10 Essential Literary Devices for English Learners
There are many ways writers can amplify their writing, but one of my favourite tools is literary devices. I enjoy using them, thinking about them, and reading them. They’re like literary puzzles; readers need to think about what they mean and how they are used. To do this properly, however, you need to know what they are, so here are my top 10 literary devices.
I’ve also included my favourite literary device, and I’ve included an uncommon one.
Exaggerate away: the hyperbole.
When something is exaggerated, which means that it’s made larger than it is, hyperbole is used. It’s a deliberate exaggeration of something. Take this familiar phrase parents use, for example: “I’ve told you a million times to clean up your room, and you still haven’t done it!”
It’s not that your mother or father have actually told you a million times to clean your room because that would seem impossible, but they want to indicate that they’ve told you many times. Still haven’t cleaned my room, though.
Here’s an example of a hyperbole used in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer:
“He knew the taverns well in every town, And every innkeeper and barmaid too / Better than lepers, beggars, and that crew.”
Here, hyperbole is used to exaggerate the Knight’s power. He probably did not know every person in every town, but Chaucer wanted to indicate that he was pretty familiar.
When they’re not there: apostrophe.
Sometimes, speakers in a poem or text might address something that’s not present in the text itself. It could be something that’s dead, inanimate, or simply in a different location. In this case, we have an example of an apostrophe.
Consider the following situation. You’re waiting for a critical phone call, and you’re desperately pacing up and down around your phone. Sometimes, you even scream at your phone: “For the love of all that’s holy, why don’t you just ring?!” That’s right: you’re using the literary device apostrophe.
A very familiar example of an apostrophe is the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet exclaims from her balcony: “Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” She addresses him while he’s not there. Awkward.
One too tricky to pronounce: synecdoche [and metonymy].
The following two literary devices are pretty confusing, and that’s not only because one is impossible to pronounce; they’re closely related to a metaphor but not really the same.
A synecdoche is when a smaller part of something refers to the whole. The common phrase “all hands on deck” is an example of a synecdoche because a smaller part ‘hands’ is used to refer to the whole ‘people’.
A metonymy, however, is used as a form of association, where something is used to refer to something else. In the sentence “The crown was passed on to the new king Charles III”, the crown, which is associated with the monarchy, is used as a metonymy to indicate that the monarchy has been passed on to the next in line.
The idiom “The pen is mightier than the sword” is also an example of metonymy: the pen relates to writing, and the sword refers to fighting.
Synecdoche is pronounced as SI-NEK-DU-KEE, by the way.
The one that makes you smile: simile [and metaphor]
Here are two literary devices used to make comparisons: the metaphor and a simile.
A metaphor is a device in which an author uses something to represent or express something else. In a metaphor, words like as and like are not used. Consider the phrase: “The world is a theatre stage.” is an example of a metaphor.
A simile, on the other hand, is the same as a metaphor. It does use the words like and as to create a direct comparison. Consider: “Her smile is as beautiful as the sun on a hot summer day.” or “Her eyes are as blue as the Caribbean ocean.”
So, the difference between these two lies in the use of words that create a direct comparison.
It’s alive: personification.
My favourite literary device is personification, where human elements are given to something that doesn’t have human elements or characteristics. Personification creates interactions with things that people normally wouldn’t interact with, which makes it a fascinating literary device.
Consider the first two stanzas of Emily Dickinson’s poem Because I could not stop for death:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility.
In this poem, Death and Immortality are personified. The speaker couldn’t stop for Death [death is inevitable], so Death [the person driving the carriage] stopped for her; she died. Immortality was also a passenger of Death’s carriage, considering that immortality is impossible so also always dies.
What do you mean: the allegory.
Our linguistic worlds are filled with allegories, which are stories or poems which, in their entirety, represent something else. A very well-known example of an allegory is Animal Farm by George Orwell. In this novel, the farm represents a Communist society, and the pigs represent Communist dictators.
The Christian Bible is also filled with allegories given by Jesus, and in those cases, the stories are called parables (they’re parables because they contain lessons). Jesus’s allegorical parables are lessons for His listeners packed in a different story.
I didn’t see that coming: anachronism.
Finally, there’s an eleventh literary device that I couldn’t keep hidden: the anachronism. An anachronism is an error in the timeline or storyline of a piece of work. I always describe it as something that is out of place at a particular time, and I always refer to a Starbucks cup of coffee in a television series on the Middle Ages.
Anachronisms are usually an unintentional error by the writer. They might even be careless by not correcting the error. The people at LiteraryDevices.net, however, found that some writers might deliberately use anachronisms to make a point. They give the example of John Keats’s Ode on an Grecian Urn, in which Keats uses the personal pronoun ‘ye’ instead of ‘you’. They explain it as:
“It is an anachronism, but its use here is intentional, as it is used to show the respect that the urn inspires in Keats; hence, produces an artistic effect.” (source)
All in all, literary devices enhance the readers’ experience. They give them something to think about, something readers should let simmer in their minds. Using literary devices can make your work more interesting to read, but overuse might make it rather difficult; unless that’s what you’re looking for, then go for it.
What’s your favourite literary device?
