Common Literary Devices

Front 1

Alliteration

Back 1

Repetition of initial sounds in consecutive or neighboring words.

Front 2

Allusion

Back 2

Reference to something outside of the literary work the reader is assumed to know or understand.

Front 3

Anaphora

Back 3

Repetition [of a word or phrase at the beginning of consecutive lines or sentences] for effect.

Front 4

Antithesis

Back 4

A statement in which two opposing ideas are compared and balanced.

E.g. "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools," Martin Luther King Jr.

Front 5

Aside

Back 5

Breaking the fourth wall;

When a character "talks" to the audience without the knowledge of any of the other characters.

Front 6

Euphemism

Back 6

Indirect, less offensive way of saying something unpleasant.

E.g. "ethnic cleansing" as opposed to "genocide"

Front 7

Foreshadowing

Back 7

Leaving hints for the reader as to what's about to happen.

Front 8

Hyperbole

Back 8

[Unrealistic] exaggeration for effect.

Front 9

Iambic Pentameter

Back 9

Ten syllables in each line, the pattern being dee-DUM dee-Dum dee-Dum dee-DUM dee-DUM

Used mostly by poets of Elizabethan England (e.g. Shakespeare)

E.g. "Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmer's DAY?"

Front 10

Idiom

Back 10

Expression in a given language (NOT to be taken literally)

Front 11

Metaphor

Back 11

A direct comparison of two [unlike] things.

E.g. "His feet were boats."

Front 12

Litotes

Back 12

An ironic understatement, often with two negatives used to mean a positive.

E.g. "not bad", "not unintelligent"

Front 13

Onomatopoeia

Back 13

Words that imitate a sound.

E.g. "woof"

Front 14

Oxymoron

Back 14

When two contradicting words are joined to make a phrase.

E.g. "virtual reality"

Front 15

Parallelism

Back 15

The use of several of the same grammatical or syntactical forms in a sentence.

E.g. "I have received, read, and replied to the letter."

Front 16

Pathetic fallacy

Back 16

When human emotions are attributed to aspects of nature, usually the weather.

E.g. It rains when the character is sad.

Front 17

Personification

Back 17

When human qualities are given to non-human things.

E.g. "The trees danced"; "the cake called"

Front 18

Rhyming couplet

Back 18

Two rhyming lines of poetry in Iambic pentameter;

Often used to summarize or conclude

Front 19

Satire

Back 19

Humor used to emphasize human weakness

Front 20

Simile

Back 20

Comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as"

Front 21

Understatement

Back 21

Deliberate representation of something as less [insert adjective] than it is.

E.g. "9/11 was a minor mishap"