Poetic Devices

It's important to be able to recognise and analyse poetic devices when studying literature at any level. Dylan Thomas is my favourite poet, and he uses so many that I decided to take most of my examples from his writings.

A simile is just a comparison using the word 'like' or 'as', such as 'I sang in my chains like the sea' or 'happy as the grass was green'. A metaphor treats an object or person as if it is something else to make the comparison more vivid, as in 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower'. If you prefer Churchill to Thomas, Russia is 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'.

Personification goes one step further and treats an inanimate object as if it were a person with human habits, as in 'It is night, moving in the streets'. Irony takes many forms, but its most well known form is shown in the famous opening line of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' The joy of this quotation (and of irony in general) is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. To Mrs Bennett (and anyone else who values marrying off her daughters more than anything else in the world), this is a simple statement of fact. To Mr Bennett (and anyone else who believes there are far more important things in life), it is funny because it is such a ridiculous exaggeration. Dramatic irony is a kind of foreshadowing, where the audience or reader knows more than the characters, usually when we are told something in advance. The classic example of this is in a horror film, when we see the axe murderer in the loft, but the blonde cheerleader still climbs the rickety staircase to see what's wrong. Shouting at the TV won't do any good, she's just a victim of dramatic irony. We also use irony to describe a situation that's the last thing we would expect, such as 'Water, water, everywhere,| Nor any drop to drink'. Alanis Morissette even wrote a song about it, although she actually quotes examples of incongruity rather than irony. Now that's ironic!

Rhyme is fairly easy to spot when the ending of one word matches that of another, eg 'night' and 'light', but it is useful to be able to map out the rhyme scheme of a poem by giving each different sound at the end of a line a different letter, eg the rhyme scheme of a limerick is aabba. There are also a couple of variations that often introduce a discordant note into a lot of 20th century poetry: an eye-rhyme is a pair of words whose endings look the same but sound different, eg 'wove' and 'love', and a 'half-rhyme' involves two words that share the same consonants but different vowel sounds, eg 'frowned' and 'friend'.

The rhythm of a poem is often not obvious, but it's worth becoming familiar with the two main types of meter, or rhythmic pattern. The first is based on the number of beats to a line. A beat is simply a syllable that is given extra stress, and the obvious example is again the limerick. It doesn't matter how many syllables the lines have as long as the number of beats is 3, 3, 2, 2 and 3. The second is more common and is based on the number of syllables. Each line is divided into a number of metrical 'feet', each of which has one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables in a particular order. Shakespeare wrote almost all his plays and poetry in iambic pentameter, as he thought that best matched the natural rhythm of English. All it means is that there are five feet in each line, each containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, eg 'From fairest creatures we desire increase'. You can also have dactylic, trochaic or anapaestic feet if you so desire!

Metonymy and synecdoche are both examples of a part standing for the whole. There are many variations, but an obvious example is 'the crown' standing for the monarchy. It is only what the king or queen wears, but it has come to stand for royalty or government in general.

An allegory is a story that works on two levels. In the days of William Langland's Piers Plowman, religion was a far greater part of people's lives, and priests and their congregations would be more familiar with interpreting texts on many different levels: the literal, the metaphorical, the spiritual, the tropological, the anagogical and the allegorical! Just be thankful times have changed. Alliteration is often the simplest technique to identify but the most difficult to talk about. It is simply the repetition of the first letter in two or more words, usually but not always right next to one another, eg 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light.' Yes, we know it's there, but what can we say about it? I'll leave that for you to decide.

Assonance is similar to alliteration, but it's the vowel sounds that are repeated. The classic examples are from 19th century elocution lessons, such as 'How now, brown cow?' or 'The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain'. Onomatopoeia is the choice of words that sound like the actual sounds they represent, such as 'crash, bang, wallop'.

Enjambment describes a line of poetry that doesn't end with any punctuation, such as a comma or full-stop, eg 'Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs|About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green'. The tricolon or rule of three appeals to a uniquely human penchant for listing things in threes. If you want someone to blame for starting it all off, you won't go far wrong with Julius Caesar and 'veni, vidi, vici'.

An oxymoron is a paradox, or something that appears to be a contradiction, such as 'military intelligence'. It is usually meant as a joke or a surprising truth, but one or two have now become clichés, such as 'deafening silence'.

Repetition is again something that's easy to spot but difficult to talk about. It is simply the repeated use of a word or phrase to add emphasis, eg 'Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.'

These are just a sample of the most important poetic devices. If you still want more, try reading a little Dylan Thomas. If 'the dogs in the wet-nosed yards' catch your eye, you can congratulate yourself on spotting a rare example of the transposed epithet!

Enjoy.