Literary and poetic devices

Allegory

Allegory is the expression of abstract concepts through concrete artistic images.

Examples of allegory:

The stupid and stubborn are often called the Donkey, the coward - the Hare, the cunning - the Fox.

Alliteration (sound writing)

Alliteration (sound writing) is the repetition of identical or homogeneous consonants in a verse, giving it a special sound expressiveness (in versification). Wherein great importance has a high frequency of these sounds in a relatively small speech area.

However, if entire words or word forms are repeated, as a rule, we are not talking about alliteration. Alliteration is characterized by irregular repetition of sounds, and this is precisely the main feature of this literary device.

Alliteration differs from rhyme primarily in that the repeating sounds are not concentrated at the beginning and end of the line, but are absolutely derivative, albeit with high frequency. The second difference is the fact that, as a rule, consonant sounds are alliterated. The main functions of the literary device of alliteration include onomatopoeia and the subordination of the semantics of words to associations that evoke sounds in humans.

Examples of alliteration:

"Where the grove neighs, guns neigh."

"About a hundred years
grow
we don't need old age.
Year to year
grow
our vigor.
Praise,
hammer and verse,
land of youth."

(V.V. Mayakovsky)

Repeating words, phrases, or combinations of sounds at the beginning of a sentence, line, or paragraph.

For example:

“The winds did not blow in vain,

It wasn’t in vain that the storm came.”

(S. Yesenin).

The black-eyed girl

Black-maned horse!

(M. Lermontov)

Quite often, anaphora, as a literary device, forms a symbiosis with such a literary device as gradation, that is, increasing the emotional character of words in the text.

For example:

“Cattle die, a friend dies, a man himself dies.”

Antithesis (opposition)

Antithesis (or opposition) is a comparison of words or phrases that are sharply different or opposite in meaning.

Antithesis makes it possible to make a particularly strong impression on the reader, to convey to him the strong excitement of the author due to the rapid change of concepts of opposite meanings used in the text of the poem. Also, opposing emotions, feelings and experiences of the author or his hero can be used as an object of opposition.

Examples of antithesis:

I swear by the first day of creation, I swear by its last day (M. Lermontov).

He who was nothing will become everything.

Antonomasia

Antonomasia is an expressive means, when used, the author uses a proper name instead of a common noun to figuratively reveal the character of the character.

Examples of antonomasia:

He is Othello (instead of "He is very jealous")

A stingy person is often called Plyushkin, an empty dreamer - Manilov, a person with excessive ambitions - Napoleon, etc.

Apostrophe, address

Assonance

Assonance is a special literary device that consists of repeating vowel sounds in a particular statement. This is the main difference between assonance and alliteration, where consonant sounds are repeated. There are two slightly different uses of assonance.

1) Assonance is used as an original tool that gives an artistic text, especially poetic text, a special flavor. For example:

Our ears are on top of our heads,
A little morning the guns lit up
And the forests are blue tops -
The French are right there.

(M.Yu. Lermontov)

2) Assonance is widely used to create imprecise rhyme. For example, “hammer city”, “incomparable princess”.

One of the textbook examples of the use of both rhyme and assonance in one quatrain is an excerpt from the poetic work of V. Mayakovsky:

I won’t turn into Tolstoy, but into a fat man -
I eat, I write, I’m a fool from the heat.
Who hasn't philosophized over the sea?
Water.

Exclamation

An exclamation can appear anywhere in a work of poetry, but, as a rule, authors use it to intonationally highlight particularly emotional moments in the verse. At the same time, the author focuses the reader’s attention on the moment that particularly excited him, telling him his experiences and feelings.

Hyperbola

Hyperbole is a figurative expression containing an exorbitant exaggeration of the size, strength, or significance of an object or phenomenon.

Example of a hyperbole:

Some houses are as long as the stars, others as long as the moon; baobabs to the skies (Mayakovsky).

Inversion

From lat. inversio - permutation.

Changing the traditional order of words in a sentence to give the phrase a more expressive shade, intonation highlighting of a word.

Inversion examples:

The lonely sail is white
In the blue sea fog... (M.Yu. Lermontov)

The traditional order requires a different structure: A lonely sail is white in the blue fog of the sea. But this will no longer be Lermontov or his great creation.

Another great Russian poet, Pushkin, considered inversion one of the main figures of poetic speech, and often the poet used not only contact, but also remote inversion, when when rearranging words, other words are wedged between them: “ Submissive to Perun old man alone..."

Inversion in poetic texts performs an accent or semantic function, a rhythm-forming function for building a poetic text, as well as the function of creating a verbal-figurative picture. In prose works, inversion serves to place logical stresses, to express the author’s attitude towards the characters and to convey their emotional state.

Irony is a powerful means of expression that has a hint of mockery, sometimes slight mockery. When using irony, the author uses words with opposite meanings so that the reader himself guesses about the true properties of the described object, object or action.

Pun

A play on words. A witty expression or joke based on the use of words that sound similar but have different meanings or different meanings of one word.

Examples of puns in literature:

In a year, for three clicks on your forehead,
Give me some boiled spelt.
(A.S. Pushkin)

And the verse that served me before,
A broken string, a verse.
(D.D. Minaev)

Spring will drive anyone crazy. The ice – and it started to move.
(E. Meek)

The opposite of hyperbole, a figurative expression containing an exorbitant understatement of the size, strength, or significance of any object or phenomenon.

Example of litotes:

The horse is led by the bridle by a man in big boots, in a short sheepskin coat, in big mittens... and he himself is as tall as a fingernail! (Nekrasov)

Metaphor

Metaphor is the use of words and expressions in a figurative sense based on some kind of analogy, similarity, comparison. Metaphor is based on similarity or resemblance.

Transferring the properties of one object or phenomenon to another based on their similarity.

Examples of metaphors:

A sea of problems.

The eyes are burning.

Desire is boiling.

The afternoon was blazing.

Metonymy

Examples of metonymy:

All flags will be visiting us.

(here flags replace countries).

I ate three plates.

(here the plate replaces the food).

Address, apostrophe

Oxymoron

A deliberate combination of contradictory concepts.

