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Stylistic Devices

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Stylistic Devices
Simile - a kind of comparison in which two things are com¬pared be¬cause they have something in common though they are in all other respects different. The imagina¬tive compa¬rison is explicitly made with the help of like or as.
She walks like an angel. / I wandered lonely as a cloud.
This simile suggests /implies / illustrates that ...
Metaphor - a comparison between two things which are basically quite different without using the words like or as. While a simile only says that one thing is like another, a metaphor says that one thing is another.
All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players ... (Shakespeare)
Life’s but a walking shadow ... (Shakespeare Macbeth)
‘Night’ is often used as a metaphor for ‘evil’. He uses ‘night’ as a metaphorical equivalent of ‘evil’.
Personification: a kind of metaphor in which animals, plants, inanimate objects or ab¬stract ideas are represented as if they were human beings and possessed human qualities.
Justice is blind. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Eros is a personification of love. Eros personifies love.
Symbol - something concrete that stands for something ab¬stract or invisible.
The Cross is the symbol of Christianity. The dove symbolizes peace /is symbolic of peace.
SOUND
Alliteration: the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of neighbouring words.
Oh dear daddy of death dance ...
Words alliterate (with each other)/form an alliteration.
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds within stressed syllables of neighbouring words. fertile - birth
Con¬so¬nance: the repetition of consonant sounds especially at the end of neighbouring words. strength - earth - birth
Metre: a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables within a line of a poem.
Iambic metre: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (– '–):
The way a crow / Shook down on me / The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree (Frost)
Trochaic metre: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one ('– –):
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright / In the forest of the night. (William Blake)
Anapestic metre: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (– – '–):
Oh he flies through the air / With the greatest of ease.
Dactylic metre: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones ('– – –):
Just for a handful of silver he left us / Just for a riband (Band) to stick in his coat.
Onomatopoeia: the use of words which imitate the sound they refer to. adj. onomatopoeic the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle / The cuckoo whizzed past the buzzing bees.
Rhyme: the use of words which end with the same sounds, usually at the end of lines.
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright / In the forests of the night.
Internal rhyme: rhyme within a line.

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