Soliloquy-Definition and Examples of Soliloquy

Soliloquy:

Soliloquy is a dramatic technique of speaking alone on the stage. Soliloquy is a dramatic convention of exposing to the audience the intentions, thoughts and feelings of a character who speaks to himself while no one remains on the stage. For example, four lines of Hamlet's famous soliloquy are quoted here:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea or troubles,

A soliloquy is different from an aside. Though, both in soliloquy and in aside only one character speaks, in aside some other characters remain present on the stage but in soliloquy none is allowed to be present on the stage. A soliloquy is also different from the dramatic monologue. The soliloquy is a dramatic technique but the dramatic monologue is a form of poetry in which a single speaker speaks to a silent listener who responds by physical gestures.

Onomatopoeia-Definition and Examples of Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia:

Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which the sound of the words or phrases suggests the sense. The use of words whose sound imitates the sound of the thing being named. For example, the pronunciation of words like hum, buzz, clang, boom, hiss, crack, and twitter suggests their meaning. The value of onomatopoeia as a poetic device becomes evident when sound echoes sense throughout an entire phrase or line:

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

"Tis the night of doom," say the ding-dong doom-bells.

Metonymy- Definition and Examples of Metonymy

Metonymy:

Metonymy is a figure of speech that substitutes the name of a related object, person, or idea for the subject at hand. Crown is often substituted for monarchy, the White House for the President of the United States and the staff, and Shakespeare for the works of Shakespeare. Metonymy should not be confused with synecdoche, a substitution of a part of something for the whole or the for a part.

Imagery- Definition and Examples of Imagery

Imagery:

Imagery is the collective use of images.  The making of  "pictures in words," the pictorial quality of a literary work achieved through a collection of Images. In a broader sense, imagery is often used as synonymous with figure of speech or figurative language (Simile, Metaphor, or Symbol). Imagery appeals to the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and touch, and to internal feelings, as well as to the sense of sight. It evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicates Mood, Tone, and meaning. It can be both figurative and literal, as these lines from Elinor Wylie's "Puritan Sonnet" demonstrate:

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,

Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves;

That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,

Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,

Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,

And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

Hyperbole- Definition & Examples of Hyperbole, Hyperbole in Poetry

Hyperbole:

Hyperbole, obvious, extravagant exaggeration or overstatement, not intended to be taken literally, but used figuratively to create humor or emphasis. The most extreme examples of hyperbole occur, not surprisingly, in love poetry, context, moreover, in which hyperbole seems psychologically believable. In Andrew Marvell's " To His Coy Mistress, " for example, the speaker declares:

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow,

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze:

Two hundred to adore each breast:

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

Definition & Examples of Symbol in Literature

Symbol:

Symbol,broadly, anything that signifies, or stands for, something else. In Literature, a symbol is usually something concrete- an object, a place, a character, an action- that stands for or suggests something abstract. In Joseph Conrad's story " The Lagoon," darkness is a symbol of evil and light a symbol of good. A symbol may be universal or private. Darkness and light are universal symbols of evil and good. Climbing is a universal symbol of progress, descending, of failure. The dove is a universal symbol of peace. In contrast, the great white whale in Herman Melville's Novel. Moby-Dick is a private symbol and a complex one. Many books and articles have been written in an effort to explain it, but like many great private symbols in literature and art, its significance is complex and clusive.

A symbol differs from a literal Image, from a Metaphor, and also from an emblem in an Allegory. Consider a forest, or a wood. In the following lines, woods is an image, presented literally as a place one is going through:

Over the river and through the woods

To grandmother's house we go.

If the woods were pictured in more detail-snow covered pines, elm branches black against the sky-it would still be literal image, although a more vivid one

Simile- Simile Literary Terms, Examples & Definition of Simile

Simile:

Simile is a figure of speech that uses like, as, or as if to compare two essentially different objects, actions, or attributes that share some aspect of similarity. In contrast to a Metaphor, in which a comparison is implied, a simile expresses a comparison directly.

Examples of Simile:

-Here and there

his brown skin hung in strips

like ancient wallpaper..

--Elizabeth Bishop

An old man whose black face

shines golden-brown as wet

pebbles under a street light...

--Denise Levertow

Like a small grey

coffe-pot

sits the quirrel

--Humbert Wolfe

Pun- Examples and Definition of Pun or Paronomasia.

