Don’t forget about: film metalanguage *see Insight text book for more 

Figurative Language – In literature: a way of saying one thing and meaning something else. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns, My luv is a red, red rose. Mr. Burns does not really mean the literal meaning here: that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, many-petalled, long, thorny-stemmed plant. His intention suggests a figurative meaning: He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a rose.  Note: While, figurative language provides a writer with the opportunity to write imaginatively, it also tests the imagination of the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into deep, hidden meanings. 

  

The Figurative Language of Literature

 Note: Literary is different to literal. Literary refers to literature (the world of writing); literal refers to language meaning.  

• Allegory – A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings.
• Allusion – A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work.
• Metaphor – A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words “like” or “as.”
• Simile – A figure of speech which takes the form of a comparison between two unlike quantities for which a basis for comparison can be found, and which uses the words “like” or “as” in the comparison, as in this line from Ezra Pound’s “Fan-Piece, for Her Imperial Lord:”clear as frost on the grass-bade,In this line, a fan of white silk is being compared to frost on a blade of grass. Not the use of the word “as.”
• Parody – A literary work that imitates the style of another literary work. A parody can be simply amusing or it can be mocking in tone, such as a poem which exaggerates the use of alliteration in order to show the ridiculous effect of overuse of alliteration.
• Personification – A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human characteristics.
• Pun – A play on words wherein a word is used to convey two meanings at the same time. The line below, spoken by Mercutio in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” is an example of a pun. Mercutio has just been stabbed, knows he is dying and says:

Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.

Mercutio’s use of the word “grave’ renders it capable of two meanings: a serious person or a corpse in his grave.

• Symbolism – A device in literature where an object represents an idea.
• Imagery – A word or group of words in a literary work that appeals to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work.
• Irony – Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony
• Hyperbole – A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs

o       Foreshadowing – In drama, a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Romeo’s expression of fear in Act 1, scene 4 foreshadows the catastrophe to come:

I fear too early; for my mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels and expire the term

Of a despised life closed in my breast

By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

But He that hath the steerage of my course,

Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.

• Oxymoron – A combination of contradictory terms, such as used by Romeo in Act 1, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet:”

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

      heavy lightness, serious vanity;

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

 

(A Feather of lead? bright smoke? cold fire? sick health?!)

  

Terms that deal with Sound

 

• Onomatopoeia – A literary device wherein the sound of a word echoes the sound it represents. The words “splash.” “knock,” and “roar” are examples.
• Imagery – A word or group of words in a literary work that appeals to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work.
• Alliteration – Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group
• Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem.