
  • Apostrophe: speaking to an inanimate object (ex. Hamlet to the skull)
  • Hyperbole: exaggeration
  • Irony: in simple terms, something that happens that wasn’t expected (ex. a firetruck catching on fire)
  • Juxtaposition: placing two contrasting things or ideas close to each other
  • Litotes: understatement used for emphasis, usually involving a double negative (ex. “Not unkind”, meaning the positive “kind”, but in a lesser way than simply saying “kind”)
  • Metaphor: an illustrative comparison, usually involving the words “is”, “am”, “are”, “was”, or “were”
  • Onomatopoeia: words that read how they sound (ex. sizzle, slosh, cuckoo)
  • Personification: giving human characteristics to an animal, object, or intangible concept (ex. Mother Nature, Father Time)
  • Simile: a comparison involving “like” or “as”
  • Symbolism: using objects or animals to represent ideas or qualities (ex. dove as purity, innocence, and/or hope)

Rhetorical/Persuasive Strategies

  • Ethos: establishing credibility/authority (ex. “I’m an expert.”)
  • Pathos: establishing emotional connection (ex. “Save the cute animals!”)
  • Logos: logical reasoning (if “p”, then “q”); deductive reasoning (general to specific; think Sherlock Holmes); inductive reasoning (specific to general; think scientific method, start with hypothesis, find info to support it)

Syntactical Devices, deal with sentence structure

  • Alliteration: a sequence of words that begin with the same letter, usually a consonant (ex. “the snake slithered silently”)
  • Anaphora: sentences or clauses that begin with the same word (ex. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”)
  • Asyndeton: a lengthy sentence with successive words/clauses not connected by conjunctions (ex. “she packed shirts, pants, socks, her trusty alarm clock; with these, she was fully prepared for her journey.”)
  • Repetition: self-explanatory
  • Parallelism: sentences with the same structure (ex. “girls danced in yellow dresses; men stood with stoic stares” Structure: noun, verb, prepositional phrase)
  • Polysyndeton: a series of clauses connected in a single sentence by conjunctions (ex. “I am a certified doctor and nurse and psychiatrist and neurologist and a murderer of assholes.”)