Pun or Paronomasia:

The pun or paronomasia is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. It is occurs when a single word conveys two meanings. Pun is also called paronomasia.

Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand. Puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin. The Roman playwright Plautus is famous for his tendency to make up and change the meaning of words to create puns in Latin.

Examples of Pun:

“Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”

(Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet)

Here ‘grave man’ may mean a dead man or a man of grave disposition. There is another variety of pun where two words of same sounds but different spellings are used to suggest two different meanings. For example: “Would that its tone could reach the rich”. Here reach means arrive at and rich means the wealthy.

Personification- Definition and Examples of Personification

Personification:

Personification is a figure of speech in which lifeless objects or ideas are given human qualities or abilities. In other words, whenever sensations, emotions, desires, physical gestures and speech are stated in context of non-living things, personification is said to have taken place. By this technique, lifeless things are given life. The concept of personification is commonly used in poetry, where things are often described as having feelings. It is also widely used in fiction and children’s literature, though fiction is not likely to stay focused on the personified object for long.

Example of Personification:

“And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu;”

--Keats

Here “Joy” has been imagined as a living person.

Paradox, Definition of Paradox, Example of Paradox

Paradox

Paradox is a self-contradictory statement that hides a rational meaning. Example: " Sweet are the uses of adversity."  The surface meaning of this line appears contradictory as, generally, adversity is bitter. But as we go deeper we find the truth that adversity carries within itself the sweetness of advantages.

Metaphor Example & Definition of Metaphor

Metaphor:

Metaphor is an implicit comparison between two different things. It is a compressed form of simile. Liza is a rose is an example of metaphor as there is an implied comparison between the colour, softness, fragrance, etc. of the rose and those of Liza. It becomes a simile if the comparison is made explicit: Liza is like a rose.

Machinery | Definition of Machinery | Example of Machinery

Machinery

The supernatural agents used in an epic or a mock-epic. For example, the whole battalion of the sylphs and nymphs under Ariel's command in The Rape of the Lock is called the machinery of it.

Litotes | Examples of Litotes | Litotes Definition

Litotes

Litotes is a figure in which the negative statement suggests a very strong affirmative. For example, " He is not a bad student" means he is a good student.

Irony | Examples of Irony

Irony

Irony is a statement or a situation which actually means the opposite of its surface meaning. An often quoted example of irony is " Brutus is an honourable man" from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Antony says this in his oration over dead body of Caesar. This appreciation of Brutus really means that Brutus who killed Caesar is an ignoble man. The first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is another example of irony

" It is truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

After reading the novel one, however, finds that it is not the rich man who needs a wife but, quite opposite to it, it is the lady who needs a rich husband.

Heroic couplet | Example of Heroic Couplet

Heroic couplet:

A pair of iambic pentameter verse lines which rhyme together. A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry. It is commonly used for epic and narrative poetry. It refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines

 

Example of Heroic Couplet:

But when/ to mis / chief mor / tals bend / their will

How soon / they find / fit ins / truments/ of ill!

(Pope: The Rape of the Lock)

Each of these lines consists of five iambic feet. In each pair the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. Such five feet arranged in a verse line are called iambic pentameter. When two such iambic pentameter lines end with similar sounds as in these lines (will=ill) they are called heroic couplet.

 

Hamartia | Example of Hamartia | Hamlet's Hamartia

Hamartia: 

Hamartia has often traditionally been described as a hero's fatal flaw. It is called tragic flaw. Hamartia is an error or a flaw for which the hero of a tragedy falls from the zenith of his success to the nadir of his misery.

Example of Hamartia:

Hamlet, for example, suffers from the tragic flaw of indecision. He hesitates to kill his cruel and villainous uncle, which leads to the ultimate tragedy of the play. By struggling with an inherent moral flaw, Hamlet brings about his own destruction. His hesitation, therefore, is the action to which the term hamartia is applied. If the flaw is pride it is called hubris

Epic simile definition | Epic simile examples

Epic simile:

Epic simile is a formal and sustained simile. Like a regular simile, an epic simile makes a comparison between one object and another using "like" or "as." However, unlike a regular simile, which appears in a single sentence, the epic simile may be developed at great length, often up to fifty or a hundred lies. It is called epic simile because the epic poets introduced the tradition of such similes.

