Literary terms in english Literature with Examples

In English Literature there are many Literary Terms. Explore essential literacy terms with clear definitions and examples. Enhance your reading, writing, and comprehension skills by understanding key literary and linguistic concepts.

Alliteration
Repetition of a consonant at the beginning of two or more words or stressed syllables.

Examples:

Here “f” and “b” have been repeated.

More examples:

“Blue, glossy green, and velvet black”
(Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)

In this line “b” “v” and “g” have been repeated. 

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of two or more successive verse lines, clauses, or sentences.

Examples:
     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
                    (Shakespeare: “Sonnet XVIII”)

More examples:

In every cry of every man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear:
            (W. Blake: “London”)

Apostrophe

An address to someone absent or something abstract as if the person or the thing were present. It is often introduced by the exclamation “O”.
O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
 (Shelly: “Ode to the west wind”)

More examples:

“O wretched maid!” She spreads her hands and cried
        (While Hampton’s echoes, “Wretched maid! Replied)

Climax

The peak of importance in a play or in a story. It is the point at which the rise of action ends and the fall of action begins.

Conceit

Comparison between two far-fetched objects of different kinds.
Example:

Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp North, without declining West?
                (The Good-Morrow)

The comparison between two hemispheres and two lovers is an unusual, though provking one, and so, it is a conceit.

Couplet

Two verse lines rhyming together at the end.
Example:

Blow, blow thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act II)

These trimeter lines end with the same sound, “ind”, and thus, they rhyme together.

Epigram

A brief and witty statement which is apparently self-contradictory.
Example:

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought”
               (Shelley: To a Skylark)

Here “sweetest” and “saddest” oppose each other but as we go beneath the surface level, we find that the song the sadder the song the deeper the impression it makes. 

Hyperbole

An exaggerated statement or an extreme overstatement.
Example:

“Ten thousand saw I at a glance”
         (Wordsworth: Daffodils)

Hyperbole is used to create strong emotional response. It can be positive as well as negative. 

Image

“Picture in words”. It is a replica produced in the mind of the reader by sense perception.
For example: “The black cat is now in the dark room” – reflects in our mind a picture of an animal which is not a dog or a tiger or a lion or any other animal but the small animal which is named as cat. We also understand that its colour is black. This picture of the black animal reflected in our mind is an image in this sentence.

Imagery

The collective use of images.

Irony

A statement or a situation or an action which actually means the opposite of its surface meaning.

Metaphor

An implicit comparison between two different things. It is a compressed from of simile.
Example:  “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 simile if the comparison is made explicit: Liza is like a rose.

Meter

The arrangement of “feet” 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 trimeter.
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.

Objectivity

A mode of expression in which the writer’s personal life remains absent from his writing.

Personification

A figure of speech in which lifeless objects or ideas are given imaginary life.
Example:
“Who hath not seen thee oft amid thu store?”
              (Keats: ‘To Autumn’)

Autumn has been treated as a living woman.

Point of view

The perspective form 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 used:

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 this line human life has been compared to summers 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 simile very frequently because similes help them suggest their meanings.

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 a character who speaks to himself while no one remains on stage.

Subjectivity

A mode of expression in which information about the writer’s personal life finds place. In this type of writing, the writer’s like and dislikes are given importance. It is opposite to objectivity.

Symbol

A thing which stands for something else.
Example: A rose stands for beauty, a dove for peace, a V-sign for victory etc.

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.

Tone

Tone in literature is the attitude or feeling towards the subject or the target audience.
Tone may be as many as human feelings. It may be formal or informal, serious or playful, romantic or matter-of-fact, joyful or melancholic etc.