Literary Figures

Literary Figures

ALLITERATION Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or accented syllables. Sara Teasdale uses allitera-tion in the second stanza of her poem “Under¬standing”:
But you I never understood,
Your spirit’s secret hides like gold
Sunk in a Spanish galleon
Ages ago in waters cold.
Poets and other writers use alliteration to link and to emphasize ideas as well as to create pleasing, musical sounds.

ANALOGY An analogy is a comparison be¬tween two unlike things. The purpose of an analogy is to describe something unfamiliar by pointing out its similarities to something that is familiar. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” on page 468, Walt Whitman makes an analogy be¬tween a spider weaving its web and the soul seeking connections with things outside itself. See Metaphor and Simile.

ANAPEST     See Meter.

ASSONANCE Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in conjunction with dissimilar con¬sonant sounds. Emily Dickinson uses asso¬nance in the line “The mountain at a given distance.” The i sound is repeated in the words given and distance, in the context of the dissimilar   consonant sounds g-v and d-s.

BLANK VERSE Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. An lamb is a poetic foot consisting of one weak stress fol¬lowed by one strong stress. A pentameter line is a line of five poetic feet. Robert Frost’s “Birches,” on page 924, is written in blank verse.

CATALOG A catalog is a list of people, places, or things in a literary work. In the following example from “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life,” Walt Whitman records what he sees along the shore:
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood,
weeds, and the sea-gluten.
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves
of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.
Whitman often used catalogs in his verse to suggest the fullness, diversity, and scope of American life or of the human experience.

CONNOTATION     A connotation is an associa¬tion that a...