Example of epic simile:

 In Book-XII of Iliad Hector has been compared to a boar and a lion:

 “He was like a wild-boar or a lion when he turns this way and that among the hounds and huntsmen to defy them in his strength.”

Dramatic Irony | Example of Dramatic Irony | Definition of Dramatic Irony

Dramatic Irony:

Dramatic irony is a dialogue or a situation in a play when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. This is the result of the reader having a greater knowledge than the characters themselves. It is used both in tragedy and in comedy to heighten respective effects.

Example of Dramatic Irony: 

In “Oedipus Rex” when Oedipus says, “I, Oedipus, whom all men call great” he knows that he is really great but the audience knows that he is the most ignoble.

Couplet | Example of Couplet

 Couplet:

A couplet is a pair of successive lines of verse having the same meter and often forming a complete thought. Couplet generally appears in poetry. A couplet generally consists of two lines of verse which rhyme together & are of the same length. “The Night Before Christmas,”  “The Canterbury Tales” are written entirely in couplets. Shakespeare and Alexander Pope were both well known for their writing in heroic couplets.

Example of couplet:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."

Here the last word of the first line and second line has the similar sounds ‘ing’.

Conceit | Example of Conceit

Conceit:

Conceit is an elaborate poetic image or a far-fetched comparison of very dissimilar things. Conceit is a witty or ingenious turn of phrase. A conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison by manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways.

Example of Conceit:

In “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning “Donne compares between two lovers’ soul & the two arms of a pair of compasses.

 If they be two, they are two so

A stiff twin compasses are two;

Climax | Example of Climax

Climax:

Climax is the highest or more intense point or the peak of importance in a play or in a story. Climax is the point of which the rise of action ends and the fall of action begins. The climax of Hippolytus, written by Euripides, for example, is the point at which, when Phaedra hears Hippolytus react rudely because of her love for him. It is the time that Aphrodite's curse is finally fulfilled, and while not action-packed. It is the turning point of the whole play.

Classicism

Classicism:

Classicism is a doctrine of art and literature. Classicism was  followed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Classicism is opposite to romanticism. Classicism's main features are:

a) Clarity, simplicity and balance:
b) Respect and tradition;
c) Restraint or control;
d) Precision;

e) Predominance of reason over emotion;
g) Importance to form rather than to content;

Chorus

Chorus:

Chorus is a group of performers in a play who comment on the action and provide mood and atmosphere for it. Milton uses such a chorus in Samson Agonistes. The number of persons in a chorus may be reduced from group to a single person; such a chorus is usually called single chorus. The Fool in King Lear is an example of a single chorus.

Chiasmus | Examples of Chiasmus

Chiasmus

Chiasmus is the inversion in the order of words or phrases when repeated. Chiasmus is used to make the meaning more impressive. Chiasmus was popular both in Latin and Greek literature.

Examples of Chiasmus:

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty, "

(Keats: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" )

Or,   " Fair is foul, and foul is fair;"

(Shakespeare: Macbeth)

Catharsis

Catharsis

Catharsis means the purgation or purification of pity and fear. Catharsis is a dramatic presentation of suffering and defeat arouses pity and fear in spectators to such an extent that a spectator, after watching such scenes, feels relieved of those emotions as after storm comes calmness and serenity.

Catastrophe

Catastrophe

A catastrophe is the final scene of  a tragedy in which the action ends with the death of the hero and other characters. Catastrophe takes place in the last scene of King Lear in which all the important characters- King Lear, Cordelia, Regan, Goneril, Edmund and Gloucester- die. 

In Othello Catastrophe occurs when Othello kills Desdemona and then kills himself. 

The catastrophe of Hamlet is in the death of Hamlet, Gertrude and Laertes ( son to Polonius ). Catastrophe is the tragic outcome of a tragedy.

Caesura | Example of Caesura.

Caesura

Caesura is a pause in the rhythmic progression in a line of poetry. Caesuras or caesurae is the plural form of Caesura. The caesura often is used to stress the formal metrical structure of a line but it more of sometimes introduces the cadence of natural speech patterns and habits of phrasing into the metrical scheme. 

Example of Caesura

Caesura is indicated by the mark " | | " as is shown in the following lines of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel :

In friendship false, | | implacable in hate,

Resolved to ruin | | or to rule the state;

Caesura is used to bring variety in the natural rhythm. It also produces metrical subtlety and makes meanings sharp and distinct.

