Literary devices are the techniques writers use to make language do more than state facts: to make it sound a certain way, put a picture in the reader's mind, or mean two things at once. Metaphor, imagery, alliteration, irony and enjambment are all literary devices. Some work across a whole novel, like foreshadowing; in poetry most work at close range, inside a line or a single word.
Each of the thirty below comes with lines from a poem and what the device does in them. For persuasive devices such as antithesis, see rhetorical devices.
Literary devices at a glance
| Group | Devices | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| GroupSound | DevicesAlliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, end rhyme, internal rhyme, slant rhyme | What they doMake the words echo each other, so the ear hears connections |
| GroupRhythm and the line | DevicesMeter, enjambment, caesura, anaphora, refrain | What they doSet the pace: where the reader speeds up, pauses and hears something return |
| GroupImage and comparison | DevicesImagery, simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, personification, synesthesia, symbol, metonymy, synecdoche | What they doPut things in front of the senses, or show one thing in terms of another |
| GroupMeaning and tone | DevicesAllusion, irony, paradox, oxymoron, hyperbole, juxtaposition | What they doMake words mean more than, or other than, what they say |
| GroupVoice and address | DevicesApostrophe, dramatic monologue, volta | What they doDecide who speaks, to whom, and where the poem changes its mind |
Sound devices in poetry
Poems are written for the ear first. Sound devices repeat sounds so that words seem to belong together, and they make a line feel fast or slow, harsh or soft.
1. Alliteration
The same consonant sound at the start of nearby words, usually on stressed syllables. It binds the words together.
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Two sounds do the work: the hum of /m/ three times in the first line, then six hard /d/ sounds in the second, starting with the “dom” Hopkins splits off “kingdom” at the line break. The soft sound hovers and the hard one drives, so the lines hover and then rush, the way the bird does.
2. Assonance
Repeated vowel sounds in nearby words, without the consonants matching. Repeated long vowels slow a line and make it sound sung.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Listen for one vowel sound, the long i (/aɪ/), whatever the spelling: night, tide, I, lie, side, my, life, bride. Five spellings carry one sound. The vowel keeps coming back the way the tide does, and the speaker keeps coming back to the grave.
3. Consonance
Repeated consonant sounds inside or at the ends of words, not only at the start.
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
Listen for sounds, not letters. The /p/ runs through tap, pane, sharp and spurt; the /t/ through tap, spurt and lighted. The /k/ is spelled three ways: “qu” and “ck” in quick, “c” in scratch. Those small, hard sounds are the noise of a knock on glass and a match being struck.
4. Onomatopoeia
A word that imitates the sound it names, such as buzz, hiss or murmur, or a phrase whose sounds imitate the thing.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
“Stuttering,” “rattle” and “patter” sound like gunfire, and Owen puts that noise where the funeral bell and the prayers (orisons) should be.
5. End rhyme
Matching sounds at the ends of lines, from the last stressed vowel onward. ABAB means the first and third lines rhyme, and the second and fourth.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Day and way, lea and me: each line waits for its partner, and the last rhyme lands on the speaker, alone in the dark.
6. Internal rhyme
A rhyme inside a line, usually between a word in the middle and the word at the end.
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
Showers and flowers, shade and laid: each long line rhymes with itself before it ends, so the poem patters like the rain the cloud is bringing.
7. Slant rhyme
Words whose sounds nearly match, such as faces and houses. Also called near rhyme or half rhyme, it sounds less formal than full rhyme.
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
Day and grey rhyme fully; faces and houses only nearly. The looser rhyme keeps the opening casual, like an ordinary evening, before the poem turns to the rising that changed those people.
Rhythm and the line
A poem decides where every line ends. These devices work on the line: how many beats it holds, where it pauses, what comes back.
8. Meter
A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common meter in English is iambic pentameter, five iambs (da-DUM) to a line. The guide to meter in poetry covers every foot and how to scan a line.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
shall I | com-PARE | thee TO | a SUM | mer's DAY: five beats, each on the second syllable of its pair, so the line sounds like speech with a steady pulse under it.
9. Enjambment
Running a sentence past the end of a line with no pause, so the meaning hangs across the break. Its opposite is the end-stopped line, which ends where a phrase ends, as every line of Gray's stanza above does.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
The second line ends on a flat “it will never,” and for a moment that sounds like a denial. The next line turns it into a promise: never pass into nothingness.
10. Caesura
A pause inside a line, usually marked by punctuation. A pause in the middle balances a line; one near the start or end jolts it.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
The semicolon splits the line into two halves that answer each other. The comma before “divine” adds a second, smaller pause, so the last word stands alone.
11. Anaphora
The same word or phrase at the start of successive lines. The guide to repetition covers its relatives.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
…
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
The first line asks a question, and the anaphora is the answer: each “I love thee” is one more way, counted off.