Look, she has fun being sad

So elegantly naked

(A. Akhmatova)

Personification

Personification is the transference of human feelings, thoughts and speech to inanimate objects and phenomena, as well as to animals.

These signs are selected according to the same principle as when using metaphor. Ultimately, the reader has a special perception of the described object, in which the inanimate object has the image of a certain living being or is endowed with qualities inherent in living beings.

Impersonation examples:

What, a dense forest,

Got thoughtful
Dark sadness
Foggy?

(A.V. Koltsov)

Be careful of the wind
Came out of the gate

Knocked on the window
Ran across the roof...

(M.V.Isakovsky)

Parcellation

Parcellation is a syntactic technique in which a sentence is intonationally divided into independent segments and highlighted in writing as independent sentences.

Parcelation example:

“He went too. To the store. Buy cigarettes” (Shukshin).

Periphrase

A paraphrase is an expression that conveys the meaning of another expression or word in a descriptive form.

Examples of paraphrase:

King of beasts (instead of lion)
Mother of Russian rivers (instead of Volga)

Pleonasm

Verbosity, the use of logically unnecessary words.

Examples of pleonasm in everyday life:

In the month of May (suffice it to say: in May).

Local aborigine (suffice it to say: aborigine).

White albino (suffice it to say: albino).

I was there personally (suffice it to say: I was there).

In literature, pleonasm is often used as a stylistic device, a means of expression.

For example:

Sadness and melancholy.

Sea ocean.

Psychologism

An in-depth depiction of the hero’s mental and emotional experiences.

A repeated verse or group of verses at the end of a song verse. When a refrain extends to an entire stanza, it is usually called a chorus.

A rhetorical question

A sentence in the form of a question to which no answer is expected.

Or is it new for us to argue with Europe?

Or is the Russian unaccustomed to victories?

(A.S. Pushkin)

Rhetorical appeal

An appeal addressed to an abstract concept, an inanimate object, an absent person. A way to enhance the expressiveness of speech, to express an attitude towards a particular person or object.

Rus! where are you going?

(N.V.Gogol)

Comparisons

Comparison is one of the expressive techniques, when used, certain properties that are most characteristic of an object or process are revealed through similar qualities of another object or process. In this case, such an analogy is drawn so that the object whose properties are used in comparison is better known than the object described by the author. Also, inanimate objects, as a rule, are compared with animate ones, and the abstract or spiritual with the material.

Comparison example:

Then my life sang - howled -

It hummed like an autumn surf -

And she cried to herself.

(M. Tsvetaeva)

A symbol is an object or word that conventionally expresses the essence of a phenomenon.

The symbol contains a figurative meaning, and in this way it is close to a metaphor. However, this closeness is relative. The symbol contains a certain secret, a hint that allows one to only guess what is meant, what the poet wanted to say. The interpretation of a symbol is possible not so much by reason as by intuition and feeling. The images created by symbolist writers have their own characteristics; they have a two-dimensional structure. In the foreground there is a certain phenomenon and real details, in the second (hidden) plane there is the inner world of the lyrical hero, his visions, memories, pictures born of his imagination.

Examples of symbols:

Dawn, morning - symbols of youth, the beginning of life;

Night is a symbol of death, the end of life;

Snow is a symbol of cold, cold feeling, alienation.

Synecdoche

Replacing the name of an object or phenomenon with the name of a part of this object or phenomenon. In short, replacing the name of a whole with the name of a part of that whole.

Examples of synecdoche:

Native hearth (instead of “home”).

A sail floats (instead of “a sailboat floats”).

“...and it was heard until dawn,
how the Frenchman rejoiced..." (Lermontov)

(here “French” instead of “French soldiers”).

Tautology

Repetition in other words of what has already been said, which means it does not contain new information.

Examples:

Car tires are tires for a car.

We have united as one.

A trope is an expression or word used by the author in a figurative, allegorical sense. Thanks to the use of tropes, the author gives the described object or process a vivid characteristic that evokes certain associations in the reader and, as a result, a more acute emotional reaction.

Types of trails:

Metaphor, allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, irony.

Default

Silence is a stylistic device in which the expression of a thought remains unfinished, is limited to a hint, and the speech that has begun is interrupted in anticipation of the reader’s guess; the speaker seems to announce that he will not talk about things that do not require detailed or additional explanation. Often the stylistic effect of silence is that unexpectedly interrupted speech is complemented by an expressive gesture.

Default examples:

This fable could be explained more -

Yes, so as not to irritate the geese...

Gain (gradation)

Gradation (or amplification) is a series of homogeneous words or expressions (images, comparisons, metaphors, etc.) that consistently intensify, increase or, conversely, reduce the semantic or emotional significance of the conveyed feelings, expressed thoughts or described events.

Example of ascending gradation:

I do not regret, do not call, do not cry…

(S. Yesenin)

In sweetly misty care

It will not take an hour, not a day, not a year.

(E. Baratynsky)

Example of descending gradation:

He promises him half the world, and France only for himself.

Euphemism

A neutral word or expression that is used in conversation to replace other expressions that are considered indecent or inappropriate in a given case.

Examples:

I'm going to powder my nose (instead of going to the toilet).

He was asked to leave the restaurant (instead, He was kicked out).

A figurative definition of an object, action, process, event. An epithet is a comparison. Grammatically, an epithet is most often an adjective. However, other parts of speech can also be used, for example, numerals, nouns or verbs.

Examples of epithets:

Velvet skin, crystal ringing.

Repeating the same word at the end of adjacent segments of speech. The opposite of anaphora, in which words are repeated at the beginning of a sentence, line, or paragraph.

“Scallops, all scallops: a cape made of scallops, scallops on the sleeves, epaulettes made of scallops...” (N.V. Gogol).

Poetic devices are an important part of a beautiful, rich poem. Poetic techniques significantly help to make the poem interesting and varied. It is very useful to know what poetic techniques the author uses.

Poetic devices

Epithet

An epithet in poetry is usually used to emphasize one of the properties of the described object, process or action.

