Example in Hamlet

Literary Terms BY LAUREN NOLAN

Imagery  Imagery is an author’s use of vivid and descriptive language

to add depth to their work.  Example: A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake,

beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way- “Daffodils” William Wordsworth  Example in Hamlet O, that this too too solid flesh would

melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Act I scene ii

Simile  A simile is a comparison of two things using words such as

“like” or “as”.  Example: “She floats down the aisle like a pageant queen”

“Speak Now”- Taylor Swift  Example in Hamlet: "Make thy two eyes, like stars, start

from their spheres” Act II scene ii

Metaphor  A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase

is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.  Example: “Love is a Temple” “One” by U2  Example in Hamlet: "This is th' impostume of much

wealth and peace, that inward breaks and shows no cause without why the man dies.” Act IV scene iv

Personification  Personification is the attribution of human nature or

character to inanimate objects.

 Example: “Pocketful of sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield-

“Pocketful of Sunshine”  Example in Hamlet: So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it

spills itself in fearing to be spilt. Act IV scene iii

Apostrophe  Apostrophe is the addressing of a usually absent person or

a usually personified thing rhetorically.

 Example: Tom Hanks referring to the volleyball, an

inanimate object, in the movie Castaway.  Example in Hamlet: “Let me not think on’t; frailty, thy

name is women” Act I scene ii

Symbol  A symbol is an action, object, or event that expresses or

represents a particular idea or quality.

 Example: The green light in The Great Gatsby symbolizes

new life.  Example in Hamlet: Yorick’s skull in Act V scene i. The

skull is a symbol of death, an important motif throughout the play.

Allegory  Allegory is a story in which the characters and events are

symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation.  Example: The Truman Show is an example of allegory.

Truman makes the decision to get out of the town and not be tied to their private system of merchant law.  Example in Hamlet: The ghost in Act I represents

Hamlet’s father and forces Hamlet to think about death more in depth.

Paradox  A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself

and yet might be true.

 Example: “Everyone can be super. And when everyone’s

super…no one will be” The Incredibles

 Example in Hamlet: “You are the queen, your husband’s

brother’s wife.” Act III scene iv

Hyperbole  Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device

or figure of speech.

 Example: "It seems to me you lived your life like a candle

in the wind” "Candle In the Wind" Elton John

 Example in Hamlet: “O that this too too solid flesh

would melt, thaw and resolve into a dew.” Act I scene ii

Understatement  An understatement is the presentation of something as

being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is.

 Example: “Cannibalism is frowned upon in most

societies.” 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’  Example in Hamlet: “With such dexterity to incestuous

sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good” Act I scene ii

Irony  Irony is a situation that is strange or funny because things

happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected.  Example: “It's like rain on your weddin' day It's a free ride

when you've already paid. It's the good advice that you just didn't take, And who would've thought, it figures” ‘Ironic’ Alanis Morissette  Example in Hamlet: “I am too much in the sun.” Act I

scene ii

Chiasmus  Chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more

clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a lager point.  Example: “Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the

sweaty things.” - Jacquelyn Small.  Example in Hamlet: “Whether love lead to fortune, or

else fortune love.” Act IV scene iii  “To be or not to be” Act III scene i

Metonymy  Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept

is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept.  Example: Referring to royalty as the “crown” is an

example of metonymy.  Example in Hamlet: “I saw him enter such a house of

sale.” Act II scene ii

Synecdoche  Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a term for a part

of something to the whole of something or vice-versa.

 Example: “Our song is a slamming screen door, sneaking

out late.” ‘Our Song’ Taylor Swift  Example in Hamlet: "So the whole ear of Denmark Is by

a forged process of my death Rankly abused." (ear stands for Denmark), Act I, scene v,

Repartee  Repartee is a conversation or speech characterized by

quick, witty comments or replies.

 Example in Hamlet: “One.” “No.” “Judgment.” “A hit, a

very palpable hit.” “Well again.”

Stichomythia  Stichomythia is a dialogue in which two characters speak

alternate lines of verse, used as a stylistic device in ancient Greek drama.

 Example in Hamlet: “Come, come, you answer with an

idle tongue.” “Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.” Act III scene iv

Stock Characters  A stock character is someone based on common literary or

social stereotypes.  Example: An example of a stock character is the school

diva, this is Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl.  Example in Hamlet: Polonius is a stock character. He

represents the older man with former wisdom, and unknowingly through his failures provides comic relief.

Alliteration  Alliteration is repetition of a particular sound in the

stressed syllables of a series of words or phrases.

 Example: Sally sells seashells by the seashore.  Example in Hamlet: "With witchcraft of his wit, with

traitorous gifts” Act I scene v

Assonance  Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create

internal rhyming within phrases or sentences  Example: "I feel the need, the need for speed.” Top Gun  Example in Hamlet: “For in that sleep of death, what

dreams may come” Act I scene i

Consonance  Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant two or

more times in short succession.  Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

 Example in Hamlet: “Thou wretched, rash, intruding

fool, farewell.” Act III scene iv

Rhyme  Rhyme is correspondence of sound between words or the

endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry.  Example: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty

Dumpty had a great fall”  Example in Hamlet: “The play's the thing  Wherein I'll catch the conscious of the King.”  Act II scene ii

Rhythm  Rhythm is a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement

or sound.  Example: In songs, the rhythm is the beat.  Example in Hamlet: Hamlet is written in iambic

pentameter, which gives it rhythm

Meter  Meter is an arranged and measured rhythm in verse:

rhythm that continuously repeats a single basic pattern.

 Example in Hamlet: O that this too too solid flesh would

melt,  Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!  Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d  His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!” Act II scene ii

End-Stopped Line  End-stopped line is a feature in poetry in which the

syntactic unit corresponds in length to the line.  Example: “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?  Thou art more lovely and more temperate.  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,  And summer's lease hath all too short a date.” Sonnet 18

 Example in Hamlet: “Without the which we are pictures,

or mere beasts” Act IV scene v

Run-On Line  Run-on line is when there is no punctuation at the end of

the line.  Example in Hamlet: “Will nothing stick our person to

arraign” Act IV scene v

Caesura  Caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in musical

composition.  Example: To err is human; || to forgive, divine  ~ Alexander Pope  Example in Hamlet: 'To Be, or Not To Be..." Act III

scene i

Free Verse  Free verse is an open form of poetry, it does not use consistent

meter patterns or rhyme or any other musical pattern.

 Example: Some kind of attraction that is neither  Animal, vegetable, nor mineral, a power not  Solar, fusion, or magnetic  And it is all in my head that  I could see into his  And find myself sitting there. ‘Feelings Now’ Katherine Foreman

 Example in Hamlet: "Indeed this counselor / Is now most

still, most secret, and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave” Act III, Scene 4

Iambic Pentameter  Iambic Pentameter is the particular rhythm that the words

establish in that line.

 Example: “But, soft! what light through yonder window

breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” Romeo and Juliet.

 Example in Hamlet: “How noble in reason! how infinite

in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” Act II scene ii

Grammatical/Rhetorical Pauses  A grammatical pause is introduced by s mark of

punctuation and rhetorical pauses are natural pauses.

 Example in Hamlet: “To be or not to be: that is the

question: whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer” Act III scene i

Concluding Couplet  Concluding couplet is a pair of end-rhymed lines of verse  Example in Hamlet:  “Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,  Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.”  Act I.ii