Basic Terms
Basic Terminology
Meter is the dominant rhythmic pattern found in a particular verse form, determined in English poetry by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables running through lines. Meter helps produce rhythm (which verse always has) and sometimes rhyme (which verse may not have, as in the case of blank verse).
Device is the word we use to describe any rhetorical Figure or flourish (otherwise known as “figurative language”) that Shakespeare deploys in his works. Like many poets of his time, Shakespeare was aware of the formal tricks that Greek and Roman poets used; his adoption and innovative use of Figures or Devices help set the tone of his works and also show his skill as a poet.
More on Poetic Devices
Devices that create Imagery:
Metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche combine within works to create system of mental pictures that we refer to as imagery. Imagery can help underline themes and define characters, giving extra emotional power to scenes and action.
These devices affect how readers/listeners respond to a subject or concept by making it loom larger or shrink in quality.
Chiasmus and Antimetabole are catchy, for one thing, and more significantly, show off a speaker’s verbal dexterity; the use of either device also emphasizes an important distinction or parallel of some sort between the two items that are inverted and set apart therein.
• Oxymoron: a phrase that blends contrasting or seemingly incompatible ideas or things. Petrarch,
for instance, frequently refers to “freezing fires.” An oxymoron evokes feelings of strangeness and can shock readers/listeners out of complacency through contrast and paradox, a claim that seems to be in opposition to common sense, but may in fact have some truth in it.
• Zeugma: This device involves linking multiple things to a common action; using a single verb for more than one subject allows a poet to preserve meter and create other effects in sound and meaning.
- Metaphor/simile: Comparisons made directly (metaphor: “my mistress’ cheeks are roses in bloom”) or using “like” or “as” (simile: “my mistress’ cheeks are like roses in bloom”). They allow readers to see more than the lines say by helping create a mental image linking something complex or abstract to something more familiar. The use of metaphors and similes can help underline significant themes within works. An extended metaphor in a poem is called a Conceit.
- Metonymy (MET-AHN-UMY): the use of an emotionally associated object for an idea (“the white house” to refer to the U.S. Government; “the throne” to refer to the English monarch).
- Synecdoche (SIN-ECK-DOH-KEY): similar to metonymy, synecdoche is the use of specific parts of something to refer to the whole: (calling your car your “wheels,” asking for somebody’s “hand” in marriage)
- Personification: This device involves giving animals or objects human qualities (“the moon looked down upon us” or “the ship groaned”)
- Apostrophe: An Apostrophe is a direct address to a quality or abstract idea as if it were present to hear the address (as in “Death, thou shalt die!” in Donne’s poem “Death be not Proud” or “Frailty, thy name is woman!” in Hamlet).
- Allegory: Allegory is an extended metaphor that typically involves naming a person after an abstract quality, such as Miranda in The Tempest (Miranda means “wonder”), or giving an abstract quality human form. For instance, Shakespeare’s goddess of Love in Venus and Adonis functions allegorically, in that all of Venus’ qualities are those the poem attributes to love as an emotion or thing.
These devices affect how readers/listeners respond to a subject or concept by making it loom larger or shrink in quality.
- Hyperbole/Litotes (LIE-TOE-TEES): Hyperbole is an exaggeration, and Litotes is an intentional understatement. “This is the best [or worst] pie ever!” vs. “This pie ain’t half bad!”
- Adynaton (A-DIN-NUH-TON): Adynaton is a kind of Hyperbole that gets its meaning and effect from its sheer impossibility. When somebody says you’ll get to do something “over their dead body,” they’re using Hyperbole because they are by referring to an unlikely, though possible, scenario. If somebody tells you you’ll get to do something “when pigs fly,” however, they’re using Adynaton, since the scenario is neither likely nor even possible.
- Systrophe: Systrophe is the listing of multiple qualities or effects of something. For example, Hamlet notes “What a piece of work is man,” and then goes on to amplify that claim by offering (in the form of questions) various ways in which man is a piece of work: he’s “noble,” “infinite in faculty, in forme and mouing,” “expresse and admirable,” “in Action….like an Angel,” “in apprehension…like a God,” “the beauty of the world, the Parragon of Animals” (2.2.294-297-8).
These devices play on the way words sound together and affect how the ear hears the words in the poem.
- Onomatopoeia (ON-NO-MAH-TOE-FEE-UH): words meant to evoke sounds. The device is used to help audiences visualize images (and for audiences of drama, actions that aren’t actually happening on stage) by appealing to their sense of hearing.
- Alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds, as in “dig deep” and “much more” in Sonnet two. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within words in a line. Think of “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” Consonance is the same device except that the final consonant sounds are repeated, as in a poem wherein the words bed, brewed, and broached appear and gain prominence.
- Caesura (SAY-SURE-UH): a break in a line that creates a pause/silence. Typically indicates strong emotion, used for emphasis.
- Paronomasia (PAIR-OH-NO-MAY-SHIA): This device revolves around homophones or similar sounding words. Mercutio uses it in Romeo and Juliet when he says “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man,” punning on two senses of the word “grave.”
- Antimeria (AN-TIM-AREA): The use of one part of speech as if it were another. Often, Antimeria takes the form of a noun getting used as a verb, as in the claims “I went to Hawaii and got lei’d,” and “They got tired after Wii’ing all day,” or the idea that somebody can “ham it up” or “summer in Cabo”).
These devices emphasize concepts by way of their grammatical structure and syntax (word order), often linking concepts together, noting distinctions between concepts, or both.
- Anaphora (UH-NAF-OR-UH) /Antistrophe (AN-TIS-TRO-FEE): Repetition of words at beginnings of lines (anaphora) or end of lines (antistrophe). They are used to emphasize a point or a word or to cue amplification/accumulation.
- Antinaclasis (AN-TIN-ACK-LUH-SIS): This device occurs when poets repeat a word or word form but use a sense in the second instance that overturns or negates the first construction. Famous coach Vince Lombardi gives us a great example of the device in modern usage: “If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.” Shakespeare uses it in lines 2 and 3 of Sonnet 116, when his speaker tell us that "Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds."
- Antithesis: Antithesis in the context of poetry does not mean "opposite"! It is a device that emphasizes ideas or words by placing them in a balanced, repetitive/ parallel construction. In contrast to Chiasmus, the repetition of phrases or ideas occurs in the same order or using the same grammatical construction. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus uses Antithesis when he justifies his murder by saying he did it “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”
- Chiasmus (KEY-AS-MUS)/Antimetabole (AN-TI-MET-TAB-OH-LEE): Chiasmus involves consecutive grammatical constructions in which one clause is followed by a second construction (whether a line or clause) that uses the same construction with the words and ideas conveyed therein in inverted order:
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strong loves. (Othello 3.3)
Antimetabole is a more specific kind of Chiasmus in which the exact words are inverted; examples include “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” “Hang on, Sloopy, Sloopy Hang on,” and “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
If something has a Chiastic structure, you can draw an ‘X’ (Greek letter Chi) to connect the ideas that are similar but placed structurally in opposition.
• Oxymoron: a phrase that blends contrasting or seemingly incompatible ideas or things. Petrarch,
for instance, frequently refers to “freezing fires.” An oxymoron evokes feelings of strangeness and can shock readers/listeners out of complacency through contrast and paradox, a claim that seems to be in opposition to common sense, but may in fact have some truth in it.
• Zeugma: This device involves linking multiple things to a common action; using a single verb for more than one subject allows a poet to preserve meter and create other effects in sound and meaning.
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