The term is of Greek origin and literally means “applied.” At its core, an epithet is a definition of an object, action, process, event, etc., expressed in artistic form. Grammatically, an epithet is most often an adjective, but other parts of speech, such as numerals, nouns, and even verbs, can also be used as an adjective. Depending on their location, epithets are divided into prepositional, postpositional and dislocational.

Comparisons

Comparison is one of the expressive techniques, when used, certain properties that are most characteristic of an object or process are revealed through similar qualities of another object or process.

Trails

Literally, the word “trope” means “turnover” translated from Greek. However, the translation, although it reflects the essence of this term, cannot reveal its meaning even approximately. A trope is an expression or word used by the author in a figurative, allegorical sense. Thanks to the use of tropes, the author gives the described object or process a vivid characteristic that evokes certain associations in the reader and, as a result, a more acute emotional reaction.

Tropes are usually divided into several types depending on the specific semantic connotation on which the word or expression was used in a figurative sense: metaphor, allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, irony.

Metaphor

Metaphor is an expressive means, one of the most common tropes, when, based on the similarity of one or another characteristic of two different objects, a property inherent in one object is assigned to another. Most often, when using metaphor, authors, to highlight one or another property of an inanimate object, use words whose direct meaning serves to describe the features of animate objects, and vice versa, revealing the properties of an animate object, they use words whose use is typical for describing inanimate objects.

Personification

Personification is an expressive technique in which the author consistently transfers several signs of animate objects onto an inanimate object. These signs are selected according to the same principle as when using metaphor. Ultimately, the reader has a special perception of the described object, in which the inanimate object has the image of a certain living being or is endowed with qualities inherent in living beings.

Metonymy

When using metonymy, the author replaces one concept with another based on the similarity between them. Close in meaning in this case are cause and effect, material and a thing made from it, action and tool. Often the name of its author or the owner's name for ownership is used to identify a work.

Synecdoche

A type of trope, the use of which is associated with changes in quantitative relationships between objects or objects. Thus, the plural is often used instead of the singular, or vice versa, a part instead of the whole. In addition, when using synecdoche, the genus can be designated by the name of the species. This expressive means is less common in poetry than, for example, metaphor.

Antonomasia

Antonomasia is an expressive means in which the author uses a proper name instead of a common noun, for example, based on the presence of a particularly strong character trait in the character cited.

Irony

Gain or Gradation

When using this expressive means, the author places theses, arguments, thoughts, etc. as their importance or persuasiveness increases. Such a consistent presentation makes it possible to greatly increase the significance of the thought expressed by the poet.

Contrast or antithesis

Contrast is an expressive means that makes it possible to make a particularly strong impression on the reader, to convey to him the strong excitement of the author due to the rapid change of concepts of opposite meaning used in the text of the poem. Also, opposing emotions, feelings and experiences of the author or his hero can be used as an object of opposition.

Default

By default, the author intentionally or involuntarily omits some concepts, and sometimes entire phrases and sentences. In this case, the presentation of thoughts in the text turns out to be somewhat confusing and less consistent, which only emphasizes the special emotionality of the text.

Exclamation

Inversion

To give the tongue literary work For greater expressiveness, special means of poetic syntax are used, called figures of poetic speech. In addition to repetition, anaphora, epiphora, antithesis, rhetorical question and rhetorical appeal, inversion (Latin inversio - rearrangement) is quite common in prose and especially in versification.

The use of this stylistic device is based on the unusual order of words in a sentence, which gives the phrase a more expressive connotation. The traditional construction of a sentence requires the following sequence: subject, predicate and attribute standing before the designated word: “The wind drives the gray clouds.” However, this word order is characteristic, to a greater extent, of prose texts, and in poetic works there is often a need for intonational emphasis on a word.

Classic examples of inversion can be found in Lermontov’s poetry: “A lonely sail turns white / In the fog of the blue sea...”. Another great Russian poet, Pushkin, considered inversion one of the main figures of poetic speech, and often the poet used not only contact, but also remote inversion, when, when rearranging words, other words are wedged between them: “The old man obedient to Perun alone...”.

Alliteration

Alliteration refers to a special literary device consisting of the repetition of one or a number of sounds. In this case, the high frequency of these sounds in a relatively small speech area is of great importance. For example, “Where the grove neighs the guns neigh.” However, if entire words or word forms are repeated, as a rule, there is no question of alliteration. Alliteration is characterized by irregular repetition of sounds, and this is precisely the main feature of this literary device. Usually the technique of alliteration is used in poetry, but in some cases alliteration can also be found in prose. So, for example, V. Nabokov very often uses the technique of alliteration in his works.

The main functions of the literary device of alliteration include onomatopoeia and the subordination of the semantics of words to associations that evoke sounds in humans.

Assonance

Assonance is understood as a special literary device consisting in the repetition of vowel sounds in a particular statement. This is the main difference between assonance and alliteration, where consonant sounds are repeated. There are two slightly different uses of assonance. Firstly, assonance is used as an original tool that gives an artistic text, especially poetic text, a special flavor.

For example,
“Our ears are on top of our heads,
A little morning the guns lit up
And the forests are blue tops -
The French are right there." (M.Yu. Lermontov)

Secondly, assonance is quite widely used to create imprecise rhyme. For example, “hammer city”, “incomparable princess”.

In the Middle Ages, assonance was one of the most commonly used methods of rhyming poetry. However, both in modern poetry and in the poetry of the past century one can quite easily find many examples of the use of the literary device of assonance. One of the textbook examples of the use of both rhyme and assonance in one quatrain is an excerpt from the poetic work of V. Mayakovsky:

“I won’t turn into Tolstoy, but into the fat one -
I eat, I write, I’m a fool from the heat.
Who hasn't philosophized over the sea?
Water."

Anaphora

Anaphora is traditionally understood as a literary device such as unity of command. In this case, most often we are talking about repetition at the beginning of a sentence, line or paragraph of words and phrases. For example, “The winds did not blow in vain, the storm did not come in vain.” In addition, with the help of anaphora one can express the identity of certain objects or the presence of certain objects and different or identical properties. For example, “I’m going to the hotel, I hear a conversation there.” Thus, we see that anaphora in the Russian language is one of the main literary devices that serve to connect the text. The following types of anaphora are distinguished: sound anaphora, morpheme anaphora, lexical anaphora, syntactic anaphora, strophic anaphora, rhyme anaphora and strophico-syntactic anaphora. Quite often, anaphora, as a literary device, forms a symbiosis with such a literary device as gradation, that is, increasing the emotional character of words in the text.