12. Refrain
A line or phrase that returns at intervals, usually at the end of each stanza. Because the reader expects it, any change carries weight.
End of the first stanza: She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said;
She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!’
End of the last stanza: Then said she, ‘I am very dreary,
He will not come,’ she said;
She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!’
After six stanzas of “He cometh not,” the refrain becomes “He will not come.” A report has turned into a conclusion, and a wish into a prayer.
Imagery and figurative language
Imagery puts things in front of the reader's senses. Figurative language presents one thing in terms of another.
13. Imagery
Language that appeals to the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, temperature and movement. Concrete detail lets the reader experience a scene instead of being told about it.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Smell, sound and sight in four lines, with no comment. Teasdale published the poem during the First World War, and its point, that spring will return whether or not people survive, lands because the images came first.
14. Simile
A comparison made openly with “like” or “as,” which keeps the two things visibly separate.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
A real ship compared to a picture of one: the simile makes the calm unnatural, as if the whole world had been painted and stopped.
15. Metaphor
A comparison that treats one thing as another, without “like” or “as.” An implied metaphor never names the second thing outright. The analogy vs metaphor guide sets it beside its neighbors.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
“Cat” appears once, as an adjective. After that the fog simply behaves like one: it sits, it watches, it leaves when it likes.
16. Extended metaphor
A metaphor developed over several lines or a whole poem, with each new detail drawn from the same source. The extended metaphor guide has more examples, including the conceit.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang;
The speaker is a tree in late autumn, and the bare branches are an empty church. The next quatrains swap in a day after sunset and a fire burning down, each image a shorter span of time than the last, so the poem's time runs out the way the speaker's does.
17. Personification
Giving human qualities, actions or feelings to something that isn't human.
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
London at dawn becomes a sleeper with a heart at rest. A view of rooftops turns into a living body, caught between breaths.
18. Synesthesia
Describing one sense in terms of another: a loud color, a sweet sound, light that has weight.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons,
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Winter light presses down like the “Heft,” the weight, of church music. Sight becomes pressure, and pressure becomes sound, so the reader feels the light as a weight on the chest.
19. Symbol
An object or image that stands for something beyond itself, without the poem saying what. A metaphor names both halves; a symbol names one.
O Rose, thou art sick:
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Read literally, it is about a pest in a garden. The “bed / Of crimson joy” and the “dark secret love” make the rose stand for something human, spoiled from inside. Blake never says what, so the reader has to supply it, and the poem stays open.
20. Metonymy
Naming something by a thing closely associated with it, as “the crown” means the monarch.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Sceptre and crown stand for kings; scythe and spade for the people who work the land. Four objects say that death levels every rank.
21. Synecdoche
A part standing for the whole, or the whole for a part: “hands” for workers, “wheels” for a car.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Prufrock doesn't wish to be a crab. He wishes to be only its claws: pure scuttling motion, with no self left to feel awkward.
Devices of meaning and tone
These make words mean more than, or other than, what they say. Each depends on the reader catching something.
22. Allusion
A brief reference to a person, place, event or text outside the poem, which the poet expects the reader to know.
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Keats borrows an explorer's first sight of the Pacific for his first reading of Homer in George Chapman's translation. He named the wrong explorer (it was Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in 1513, who first saw the Pacific from Darien), and the allusion works anyway: the reader feels a new world opening, which is what Keats says reading Homer felt like.
23. Irony
A gap between what is said and what is meant, or between what is expected and what happens. In verbal irony the words mean the opposite of what they say, as when Mark Antony keeps calling Brutus “an honourable man.” Situational irony is a reversal of events, and has its own page of situational irony examples.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains.
The inscription was meant to make rival kings despair. With nothing left around it but sand, it makes the reader despair of permanence instead. The words haven't changed; the situation has.
24. Paradox
A statement that seems to contradict itself but turns out to hold a truth.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
…
The Child is father of the Man;
A child can't father a man, but the man is made from the child he was, and Wordsworth hopes to keep that child's wonder.
25. Oxymoron
Two contradictory words joined in one phrase. The oxymoron examples page has more than a hundred.
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the Meanings are.
“Heavenly Hurt” is pain that comes from somewhere holy, and it leaves no mark. The same winter light from the synesthesia example above is both a blessing and a wound.
26. Hyperbole
Deliberate exaggeration, not meant to be taken literally.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
No gunshot is heard around the world. Emerson wrote the hymn for an 1837 monument at Concord, Massachusetts, where militia fought British troops in April 1775, and the exaggeration measures what followed.
27. Juxtaposition
Placing two things side by side so the reader compares them. The glossary entry on juxtaposition shows it at the scale of scenes and whole books.
