Easy Definition and Best Examples of Literary Terms
Literary Device and Definition English Literature (Part-3)
Literary Terms
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Metaphor
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, beauty, etc. of the rose and those of Liza. It becomes a simile if the comparison is made explicit: Liza is like a rose.
In “Sonnet XVIII”, the phrase, “eternal summer,” in the line, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade” is a metaphor that suggests “never-ending youthfulness”.
Here is another example:-
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII)
The “world" has been compared to “a stage” to suggest short life on earth. “Entrances” and “exits” are also metaphors which imply birth and death respectively.
The “unweeded garden” in the following lines is another famous metaphor which means the ethically corrupted or morally polluted world.
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! oh fie, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed:
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act I, Scene II)
More examples are given below. The metaphors are in italics:-
Out, out, briefcandle,
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
(Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act V, Scene V)
“She's all states, and all princes, I,”
(John Donne: “The Sun Rising”)
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
(Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”)
“With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain
of despair a stone of hope.”
(Martin Luther King: “I Have a Dream”)
Metonymy
The name of one thing is used for another thing to which it is related. We use metonymy when we use “the crown” for the king or “the stage” for theatre. Similarly, when we use “Shakespeare” to mean his works we use metonymy. Some other examples are given below:
“Rest, rest perturbed spirit:”
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act I, Scene V)
“Look on my. works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
(Shelley: “Ozymandias”)
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
(Tennyson: “Ulysses”)
In the first example, “spirit” has been used for ghost; in the second example, “Mighty” has been used for a powerful king; and in the third example the “sceptre” has been used for kingship or the authority to rule.
Metre
The arrangement of “feet” [i.e. stressed and unstressed syllables] in a verse line. A verse line is named according to the number of its foot:-
- A line containing one foot is called monometer.
- A line containing two feet is called diameter.
- A line containing three feet is called tri meter.
- A line containing four feet is called tetrameter.
- A line containing five feet is called pentameter.
- A line containing six feet is called hexameter.
- A line containing seven feet is called heptameter.
- A line containing eight feet is called octameter.
Each of these meters may again be different according to the use of various types of feet. A monometer line may be iambic monometer (“Thus I/ Pass by”), trochaic monometer
(“Turning/ Burning/ Changing/ Ranging”), Anapaestic monometer (“'Tis in vain/ They complain”), dactylic monometer (“Wit with this/ wantonness”) and so on. Similarly, a diameter may be iambic diameter, trochaic diameter, anapaestic diameter, dactylic diameter etc.
A pentameter may be iambic pentameter, trochaic pentameter, anapaestic pentameter, dactylic pentameter and the like.
Motif: “One of the dominant ideas in a work of literature.”
Negative Capability
An ability that enables a writer to keep himself aloof from his writings. It is synonymous with objectivity. Keats who coined this phrase defines it as an ability which makes a writer “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Shakespeare had this ability because his personal life cannot be discovered from his plays. Keats claimed that he also had this ability. T. S. Eliot called it impersonality of art.
Objective Correlative
An image that suggests a particular emotion associated with it. For example, the sentence, “He is a Meer Zafar” evokes in the mind of the readers a sense that “He” is a betrayer. It is because 'betrayal' is associated with the name of “Meer Zafar” who betrayed Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula.
So, “Meer Zafar” is an objective correlative for “betrayal”. Thus, “waste land” is an objective correlative for spiritual barrenness, “rose” for love and beauty, “nightingale's song” for suppressed agony, and the like.
Objectivity:-
A mode of expression in which the writer's personal life remains absent from his writing. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and T. S Eliot are some of the famous objective writers. No information about their lives or about their likes and dislikes is found in their great works. It is opposite to subjectivity. [see Subjectivity, Negative Capability]
Onomatopoeia
A figure in which the sound of the words and phrases suggests the sense. In An Essay on Criticism Pope says about it: “The sound must seem an echo to the sense”.
Examples:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
(Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)
These highly alliterative lines reflect the easeful, smooth movement of the Mariner's ship.
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
(Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)
This line echoes the sounds of the rough sea in the polar region.