For example, “Cattle die, a friend dies, a man himself dies.”

As you know, the word is the basic unit of any language, as well as the most important component of its artistic means. Proper Use vocabulary largely determines the expressiveness of speech.

In context, a word is a special world, a mirror of the author’s perception and attitude to reality. It has its own metaphorical precision, its own special truths, called artistic revelations; the functions of vocabulary depend on the context.

Individual perception of the world around us is reflected in such a text with the help of metaphorical statements. After all, art is, first of all, the self-expression of an individual. The literary fabric is woven from metaphors that create an exciting and emotionally affecting image of a particular work of art. Additional meanings appear in words, a special stylistic coloring, creating a unique world that we discover for ourselves while reading the text.

Not only in literary, but also in oral, we use, without thinking, various techniques artistic expression to give it emotionality, persuasiveness, imagery. Let's figure out what artistic techniques there are in the Russian language.

The use of metaphors especially contributes to the creation of expressiveness, so let's start with them.

Metaphor

It is impossible to imagine artistic techniques in literature without mentioning the most important of them - the way of creating a linguistic picture of the world based on meanings already existing in the language itself.

The types of metaphors can be distinguished as follows:

Fossilized, worn out, dry or historical (bow of a boat, eye of a needle).
Phraseologisms are stable figurative combinations of words that are emotional, metaphorical, reproducible in the memory of many native speakers, expressive (death grip, vicious circle, etc.).
Single metaphor (eg homeless heart).
Unfolded (heart - “porcelain bell in yellow China” - Nikolay Gumilyov).
Traditionally poetic (morning of life, fire of love).
Individually-authored (sidewalk hump).

In addition, a metaphor can simultaneously be an allegory, personification, hyperbole, periphrasis, meiosis, litotes and other tropes.

The word “metaphor” itself means “transfer” in translation from Greek. In this case, we are dealing with the transfer of a name from one item to another. For it to become possible, they must certainly have some similarity, they must be adjacent in some way. A metaphor is a word or expression used in a figurative meaning due to the similarity of two phenomena or objects in some way.

As a result of this transfer, an image is created. Therefore, metaphor is one of the most striking means of expressiveness of artistic, poetic speech. However, the absence of this trope does not mean the lack of expressiveness of the work.

A metaphor can be either simple or extensive. In the twentieth century, the use of expanded ones in poetry is revived, and the nature of simple ones changes significantly.

Metonymy

Metonymy is a type of metaphor. Translated from Greek, this word means “renaming,” that is, it is the transfer of the name of one object to another. Metonymy is the replacement of a certain word with another based on the existing contiguity of two concepts, objects, etc. This is the imposition of a figurative word on the direct meaning. For example: “I ate two plates.” Mixing of meanings and their transfer are possible because objects are adjacent, and the contiguity can be in time, space, etc.

Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a type of metonymy. Translated from Greek, this word means “correlation.” This transfer of meaning occurs when the smaller is called instead of the larger, or vice versa; instead of a part - a whole, and vice versa. For example: “According to Moscow reports.”

Epithet

It is impossible to imagine the artistic techniques in literature, the list of which we are now compiling, without an epithet. This is a figure, trope, figurative definition, phrase or word denoting a person, phenomenon, object or action with a subjective

Translated from Greek, this term means “attached, application,” that is, in our case, one word is attached to some other.

The epithet differs from a simple definition in its artistic expressiveness.

Constant epithets are used in folklore as a means of typification, and also as one of the most important means of artistic expression. In the strict sense of the term, only those whose function is words in a figurative meaning, in contrast to the so-called exact epithets, which are expressed in words in a literal meaning (red berries, beautiful flowers), belong to tropes. Figurative ones are created when words are used in a figurative meaning. Such epithets are usually called metaphorical. Metonymic transfer of name may also underlie this trope.

An oxymoron is a type of epithet, the so-called contrasting epithets, forming combinations with defined nouns of words that are opposite in meaning (hateful love, joyful sadness).

Comparison

Simile is a trope in which one object is characterized through comparison with another. That is, this is a comparison of different objects by similarity, which can be both obvious and unexpected, distant. It is usually expressed using certain words: “exactly”, “as if”, “similar”, “as if”. Comparisons can also take the form of the instrumental case.

Personification

When describing artistic techniques in literature, it is necessary to mention personification. This is a type of metaphor that represents the assignment of properties of living beings to objects inanimate nature. It is often created by referring to such natural phenomena as conscious living beings. Personification is also the transference of human properties to animals.

Hyperbole and litotes

Let us note such techniques of artistic expression in literature as hyperbole and litotes.

Hyperbole (translated as “exaggeration”) is one of the expressive means of speech, which is a figure with the meaning of exaggeration of what is being said. we're talking about.

Litota (translated as “simplicity”) is the opposite of hyperbole - an excessive understatement of what is being discussed (a boy the size of a finger, a man the size of a fingernail).

Sarcasm, irony and humor

We continue to describe artistic techniques in literature. Our list will be complemented by sarcasm, irony and humor.

Sarcasm means "tearing meat" in Greek. This is evil irony, caustic mockery, caustic remark. When using sarcasm, a comic effect is created, but at the same time there is a clear ideological and emotional assessment.
Irony in translation means “pretense”, “mockery”. It occurs when one thing is said in words, but something completely different, the opposite, is meant.
Humor is one of the lexical means of expressiveness, translated meaning “mood”, “disposition”. Sometimes entire works can be written in a comic, allegorical vein, in which one can sense a mocking, good-natured attitude towards something. For example, the story “Chameleon” by A.P. Chekhov, as well as many fables by I.A. Krylov.

The types of artistic techniques in literature do not end there. We present to your attention the following.