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Two processions, one stanza apart: shoulder-high in triumph, then shoulder-high to the grave. Housman adds no comment; the repeated “shoulder-high” does the grieving.
Devices of voice and address
Who is speaking, to whom, and where the poem changes its mind.
28. Apostrophe
Addressing someone absent or dead, or something that can't answer, such as an object, an idea or the sun.
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Donne scolds the sun like a nosy neighbor for waking two lovers, and argues with it for three stanzas until the lovers' bed is the center the sun must circle: “This bed thy centre is.”
29. Dramatic monologue
A poem spoken by a character, not the poet, to a listener who never speaks. The speaker reveals more than they mean to.
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
The speaker, usually identified as Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, shows a visitor a portrait and lets slip that his wife smiled too freely for his taste. “I gave commands” is as close as he comes to saying what he did about it.
30. Volta
The turn in a poem, especially a sonnet, where the argument or mood shifts. A Petrarchan sonnet usually turns at line 9; a Shakespearean sonnet often saves its turn for the final couplet. The sonnet guide shows where to place a turn in your own.
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts.
The blind poet's complaint runs for seven and a half lines. The turn comes early, in the middle of line 8, at “But Patience,” so it sounds as if he interrupts himself, and the rest of the sonnet is the answer.
How devices work together
Devices rarely appear one at a time. Tennyson's six-line “The Eagle,” first published in 1851, uses at least eight of the thirty:
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
- Alliteration: clasps, crag, crooked, close.
- Personification: “hands”; the sea “crawls.”
- Hyperbole: “Close to the sun.”
- Imagery: crag, azure sky, a sea wrinkled by distance.
- Metaphor: the cliffs are “his mountain walls.”
- Simile: “like a thunderbolt.”
- End rhyme: one rhyme per stanza (AAA, BBB).
- Meter: iambic tetrameter.
None of it is decoration. The first stanza is stillness, built from hard /k/ sounds and a bird that grips. The second ends on the poem's one sudden movement: “falls.”
Mistakes when analyzing devices
Four mistakes come up again and again in essays on poems:
- Naming without explaining. “Line 3 uses alliteration” earns little. Say what the sound does to the meaning, pace or mood.
- Mixing up near neighbors. Alliteration repeats first sounds; consonance repeats them anywhere in a word. Coincidence is not irony.
- Treating every echo as a choice. Three words starting with the same sound may be chance. Discuss a device when it lines up with what the poem is doing.
- Stacking devices in your own draft. A stanza with four devices at once reads as a demonstration. In prose the same habit turns into purple prose.
Analysis that works
- Owen fills the line with t and r sounds so the rifles stutter in the reader's mouth, which is the only funeral these soldiers get.
- Tennyson changes the refrain once, at the end, so the reader feels Mariana's hope give out.
Analysis that only labels
- Owen uses onomatopoeia and alliteration in line 3.
- Tennyson uses a refrain to create emphasis.
To check your own draft against the list, select a stanza and ask the Strokes Assistant which devices it uses and what each does there. It can mishear a sound, so read the lines aloud before you trust its answer on rhyme or alliteration.
Practice: name the device
These lines are original, written for this guide. Name the main device in each, then check the answers.
- The kettle sulks on the back burner, refusing to boil.
- Slow snow on the stone road home.
- The city council finally heard the street.
- O Monday, why do you always arrive before I'm ready?
- The fastest way to finish the draft was to stop writing it for a week.
- Forty new faces walked into the plant that morning.
- Personification: a kettle can't sulk or refuse.
- Assonance: one long o sound (/oʊ/) in slow, snow, stone, road and home, spelled three ways (ow, o-e, oa).
- Metonymy: “the street” stands for the people who live and work on it.
- Apostrophe: addressing a day of the week.
- Paradox: stopping sounds like the opposite of finishing, but the week away is what got the draft done.
- Synecdoche: faces stand for whole new workers.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most common literary devices in poetry?
The ones you will meet most often are imagery, metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, enjambment, repetition and symbol. Most poems use several at once: Tennyson's six-line "The Eagle" uses at least eight. In an essay, pick the two or three that do the most work in your poem rather than listing every one you can find.
What is the difference between a literary device and a figure of speech?
A figure of speech is one kind of literary device: a use of words beyond their literal meaning, such as metaphor, simile, hyperbole or metonymy. Literary devices also include sound devices like alliteration, structural ones like enjambment and refrain, and story-level ones like foreshadowing and point of view.
How many literary devices are there?
There is no fixed number. Classical rhetoric named hundreds of figures, and lists for students often run from twenty to fifty. The thirty on this page are the ones you are most likely to need for poems; story-level devices such as foreshadowing and frame stories add more for fiction and drama.