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
(Keats: “To Autumn”)
The rhythm in this line mirrors a picture of the up and down movement of the vines on the edge of the thatch. The vines lie along the edge of the thatch but they go down at certain points, at regular gaps, where bunches of grapes dangle because of their weight. This up and down of the vines has been indicated here by the use of alternatively stressed iambic feet.
Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which two contradictory words are put together. When we use phrases like male-female, host-guest, civil war, open secret, magic realism or wise fool, we, in fact, use oxymorons. Here is a famous example:-
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
(Yeats: “Easter 1916”)
Here is another example:-
I find no peace, and all my war is done:
I fear, and hope; I burn, and freeze like ice;
(Sir Thomas Wyatt: “I Find No Peace”)
Paradox
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 achievement.
Persona
The speaker in a poem or novel. The speaker is necessarily not the writer of the poem or the novel. For example, the persona of Tennyson's “Ulysses” is Ulysses, the Greek hero, not Tennyson; the persona of Browning's “My Last Duchess” is Duke of Ferrara, not Browning;
the persona of Conrad's Heart of Darkness is Marlow, not Conrad, the persona of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is an omniscient observer, not Jane Austen.
There is confusion whether the first person speaker in a creative work is the author himself or a mask. In Wordsworth's “I wander lonely as a cloud”(“Daffodils”), “I” is closer to Wordsworth's actual identity.
However, in most cases, “I” may be a mask (or an alter ego) of the author. Keats has used first person pronouns in his poems. For instance, “Much have I travelled”, “My heart aches”, “I will fly to thee", “I will be thy priest” and the like. But he has appreciated “Negative Capability" in a letter written to George and Tom Keats.
T. S. Eliot has appreciated Keats for his “Negative Capability” which he calls “impersonality". Therefore, we cannot blindly say that the “I" in Keats' poems is definitely Keats himself.
To be on the safe side it is better to call the person speaking in a creative work “speaker” instead of “poet” or “novelist”, even though the speaker appears to be closer to the writer's own identity. If it is evident that the speaker is a mask, we should call him “persona”.
Personification
A figure of speech in which lifeless objects or ideas are given imaginary life. Examples:-
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu.
(Keats: “Ode on Melancholy”)
Here “Joy” has been imagined as a living person.
“Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?”
(Keats: “To Autumn”)
Autumn has been treated as a living woman.
“There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
(Tennyson: “Ulysses”)
The vessel has been used as a living being.
Plot
In a literary work a plot is the logical arrangement of events designed to excite curiosity or suspense. It is the structure or scheme of a literary work.
Plot and Story
A story differs-from a plot in that a story consists of events which take place one after another according to a time sequence but a plot comprises events which take place as effects of earlier causes.
E. M. Forster has illustrated the difference between a story and a plot with examples in his book, Aspects of the Novel
- The king died and then the queen died (story).
- The king died and then the queen died of grief(plot).
In the first example “then” suggests time sequence-the queen died after the death of the king. In the second example “of grief' suggests cause and “died” suggests effect. Because of the death of the king the queen died. The story maintains time sequence but the plot maintains logic of cause and effect.
Poetic Justice
The natural judgment which gives the wicked his due punishment and the virtuous his due reward.
Point of View
The perspective from which the narrator tells his story. It is also called “viewpoint” or “narrative mode” .There are several types of viewpoints. Of them the following ones are most frequently used:
- First person point of view: In the first person point of view one of the characters of the narrative tells the story in his own person using first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine, we, our, us, etc.). First person narrator participates in the action of the story.
- Third person point of view: In the third person point of view, the narrator is an outer observer without being involved in the action of the story.
It is of two types
- The omniscient point of view;
- Limited omniscient point of view.
Omniscient point of view: In this mode of narrative, the narrator does not participate in the action. He or she is all-knowing and narrates thoughts and feelings of the characters using third person pronouns (he, him, she, her, they, them, it, etc.).
Limited omniscient point of view: In this narrative technique, the narrator tells the story in the third person but his or her knowledge remains limited to the experiences, thoughts and feelings of only one character.
Pun or Paronomasia
A play upon words which are similar in sound but different in meaning. It occurs when a single word conveys two meanings. The title of Hemingway's famous novel, Farewell to Arms has a pun on it.
