“Maggie and milly and molly and may” is written in the tone and style of a nursery rhyme and is marked by both its skillful use of alliteration and its complex end-line and internal rhymes. Nursery rhymes do not all share a single poetic form or meter, but they are generally marked by their use…
Tag: Literary Devices
The Lamb by William Blake – Poetic Devices – Setting
“The Lamb” consists of two ten-line stanzas which pose a question and give an answer. Each stanza has five pairs of rhyming couplets, where the end word of one line rhymes with the next. Note that Blake often repeats a word to create this rhyme, creating a type of refrain, and twice employs the slant…
An Arundel Tomb – Literary Devices
Rhyme The poem is rhymed and follows a regular rhyme-scheme of abbcac; that is, line 1 (designated a) rhymes with line 5; line two (designated b) rhymes with line 3; and line 4 (designated c) rhymes with line 6. Most of the rhymes are perfect, or true rhymes, in that the sounds correspond exactly to…
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant – Literary Devices – Symbolism
Naturalism The generation of French authors before Maupassant, including such figures as Honore´ de Balzac and Maupassant’s mentor Gustave Flaubert, aimed at realism: the depiction of everyday life in realistic terms. This was opposed to the earlier Romantic movement, which emphasized the fantastic and the exotic, in language as well as in subject matter. E´mile…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Literary Devices
Verisimilitude Most commonly, when reading short stories and novels, readers are expected to treat the material as though it were factual, to pretend—even with stories involving space travel or vampires—that the events described in the story actually happened. Readers sometimes describe this experience as being ‘‘caught up’’ in a story. They come to trust a…
A Mystery of Heroism – Irony – Realism – Literary Devices
Irony Crane’s work often makes use of irony (a contradiction between what appears to be, or what one expects, and reality). In this story there are many ironic elements. First of all, the story of a man’s journey through heavy artillery fire to get a drink of water is in itself ironic. In a story…
The Medicine Bag – Symbolism, Characterization
Characterization ‘‘The Medicine Bag’’ includes examples of both rounded and flat characters, sometimes also referred to as dynamic and static characters. A rounded or dynamic character in a story is one who changes and grows from the beginning to the end, whereas a flat or static character remains essentially the same throughout. Martin and Grandpa…
Marigolds by Eugenie W. Collier – Symbolism, Metaphor, Literary Devices
Memoir Collier tells the story in the style of a memoir, that is, in first person, as if she is speaking directly to the reader. Use of the words ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘my’’ and ‘‘we’’ make the story more personal, more emotional than it would be if told in the third person or in the style…
How Much Land Does A Man Need? – Folktale, Foreshadowing & Irony
Folktale ‘‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’’ is Tolstoy’s retelling of a folktale. A folktale is a prose story usually of unknown authorship that is handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth or in writing. Folktales are found in all human cultures. Many folktales contain the devil as a character who…
House Taken Over – Literary Devices
Unreliable First-Person Narrator The unnamed first-person narrator in this story is characterized not by what he does but by what he says, thinks, and feels. The reader experiences all of the events in the story through this lens. The reader understands Irene and her actions only through her brother’s opinions. While this creates a sense…