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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