Blank Verse | Examples of Blank Verse Poetry.

Blank Verse:

Blank verse is a form of poetry. Blank verse is poetry consisting of iambic pentameter lines without rhyme at the end. Blank verse is any kind of verse consisting of unrhymed  lines all in the same meter, usually iambic pentameter. An iambic pentameter line is a line of five iambic feet. William Shakespeare wrote most of his play in Blank verse.

Example of Blank Verse:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

(Macbeth by William Shakespeare)

Assonance: Examples of Assonance

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound without the recurrence of a consonant sounds which would make a rhyme within phrases or sentences. Love and dove is a case of rhyme as both vowels and consonants are repeated. But there is an assonance in write and ride as a vowel sound ("ai" ) is repeated. For one more example notice the repetition of "o" in the following line of Keats' "To Autumn":

"Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies:"

Like alliteration, assonance also imparts musical effects to the language in which it is used.

Examples of Assonance/ Assonance Examples

Lots of examples of assonance can be found in prose and poetry. Assonance is the repetition of a vowel. Assonance occurs when vowels are repeated in words which are close to each other. Sometime Assonance examples are too hard to find because they work subconsciously.

A few examples of assonance:

1.Notice the repetition of "u" in the following line of  Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight"

“That solitude which suits astruser musings”

2.  “The Princess VII.203” by Alfred Lord Tennyson  is another example of assonance

 

“And murmuring of innumerable bees”

Archaism- Defination and Examples of Archaism.

Archaism: An archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. A word or style of expression which has already been outdated. Example of archaism-

Lord, thou hast examined me and knowest me.

Thou knowest all, whether I sit down or rise up:

thou hast discerned my thoughts from afar.

(The Bible, "Psalms"-139)

Here the words "thou" for you,  " for know, "hast" for has. A modern writer uses it to add gravity to his meanings.

Aphorism-definition and examples of Aphorism.

Aphorism: A terse expression of a universal truth. Example of Aphorism-

"Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses."

(Bacon: "Of Marriage and Single Life")

The use of aphorism reflects the depth of an author's personal experience. It is different from a proverb: a proverb is an anonymous expression of a general truth while an aphorisms are individual.

Anti-climax or Bathos- Definition of Anti-climax or Bathos.

Anti-climax or Bathos: Anti-climax or Bathos is a statement in which there is a sudden fall from the serious to trivial, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Example of Anti-climax or Bathos:

Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast,

When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last;

(Pope: The Rape of the Lock)

Here is a sudden fall of importance from husbands to dogs. Poets use anti-climax to produce humour.

Anapaest-anapest- examples of Anapaest.

Anapaest or anapest: An Anapaest (also spelled anapest) is a metrical foot comprising three syllables of which the first two are unstressed and the third is stressed. Example of Anapaest:

Like a child/ from the womb,/ like a ghost/ from the tomb,

I arise/ and unbuild/ it again.

(Shelley: "The Cloud")

The use of anapaest gives swiftness to the movement of the verse line in which it is used. Poets create the illusion of swift-movement and action by its use.

Allusion-examples of Allusion- What is an Allusion?

Allusion: Allusion is an implicit or indirect reference to another work of art or literature, to a historical person or event. Example of  Allusion:

Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.
(Pope: The Rape of the Lock)

Here is an allusion to the dilemma of Aeneas, the hero of Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas falls in love with Dido, the queen of Carthage. Dido implores Aeneas to marry her and get settled permanently in Carthage. Though Aeneas is deeply in love with her, he cannot ignore his duty to continue his voyage in search of a permanent empire for his future generation. He is torn between love and duty. This dilemma of Aeneas has been recalled here to suggest the intensity of Belinda's crisis. An allusion, which clarifies meanings and suggests a great deal in a few words, makes a work of literature difficult to understand but adds dignity to it.

Alliteration-examples of Alliteration- Define Alliteration.

Alliteration: Alliteration is a Literary Terms. Alliteration means repetition of a consonant in two or more words. Notice the following line from Pope's The Rape of the Lock:

Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux.

Here "p" has been repeated thrice and "b" twice. So there are two cases of alliteration in this line. Alliteration is used both in poetry and in prose for musical effects.