“Arms” has been used to mean weapons or war and the arms of the beloved or love. Similarly, in the title of Shaw's comedy, Arms and the Man, “arms” is a pun since it means both weapons and love. Here is an often quoted example of pun from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Act III, Scene I): “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”.
The “grave man” may mean a man of grave disposition or a dead man. The word “feet” in the following lines means the metres of verse lines but it also suggests legs.
O yes, I heard them all, and more, too, for some of them had
in them more feet than the verses would bear.
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act III, Scene II)
For my part,I had rather bear with you than bear you. Yet I
should bear no cross if I did bear you, for I think you have
no money in your purse.
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act II, Scene IV)
Touchstone makes fun by punning on the word “bear” which here means 'old coins', 'tolerate', 'carry'-carrying troubles, and even carrying a child in womb.
There is another variety of pun where two words of identical sounds but different spellings are used to convey two different meanings. For examples:
Eat enough and it will make you wise. (Proverb)
Beggars' cries do not reach (arrive at) the rich (the wealthy).
Cashiers check (scrutinize) every cheque (bank instrument) before encashment.
Romanticism
A doctrine of art and literature that involves high imagination, love of nature, spontaneity, simplicity, subjectivity, individuality, supernaturalism, strong revolutionary. desires, subjectivism, and Hellenic aestheticism. It is opposite to classicism or neoclassicism. The French Revolution influenced it.
Romanticism first appeared in the Elizabethan Age; Wordsworth and Coleridge initiated its revival in England in 1798.
The main features of romanticism are elaborated here:-
- High imagination: Romanticism involves high imagination. It seeks an ideal condition for mankind in high soaring imagination. It rejects the fact that writers should be earth-bound, realistic and factual.
- Love of nature: This doctrine has a strong liking for nature both for the beauty of its external objects and for the meanings underlying those objects. It emphasizes sense-perceptions of natural objects and interpretations of the underlying truths of those objects.
- Primitivism or spontaneity: The doctrine advocates for inherent human qualities. It prefers natural, elemental human qualities to those which are artificial.
- Interest in the remote: Romanticism has a nostalgic tendency. It involves the past, especially the ancient myths and medieval legends.
- Simplicity in expression: It supports the use of simple, everyday language and discourages unnecessary use of figures of speech, sonorous words and artificial expressions.
- Revolutionary zeal: It defies social restrictions, opposes harmful traditional beliefs and hopes for an absolutely free society.
- Individualism: Romanticism attaches more importance to an individual than to the society or state. For this reason, subjective perception is very important in it.
- Supernaturalism: Dealing with the unseen and mysterious powers is an important aspect of romanticism.
- Experiment and innovation: Experiments with the literary forms and techniques are a feature of romanticism. In romantic tradition, innovation has been given much importance.
- Art for art's sake: Art for art's sake is the slogan of romanticism.
- Hellenism: The aesthetics of the ancient Greeks, especially the sense of beauty, is also a feature of romanticism.
It should be remembered that all these features are not found in every romantic poet. Blake's poetry reflects simplicity of language and desire for a better society; Wordsworth's poetry is known for love of nature and common man; in Coleridge's poetry supernaturalism is a dominant feature; Keats' poetry reflects Hellenism;
in Shelley and Byron revolutionary zeal is remarkable. What is common in all these poets is high imagination, simple language and sympathy for common people.
There are contradictions among the features of romanticism. It is because romanticism accommodates multiplicity of views.
Round character:-
A round character is usually the main character who changes in course of the narrative of a fictional work of literature.
- The features of a round character are:-
- He or she changes with the progress of the plot;
- He or she is complex in nature;
- He or she plays the role of the protagonist;
In Dickens' Great Expectations, Pip is a round character in that he is complex, plays a main role and keeps on changing. Similarly, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are round characters since they change and play most significant roles in the novel. [see Flat Character]
Simile
A simile is an explicit comparison between two different things. Usually “as” and “like” are used in it. Example:
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain;
(Robert Herrick: “To Daffodils”)
In these lines human life has been compared to summer's rain drops to suggest that a man's life is as brief as a drop of summer's rain that evaporates in no time. Writers use similes very frequently because similes help them suggest their meanings.