Grotesque

The most important artistic techniques in literature include the grotesque. The word "grotesque" means "intricate", "bizarre". This artistic technique represents a violation of the proportions of phenomena, objects, events depicted in the work. It is widely used in the works of, for example, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The Golovlevs,” “The History of a City,” fairy tales). This is an artistic technique based on exaggeration. However, its degree is much greater than that of a hyperbole.

Sarcasm, irony, humor and grotesque are popular artistic techniques in literature. Examples of the first three are the stories of A.P. Chekhov and N.N. Gogol. The work of J. Swift is grotesque (for example, Gulliver's Travels).

What artistic technique does the author (Saltykov-Shchedrin) use to create the image of Judas in the novel “Lord Golovlevs”? Of course it's grotesque. Irony and sarcasm are present in the poems of V. Mayakovsky. The works of Zoshchenko, Shukshin, and Kozma Prutkov are filled with humor. These artistic techniques in literature, examples of which we have just given, as you can see, are very often used by Russian writers.

Pun

A pun is a figure of speech that represents an involuntary or deliberate ambiguity that arises when used in the context of two or more meanings of a word or when their sound is similar. Its varieties are paronomasia, false etymologization, zeugma and concretization.

In puns, the play on words is based on homonymy and polysemy. Anecdotes arise from them. These artistic techniques in literature can be found in the works of V. Mayakovsky, Omar Khayyam, Kozma Prutkov, A.P. Chekhov.

Figure of speech - what is it?

The word "figure" itself is translated from Latin as " appearance, outline, image." This word has many meanings. What does this term mean in relation to artistic speech? Syntactic means of expression related to figures: questions, appeals.

What is a "trope"?

“What is the name of an artistic technique that uses a word in a figurative sense?” - you ask. The term “trope” combines various techniques: epithet, metaphor, metonymy, comparison, synecdoche, litotes, hyperbole, personification and others. Translated, the word "trope" means "turnover". Literary speech differs from ordinary speech in that it uses special turns of phrase that embellish the speech and make it more expressive. Different styles use different means of expression. The most important thing in the concept of “expressiveness” for artistic speech is the ability of a text or a work of art to have an aesthetic, emotional impact on the reader, to create poetic pictures and vivid images.

We all live in a world of sounds. Some of them evoke positive emotions in us, others, on the contrary, excite, alarm, cause anxiety, calm or induce sleep. Different sounds evoke different images. Using their combination, you can emotionally influence a person. Reading works of literature and Russian folk art, we perceive their sound especially keenly.

Basic techniques for creating sound expressiveness

Alliteration is the repetition of similar or identical consonants.
Assonance is the deliberate harmonious repetition of vowels.

Alliteration and assonance are often used simultaneously in works. These techniques are aimed at evoking various associations in the reader.

Technique of sound recording in fiction

Sound painting is an artistic technique that is the use of certain sounds in a specific order to create a certain image, that is, a selection of words that imitate the sounds of the real world. This reception in fiction used in both poetry and prose.

Types of sound recording:

Assonance means “consonance” in French. Assonance is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in a text to create a specific sound image. It promotes the expressiveness of speech, it is used by poets in the rhythm and rhyme of poems.
Alliteration - from This technique is the repetition of consonants in a literary text to create some sound image, in order to make poetic speech more expressive.
Onomatopoeia is the transmission of auditory impressions in special words reminiscent of the sounds of phenomena in the surrounding world.

These artistic techniques in poetry are very common; without them, poetic speech would not be so melodic.

Lexical devices of modern poetry. Realities, vernacular, jargon, prosaisms, archaisms, terms. Stylization: historical stylization and historical poetry.
Examples of lexical devices. Modern poetic techniques, part 5.

Poetic dictionary.

Modern poetic devices, part 5

Poetry is impossible without figurative speech, i.e. speech is lively (not clerical), bright, expressive, and has aesthetic value. The selection of vocabulary plays a big role in creating figurative speech, i.e. a specific layer of words from the entire vast context of the language, a layer that is organically suitable for fulfilling the author’s task when writing a specific work. You should not assume that it does not matter what vocabulary and in what context is used in poems: each layer of language has its own coloring and its own effect when used, especially if words from different layers of vocabulary are combined in the context. This is what they are based on lexical devices in poetry - the conscious use of certain layers of language in works and the variation of their combinations in context.
Each poet above the average level has his own individual author's style, a special creative style - this is what distinguishes him even among those who write in the same vein and makes him recognizable. Typical lexical devices for a particular author to a large extent help this recognition, individuality.
In poetry, the following lexical devices are used to create expression::

Realities

Realities are purely modern life concepts, signs of everyday life, cultural facts, political life, significant recent events, etc.; a lexical device that helps to establish a close emotional connection between the author and the contemporary reader:

Where the days melt away at stops.
Where is not “Stop tap”, but “Delete”.
(Alexey Torkhov)

Mentioned in in this example the word “Delete” is known to absolutely all computer users, which includes the majority of poetry fans.

Vernacular.

Colloquialism is a lexical device based on the use of folk colloquial words and expressions that impart a character of ease and rough humor:

Yes, good Polyakov, laziness is our mother.
But there is no limit to a clever word.
For the horse mackerel of all Taurida to understand?
He chews his own food, biting every now and then.
(Stanislav Minakov)

Poets love to inadvertently twist a colloquial expression into the context of high style. When it is appropriate in tone, mood of the work and content, the lexical device of using vernaculars emphasizes natural course colloquial speech. However, unfortunately, the use of vernacular and vulgarisms - especially in parodies and humorous works - is often “overdone”, trying to “be closer to the people.” It looks tasteless and primitive.

Local color.

Local flavor - the introduction of elements characterizing local life, customs, nature, etc., including characteristic local words.
“Whose words are combined into speech like an amber low” (Stanislav Minakov) - the Ukrainian word “low” (beads, necklace) is used here.

At least for the duration of the verse,
The movements of a living thing across the sky, across the sky,
Let us be saved from the powerful embrace of sin,
Leaving the day - its anger and malice.
(Ibid.)

Ukrainian “zrada” means “treason, betrayal.”

