Literary Devices

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Alliteration

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Repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line.

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Assonance

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Repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme.

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Consonance

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A literary device that repeats the same consonant sounds in adjacent or nearby words, like the –ck sound in tick tock or the n sound in lone ranger. The shared sound can come anywhere in the word—the beginning, middle, or end.

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Tone

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The Point of View of the writer. Tells readers how the writer feels about the text and establishes narrative voice so the reader understands the words and also their meaning.

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Metaphor

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A comparison that is made directly or less directly without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”

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Onomatopoeia

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A figure of speech in which a word imitates the sound associated with an action or an object, effectively mimicking the sound it describes. Used in poetry to create an auditory effect that mirrors the thing being described, which makes the description more vivid.

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Personification

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A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person.

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Simile

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A comparison (see Metaphor) made with “as,” “like,” or “than.”

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Imagery

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Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. Specifically, using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions.

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Parallelism

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A figure of speech which uses repetition to emphasize or connect ideas in poetry. It can involve repeating words, phrases, sentences, or even stanzas with similar grammatical structures.