Some examples of well-known similes:-
“My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act IV, Scene I)
The analogy between the speaker's wandering and a floating cloud in the following line of Wordsworth's “Daffodils” indicates the aimlessness of the speaker and his dreamy mood:
Soliloquy
A dramatic technique of speaking alone on stage. It is a dramatic technique of exposing to the audience the intentions, thoughts and feelings of á character who speaks to himself while no one remains on stage. For example, four lines of Hamlet's famous soliloquy are quoted below:
Tọ be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I)
A soliloquy is different from an aside. Though, both in a soliloquy and an aside only one character speaks, in an aside some other characters remain present on stage but in a soliloquy none remains on stage. A soliloquy. is also different from a dramatic monologue.
The soliloquy is a dramatic technique but a dramatic monologue is a form of poetry in which a single speaker speaks to a silent listener who responds by physical gestures.
Stanza
A division of a poem. It is a smaller unit of the structure of a poem. However, in some cases, the stanza is a unit of thought of a poem. There are several stanza patterns. They vary according to their number of lines, length of lines and rhyme schemes.
The common English stanza patterns are: Spenserian stanza, quatrain, ottava rima, rhyme royal, terza rima, and tercet.
- Spenserian stanza:
A patten of stanza consisting of nine verse lines of which the first eight are in iambic pentameter and the ninth is in iambic hexameter. Its rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. This stanza pattern is named after Edmund Spenser who first used it in his Faerie Queene.
It is generally used for longer poems, which need grace and felicity in rhythm. Many other later poets have also used this pattern. Here is an example from Keats'
“The Eve of St. Agnes”.
Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,----------a
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;----------b
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;----------a
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees----------b
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:----------b
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,----------c
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,----------b
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,----------c
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.----------c
- Quatrain:
A stanza form which consists of four lines. A' short poem consisting of four lines is also called quatrain. The rhyme scheme of this stanza form may be aaba or aabb or abab or abba or abcb.[see Ballad stanza]
Examples:-
A quatrain in aaba rhyme scheme:
Ah,make the most of what we yet may spend,----------a
Before we too into the Dust descend;----------a
Dust into Dust,and under Dust to lie,----------b
,sans Singer, and sans End! Sans wine,sans Song,----------a
(E. Fitzgerald: Rubaiyat-24)
This stanza form is also known as “Rubaiyat Stanza” or “Omar Stanza”:
A quatrain in aabb rhyme scheme:-
Come live with me and be my love,----------a
And we will all the pleasures prove----------a
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,----------b
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.----------b
(Marlowe: “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”)
A quatrain in abab rhyme scheme:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,----------a
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,----------b
And mark in every face I meet----------a
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.----------b
(William Blake:"London”)
A quatrain in abba rhyme scheme:
Who trusted God was love indeed----------a
And love Creation's final law----------b
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw----------b
With ravine, shrieked againsthis creed----------a
(Tennyson: “In Memoriam” - LVI)
- Ballad Stanza:
A stanza consisting of four lines of which the first and third lines are in iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth lines are in iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is abcb. It is the most common stanza form in English. It is a type of quatrain.
Some poets have, however, used this stanza form with variation of the number of lines. Here is an example of a regular ballad stanza:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,----------a
The furrow followed free;----------b
We were the first that ever burst----------c
Into that silent sea.----------b
(S. T. Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)
- Ottava Rima:
A stanza of eight iambic pentameter lines rhyming abababcc. For example:
That is no country for old men. The young----------a
In one another's àrms, birds in the trees----------b
-Those dying generations-at their song,----------a
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,----------b
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long----------a
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.----------b
Caught in that sensual music all neglect----------c
Monuments of unaging intellect.----------c
(W. B. Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium”)
- Rhyme Royal:
A stanza of seven iambic pentameter lines rhyming ababbcc.