I had it for myself. And she grew up big.
And you appeared, so great -
knocked me off my thoughts, off my feet, off my path and off my pantalyk.
And so I live, with a torn soul.
(Elena Buevich)

Here the author uses a Ukrainian phraseological unit, which also has a colloquial sound and means “to confuse.” Colloquialism, a lively and expressive word, very inherent in everyday Ukrainian speech, moreover, in the same series of enumerations with a literal rather than figurative meaning (knock down), contributes to the strong expressive coloring of this piercing lyrical poem.
The Russian lyrics of Ukraine are very characterized by the use of local realities and Ukrainianisms (“surzhikov” words formed from a Russian root according to Ukrainian grammatical norms, or words that sound the same in both languages, but have accents in different places):

Oh, it’s fun on the river!
Dangled a towel
Until the pimply water - the hair of the hands - willows A...
And in rye stripes -
Sets hair on fire
A dahlia flame on a steep forehead!
(Igor Litvinenko)

The lexical device of local color can help achieve several goals at once: creating spiritual closeness with readers - representatives of a given linguistic community that uses these realities; introduction of the reader - a native of other places into a specific language environment, familiarization with interesting features speech in a given area, which allows you to “plunge into live speech”; and also - sometimes - creating a light comic effect, - for example, in last years In the Russian poetry of Ukraine, a clearly visible tendency to write satirical or political poetry in the so-called “Ukr-Rus” (Mikhail Perchenko’s term) appeared. Those. combine lines in Russian and Ukrainian in one poem, as well as sentences of a mixed type (with words from two languages and with the author’s new formations in Surzhik).

Ukrainomovny, do not shout the words Rus!
Russian-speaking, don’t be afraid and don’t be afraid!
I put my shoulders under the future.
Yes, I undertake to recreate unity:
Rus', Ukraine, Belarus –
Slavic unity of strength and speech.
(Mikhail Perchenko “Ukr-Russian language”)

“Don’t blurt out” - in Ukrainian “don’t be afraid”, “maybutne” - “future”.

Jargonisms.

Jargons are words from the lexical layer used by different social groups: youth, criminal elements, social lower classes, etc.

This is such a whim. Such a fool.
Doesn't let you sleep, crushes you like a dose.
I would like to become a horse. Dear Sivka-Burka.
And rush you away from mirrors and prose.
(Alexey Torkhov)

Goose, shout, goose, shout.
Cheerful, shout, little gander!
While the owner, growing gloomy towards night,
I didn't hook you.
Until the prunes hit the goose...
(Stanislav Minakov)

The lexical technique of using jargon in these specific cases clearly gives the poems a strong modern effect, although - I warn you - of course, there is always the danger of “overplaying”, of using too much, which can damage the impression of the work.

Prosaisms.

Prosaisms are expressions from everyday, clerical, scientific and other prosaic vocabulary, used in a poem as externally foreign elements, but with an internal motivation of validity and plot integrity:

“I asked every morning about the uselessness of the day” (Elena Morozova), “I signed the landscape with a turquoise willow branch, / So it’s March redeemed my travel ticket until spring" (Lyudmila Nekrasovskaya). The lexical technique of using prosaisms requires the author to have a developed sense of language and the ability to combine it with high style. For an author who does not possess these properties, arbitrarily introduced prosaisms reduce the high sound and give the situation a touch of absurdity and comedy, even when we are talking about romantic and pathetic things. More details here: .

Stylization.

Stylization is the reproduction of the features of the style of another era, literary movement, writing style, features of the language of a particular social class or nationality:

On the! The hammer struck his right hand on the table,
And the face of the rival intellectual was blown away.
And what? We recently tucked into our belts
Two candidates of science from apartments eight and thirty!..
(Stanislav Minakov)

It seems to us like a hoof shot:
“Tug-taritam. Tug-taritam."
(Svetlana Skorik)

And this is an excerpt from my poem-dilogy “Trizna”, from the cycle “Polovchanka”. I used stylization for Turkic languages and at the same time for the clatter of horse hooves (although the latter is already a technique of onomatopoeia).

In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the film “The Diamond Arm”, where actor Andrei Mironov very similarly imitates English language, without uttering a single phrase in English.

A common technique in plot poetry is historical stylization.
A good example of historical stylization is Lyudmila Nekrasovskaya’s poem “The Storehouse of Fire,” which is plot-related to the ban on love for the priestesses serving the Fire Temple. The heroine of the poem - the high priestess of the temple - has to make a life choice: either a calling, or finding a loved one, moreover, with the help of bribery. Bringing into the plot problems and ideas inherent in modern times, without interfering with the description historical era, helps the author’s main idea - to consider in an original way situations encountered in life:

The Storage of Fire is your path.
Don't you know, O Great One,
What is it that you are not allowed to love?
If the wrath of your angry gods,
Like the gardener, it foretells death,
I prefer novices to love,
Because I can have a family with her.

However, the technique of historical stylization does not require the author to have good knowledge of historical realities, settings, culture, or reproduction of details of events, therefore such poetry should be distinguished from historical poetry as such.

The crowd was streaming into the Ides of March.
Look, Spurinna: the Ides have begun!
Pompey laughs in the statue like an idol:
Oh, Caesar, you don’t value your life!

But Caesar was not fit to be a coward,
And if death only happens once,
Then let her secretly prepare a sting,
And the one to whom it is appointed will betray.

Not every Guy will cherish Brutus, -
Gaius Cassius and Gaius Casca do not count here.
Your child at the last minute
The thread of life will be cut off by betrayal...
(Yuri Gridasov “Caesar. Finale”)

In this case, this is purely historical poetry, considering the issue of betrayal of loved ones - a universal human question and inherent in any historical period - from the height of a universal human approach and with a very good knowledge of this particular historical era.

Archaisms.

