Literary Terms for Techniques Applied in Shakespearean Works

     Bryan Miller & Gabby Harris

Allusion

-the act of alluding or hinting; an implied or indirect meaning

Example:"As the cave's roof collapsed, he was swallowed up in the dust like Jonah, and only his frantic scrabbling behind a wall of rock indicated that there was anyone still alive".

Apostrophe

- when an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed

Example: With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies. Busy old fool, unruly sun.

Blank Verse

-unrhymed iambic pentameter

Example:from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet...bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,From off the battlements of yonder tower;Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurkWhere serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,O’er covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;Or bid me go into a new-made grave,And hide me with a dead man and his shroud;

Couplet

-pair of lines of poetry that usually rhyme Example: It was great to play in the sun.                  We all had so much fun.

Foreshadowing

-to give a hint beforehand

Example: The leaves fell early that year.

Hyperbole

-extravagant exaggeration

Example: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.

Iambic Pentameter

-A five foot line of poetry, with a stressed syllable then an unstressed syllable. Example:   I am a pirate with a wooden leg

Irony(dramatic)

-when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know Example: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. When Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged sleep, he assumes her to be dead and kills himself. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet then kills herself.

Irony(verbal)

-when an author says something and means something else Example:Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare"Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man". Mark Antony really means that Brutus is dishonourable

Motif

-a recurring idea or theme

Example: colors, seasons, clothing

Oxymoron

-a combination of contradictory or incongruous words

Example: hot ice

Personification

-is giving human qualities to animals or objects

Example: a smiling moon

Pun

-the humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest different meanings or applications or of words having the same or nearly the same sound but different meanings

Example: A bicycle can't stand alone because it's two-tired.

Soliloquy

-a dramatic monologue that gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken thoughts

Example: But if it is hard for the theatergoer to catch all the meanings in Macbeth's rippling soliloquies, then how much harder is that task when Shakespeare seems unable or unwilling to unpack his obscurities. —James Wood, New Republic, 26 June 2000

Sonnet

-a poem of 14 lines usually in iambic pentameter rhyming according to a prescribed scheme Example:Her Wilting RegretsBy Paul McCannShe was found to wilt . With words she scours . Ivory towers . The thick walls she built . Well tarnished with guilt . She hides , she cowers . In empty bowers . With her red wine spilt . She can never sip . And she has not health . She's buttoned her lip . She hears no one else . In walls ten miles thick, she grieves for herself