It is also known as Chaucerian Stanza as Chaucer was the first to use it. For example:
They flee from me; that sometime did me seek,----------a
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.----------b
I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,----------a
That now are wild, and do not remember----------b
That sometime they put themselves in danger----------b
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,----------c
Busily seeking with a continual change.----------c
(Thomas Wyatt: “They Flee from Me”)
- Terza Rima:
A three-line stanza interlocked with adjoining stanzas according to the formula aba, bcb, cdc, and so on. The first twelve lines of each section of Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind” are arranged in four terza rima stanzas and the last two linesare a couplet:
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,----------a
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead----------b
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,----------a
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,----------b
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,----------c
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed----------b
The wiged seeds, where they lie cold an low,----------c
Each like a corpse within its grave, until----------d
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow----------c
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill----------d
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)----------e
With living hues and odours plain and hill:----------e
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;----------e
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!----------e
- Tercet:
A three-line verse unit in which all lines rhyme either with each other or with the lines of an adjoining tercet.
Stream of Consciousness
A narrative technique that relates the continuous flow of thoughts and images in the mental process of a character. It is a mode of narrative that records the nonstop impressions of a conscious mind, without maintaining chronology in time and space.
In a conventional narrative method the plot line advances along the time sequence and a coherent structure is-build up. But in stream-of-consciousness mode of narrative, the writer follows the flow of a character's thought process in which countless feelings, observations, sensations or reflections pass endlessly, often jumping from one to the other.
For this reason, sequence in time and space is ignored and traditional linkers are not used in it. The term was first used by William James in his book, The Principles of Psychology (1890).
The stream-of consciousness has been used, among many others, in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), William Faulkner's Sound and the Fury (1929), and Virginia Woolfs Waves (1931). Stream of consciousness is also called “interior monologue”.
Subjectivity
A mode of expression in which information about the writer's personal life finds place. In this type of writing, the writer's likes and dislikes are given importance. It is opposite to objectivity. For example, in Wordsworth's Prelude, one finds that Wordsworth, in his childhood, stole birds, eggs and a boat for childish pleasure.
His poems also reveal that he loved nature and believed that God was present in nature. So, Wordsworth was a subjective poet. But Shakespeare was an objective dramatist because he, in his plays, did never directly say what he was, what he liked or what he disliked.
Symbol
A thing which stands for something else. It is basically an image which, by virtue of recurrent uses, assumes its special meaning. Thus, a rose stands for beauty, a dove for peace, a V-sign for victory, etc. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne “A” is a symbol for adultery.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole or a whole stands for the part. Example:
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
(Pope: The Rape of the Lock)
Here tortoise and elephant (whole) stand for shell and tusk (part) respectively.
“The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
(Shelley: “Ozymandias”)
In this line “sands” stands for desert.
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
(Tennyson: “Ulysses”)
Here “deep” stands for the sea.
Theme
The central idea of a literary work. For example, the major theme of Pride and Prejudice is love, of Othello jealousy and of Hamlet revenge. A work of literature may have several themes. For example, the themes of Great Expectations are: a child's growth to be a gentleman, love, power of money, etc.
Tone
Tone in literature is the attitude or feeling towards the subject or the target audience. An author creates the, intended tone of his writing by the variance of diction, syntax, imagery, figures of speech, etc.
Though the author sets the tone in a poem, the attitude of the speaker is called tone; in a novel the attitude of the narrator is called tone; in a non-fiction writing the attitude of the writer is called tone; and in a drama the attitude of a character reflected in his dialogues is called tone.
Tone may be as many as human feelings. It may be formal or informal, serious or playful, romantic ormatter-of-fact, cynical or sublime, joyful or melancholic, sympathetic or apathetic, arrogant or humble, ironic or sincere, didactic or objective, and the like.
Here is an example from Shelley's “Ozymandias”:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
The tone reflected in these lines is arrogant or proud.
Look at these concluding lines of Wordsworth's “Daffodils”:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
The tone here is sublime and happy.
Hamlet says to Horatio in Hamlet (Act I, Scene V):
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
Here the tone is surprised.
Wit
A brief and brilliant expression intended to produce surprise and pleasure. In Hamlet, Shakespeare says: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”Pope defines it in An Essayon Criticism as:
“True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
Examples:
“No, some of it is for my child's father.”
It is Rosalind's reply to Celia's enquiry about Rosalind's grave mood in Shakespeare's As You Like It (Act I, Scene III).
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