Archaisms - obsolete and old words grammatical forms, mainly Slavicisms. The lexical technique of using archaisms is used in historical poetry and in plot poetry - in the case of historical stylization - to convey the flavor of the era, and in high-style lyrics - to enhance solemnity:

Pray, little one, pray to the number!
Lean toward the numbers with your shaky neck!
Keep your eyes open!.. But don't miss it
that hour, that moment when Khodyna
will lay “things fingers”
on the strings and in the feather grass squad
will shake the “scarlet shields”.
(Stanislav Minakov)

When using archaisms in an ordinary lyrical work that is not ironic or romantic, the author must coordinate them with the lexical context, otherwise these words will look ridiculous and alien, and next to prosaisms and jargon, they will simply be funny. Of course, authors with a developed sense of language completely organically combine archaisms and jargons or colloquialisms side by side without negative consequences and without even a hint of irony. But sometimes they deliberately organize incongruous juxtapositions in order to achieve an ironic sound:

Should I say more? My friend, you are quite a penguin.
(Ibid.)

And two maternity mothers
carrying chickens from the store,
and chickens prophetic fingers
sticking out, pointing up at the sky,
they threaten from bags and string bags.
(Ibid.)

Here the colloquial phrase “maternity mothers” and prosaic realities (“chickens”, “shop”, “bags and string bags”) are side by side with the archaic phrase “prophetic fingers” (in combination with the emotionally charged verb “threaten”), which gives a magnificent ironic shade the entire work declared as “poetry”.

Terms.

Terms are a narrowly professional lexical layer, usually used only by representatives of a particular profession in communication with each other. Terms can be mathematical, medical, computer, philological, etc., etc. The lexical method of using terms is used for “professional flavor” (my expression, by analogy with the concept of “local flavor”), as well as for the effect of modernity or irony.

Your copyright is protected
In all living languages.
(Natalia Belchenko)

Where is the chip that indelibly stores in me
A code of love that protects a child's soul...
(Ibid.)

And you need an audit of your soul
Have time to finish before the New Year.
Passive with active lead to zero
Showing all your naivety,
When in the passive: I love you,
In the asset: without hope of reciprocity.
(Lyudmila Nekrasovskaya)

And the doctor, subject to autumn,
Writes recipes to everyone:
“A moment of beauty. Three drops of happiness.
Glass of dawn. Leaf fall."
(Ibid.)

Pasta.

Macaroniisms are foreign words and catchphrases, inserted into the text.

(My term is derived from the concept of “macaronic poetry” by A. Kvyatkovsky - comic or satirical poetry sprinkled with foreign vocabulary for a comic effect.) The lexical device of using macaroonisms is characterized by the notation foreign words and expressions both in Latin letters, in their original form, and using the Russian alphabet. Nowadays, a lexical device based on the use of macaroonisms is not always used for irony - on the contrary, it is used to increase tension in emotional moments or in the context of “smart”, intellectual words used for the sake of modernity in sound: “I don’t argue, love story is strange. Especially – up close” (Stanislav Minakov). In this case, the relevance of macaroonism is also due to the internal rhyme: dispute yu – love story (love store And).

Don't trust the pillars and don't trust the scribes:
at finita la comedia sunset
like a celestial being you are mortal, like a beast
vulnerable, and bright, like an emperor.
(Irina Ivanchenko)

A patch of sand and ant traffic.
(Gennady Semenchenko)

And Raikhelson sonata. CD
The honey from the melodies bothers my chest...
(Lyudmila Nekrasovskaya)

The author's neologisms are very important in creating figurative poetic works with an original, unique author's sound. This is such an important issue that it requires detailed, comprehensive consideration in a separate article.

© Svetlana Skorik, 2012
The article is published and is protected by copyright. Distribution on the Internet is prohibited.

S. I. Skorik. School of Poses, 2012.

Allegory

Allegory is the expression of abstract concepts through concrete artistic images.

Examples of allegory:

The stupid and stubborn are often called the Donkey, the coward - the Hare, the cunning - the Fox.

Alliteration (sound writing)

Alliteration (sound writing) is the repetition of identical or homogeneous consonants in a verse, giving it a special sound expressiveness (in versification). In this case, the high frequency of these sounds in a relatively small speech area is of great importance.

Examples of alliteration:

"Where the grove neighs, guns neigh."

"About a hundred years
grow
we don't need old age.
Year to year
grow
our vigor.
Praise,
hammer and verse,
land of youth."

(V.V. Mayakovsky)

Anaphora

Repeating words, phrases, or combinations of sounds at the beginning of a sentence, line, or paragraph.

For example :

« Not intentionally the winds were blowing,

Not intentionally there was a thunderstorm"

(S. Yesenin).

Black ogling the girl

Black maned horse!

(M. Lermontov)

Quite often, anaphora, as a literary device, forms a symbiosis with such a literary device as gradation, that is, increasing the emotional character of words in the text.

For example :

“Cattle die, a friend dies, a man himself dies.”

Antithesis (opposition)

Antithesis (or opposition) is a comparison of words or phrases that are sharply different or opposite in meaning.

Examples of antithesis:

I swear first on the day of creation, I swear by it last in the afternoon (M. Lermontov).

Who was nothing, he will become everyone.

Antonomasia

Antonomasia is an expressive means, when used, the author uses a proper name instead of a common noun to figuratively reveal the character of the character.

Examples of antonomasia:

He is Othello (instead of "He is very jealous")

A stingy person is often called Plyushkin, an empty dreamer - Manilov, a person with excessive ambitions - Napoleon, etc.

Apostrophe, address

Assonance

1) Assonance is used as an original tool that gives an artistic text, especially poetic text, a special flavor. For example :

Our ears are on top of our heads,
A little morning the guns lit up
And the forests are blue tops -
The French are right there.

(M.Yu. Lermontov)

2) Assonance is widely used to create imprecise rhyme. For example, “hammer city”, “incomparable princess”.

One of the textbook examples of the use of both rhyme and assonance in one quatrain is an excerpt from the poetic work of V. Mayakovsky:

I won’t turn into Tolstoy, but into a fat man -
I eat, I write, I’m a fool from the heat.
Who hasn't philosophized over the sea?
Water.

Exclamation

Hyperbola

Hyperbole is a figurative expression containing an exorbitant exaggeration of the size, strength, or significance of an object or phenomenon.

Example of a hyperbole:

Some houses are as long as the stars, others as long as the moon; baobabs to the skies (Mayakovsky).

Inversion

From lat. inversio - permutation.

Changing the traditional order of words in a sentence to give the phrase a more expressive shade, intonation highlighting of a word.

