Literary Terms for English I

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” –William Shakespeare

• simile
• metaphor
• anaphora
• hyperbole

“I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.”

• metaphor
• consonance
• simile
• anaphora

"The hungry night devours the daylight, leaving the world with nothing." 

• anaphora
• epistrophe
• personification
• onomatopoeia

“He cried all night, and dawn found him still there, though his tears had dried and only hard, dry sobs shook his wooden frame. But these were so loud that they could be heard by the faraway hills…”

• onomatopoeia
• anaphora
• hyperbole
• nonsense words

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

• anaphora
• nonsense words
• alliteration
• illiteration

“Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile
Whether Jew or gentile, I rank top percentile
Many styles, more powerful than gamma rays
My grammar pays, like Carlos Santana plays.”

• consonance
• anaphora
• onomatopoeia
• nonsense words

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,

• sound words
• onomatopoeia
• assonance
• hyperbole

“Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark!
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, ‘cock-a-diddle-dow!'”

• nonsense words
• hyperbole
• simile
• onomatopoeia

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses, And all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

• simile
• onomatopoeia
• rhyme
• sound devices

“Five years have passed;
Five summers, with the length of
Five long winters! and again I hear these waters…”

• anaphora
• repetitional stuff
• onomatopoeia
• simile