Literary Devices and Examples
1. ALLEGORY:
- A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning.
-This word origins in Middle English allegorie, from Latin allegoria, from Greek allegoria, from allegorein to speak figuratively, from allos ‘other’ + egorein ‘to speak publicly’.
-A short example of this literary device can be the poem ‘Epigram’ by Langston Hughes:
Oh, God of dust and rainbow, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.
in which ‘dust’ and ‘rainbow’ stand for something else rather than their superficial meaning in this poem. This means that- in the first layer of meaning- dust helps creating rainbow. Something which is considered unclean and earthly helps making something that is beautiful and heavenly.
But in fact it can refer to the Black people and their importance in the American society and in a wider sense all the world, which was being underestimated at the time. So allegorically it gives us the idea that even so-called unimportant people play their important roles in their societies.
2. ALLITERATION:
- the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables- called also head rhyme, initial rhyme
-The word Alliteration origins in Latin from the word “Litera” which means ‘letter’
-An example of this literary device could be a stanza in the seventh part of the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
I pass, like night, from land to land; (alliteration on the sound /l/ in like and land)
I have strange power of speech; (on the sound /s/ in strange and speech)
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach. (on the sound /t/ in to, tale, and, teach)
Another example is the poem “Three Grey Geese” in which there is alliteration on the sound /g/:
Three grey geese in a green field grazing,
Grey were the geese and green was
- A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning.
-This word origins in Middle English allegorie, from Latin allegoria, from Greek allegoria, from allegorein to speak figuratively, from allos ‘other’ + egorein ‘to speak publicly’.
-A short example of this literary device can be the poem ‘Epigram’ by Langston Hughes:
Oh, God of dust and rainbow, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.
in which ‘dust’ and ‘rainbow’ stand for something else rather than their superficial meaning in this poem. This means that- in the first layer of meaning- dust helps creating rainbow. Something which is considered unclean and earthly helps making something that is beautiful and heavenly.
But in fact it can refer to the Black people and their importance in the American society and in a wider sense all the world, which was being underestimated at the time. So allegorically it gives us the idea that even so-called unimportant people play their important roles in their societies.
2. ALLITERATION:
- the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables- called also head rhyme, initial rhyme
-The word Alliteration origins in Latin from the word “Litera” which means ‘letter’
-An example of this literary device could be a stanza in the seventh part of the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
I pass, like night, from land to land; (alliteration on the sound /l/ in like and land)
I have strange power of speech; (on the sound /s/ in strange and speech)
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach. (on the sound /t/ in to, tale, and, teach)
Another example is the poem “Three Grey Geese” in which there is alliteration on the sound /g/:
Three grey geese in a green field grazing,
Grey were the geese and green was
Bibliography: -The Norton Anthology of English Literature (An Abridged Form by Jalal Sokhanvar) -The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Major Authors) -Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary terms -Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary -Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English -Wikipedia