Inversion examples:

The lonely sail is white
In the blue sea fog... (M.Yu. Lermontov)

The traditional order requires a different structure: A lonely sail is white in the blue fog of the sea. But this will no longer be Lermontov or his great creation.

Another great Russian poet, Pushkin, considered inversion one of the main figures of poetic speech, and often the poet used not only contact, but also remote inversion, when, when rearranging words, other words are wedged between them: “The old man obedient to Perun alone...”.

Irony

Pun

A play on words. A witty expression or joke based on the use of words that sound similar but have different meanings or different meanings of one word.

Examples of puns in literature:

A year for three clicks for you on the forehead,
Give me some boiled food spelt.
(A.S. Pushkin)

And previously served me poem,
Broken string, poem.
(D.D. Minaev)

Spring will drive anyone crazy. Ice - and that got under way.
(E. Meek)

Litotes

The opposite of hyperbole, a figurative expression containing an exorbitant understatement of the size, strength, or significance of any object or phenomenon.

Example of litotes:

The horse is led by the bridle by a peasant in big boots, a short sheepskin coat, and large mittens... and he himself from marigold! (Nekrasov)

Metaphor

Metaphor is the use of words and expressions in a figurative sense based on some kind of analogy, similarity, comparison. Metaphor is based on similarity or resemblance.

Transferring the properties of one object or phenomenon to another based on their similarity.

Examples of metaphors:

Sea problems.

Eyes are burning.

Boiling wish .

Noon was burning.

Metonymy

Examples of metonymy:

All flags will be visiting us.

(here flags replace countries).

I'm three dishes ate.

(here the plate replaces the food).

Address, apostrophe

Oxymoron

A deliberate combination of contradictory concepts.

Look, she it's fun to be sad

Such elegantly naked

(A. Akhmatova)

Personification

Personification is the transference of human feelings, thoughts and speech to inanimate objects and phenomena, as well as to animals.

Impersonation examples:

What, a dense forest,

Got thoughtful,
Sadness dark
Foggy?

(A.V. Koltsov)

Be careful of the wind
From the gate came out,

Knocked through the window,
Ran on the roof...

(M.V.Isakovsky)

Parcellation

Parcellation is a syntactic technique in which a sentence is intonationally divided into independent segments and highlighted in writing as independent sentences.

Parcelation example:

“He went too. To the store. Buy cigarettes” (Shukshin).

Periphrase

A paraphrase is an expression that conveys the meaning of another expression or word in a descriptive form.

Examples of paraphrase:

King of beasts(instead of a lion)
Mother of Russian rivers(instead of Volga)

Pleonasm

Verbosity, the use of logically unnecessary words.

Examples of pleonasm in everyday life:

In May month(suffice it to say: in May).

Local aborigine (suffice it to say: aborigine).

White albino (suffice it to say: albino).

I was there personally(suffice it to say: I was there).

In literature, pleonasm is often used as a stylistic device, a means of expression.

For example:

Sadness and melancholy.

Sea ocean.

Psychologism

An in-depth depiction of the hero’s mental and emotional experiences.

Refrain

A repeated verse or group of verses at the end of a song verse. When a refrain extends to an entire stanza, it is usually called a chorus.

A rhetorical question

A sentence in the form of a question to which no answer is expected.

Example:

Or is it new for us to argue with Europe?

Or is the Russian unaccustomed to victories?

(A.S. Pushkin)

Rhetorical appeal

An appeal addressed to an abstract concept, an inanimate object, an absent person. A way to enhance the expressiveness of speech, to express an attitude towards a particular person or object.

Example:

Rus! where are you going?

(N.V.Gogol)

Comparisons

Comparison example:

then my life sang - howled -

Buzzed - like the autumn surf –

And she cried to herself.

(M. Tsvetaeva)

Symbol

Symbol- an object or word that conventionally expresses the essence of a phenomenon.

The symbol contains a figurative meaning, and in this way it is close to a metaphor. However, this closeness is relative. Symbol contains a certain secret, a hint that allows one to only guess what is meant, what the poet wanted to say. The interpretation of a symbol is possible not so much by reason as by intuition and feeling. The images created by symbolist writers have their own characteristics; they have a two-dimensional structure. In the foreground there is a certain phenomenon and real details, in the second (hidden) plane there is the inner world of the lyrical hero, his visions, memories, pictures born of his imagination.

Examples of symbols:

dawn, morning - symbols of youth, the beginning of life;

night is a symbol of death, the end of life;

snow is a symbol of cold, cold feeling, alienation.

Synecdoche

Replacing the name of an object or phenomenon with the name of a part of this object or phenomenon. In short, replacing the name of a whole with the name of a part of that whole.

Examples of synecdoche:

Native hearth (instead of “home”).

Floats sail (instead of “a sailboat is sailing”).

“...and it was heard until dawn,
how he rejoiced Frenchman..." (Lermontov)

(here “French” instead of “French soldiers”).

Tautology

Repetition in other words of what has already been said, which means it does not contain new information.

Examples:

Car tires are tires for a car.

We have united as one.

Trope

Types of trails:

metaphor, allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, irony.

Default

Default examples:

This fable could be explained more -

Yes, so as not to irritate the geese...

Gain (gradation)

Example of ascending gradation:

Not I'm sorry Not I'm calling Not I'm crying...

(S. Yesenin)

In sweetly misty care

Not an hour, not a day, not a year will leave.

(E. Baratynsky)

Example of descending gradation:

He promises him half the world, and France only for himself.

Euphemism

A neutral word or expression that is used in conversation to replace other expressions that are considered indecent or inappropriate in a given case.

Examples:

I'm going to powder my nose (instead of going to the toilet).

He was asked to leave the restaurant (instead, He was kicked out).

Epithet

Examples of epithets:

velvet leather, crystal ringing

Epiphora

Repeating the same word at the end of adjacent segments of speech. The opposite of anaphora, in which words are repeated at the beginning of a sentence, line, or paragraph.

Example:

“Scallops, all scallops: a cape from scallops, on the sleeves scallops, Epaulettes from scallops..." (N.V.Gogol).