Most common literary figures

Literature allows us to use language in a special way in order to convey an idea, thought or feeling in the most beautiful way possible. The poetic function of language analyzes its use in the literature. One of the most significant characteristics of the literary text are the so-called figures literatures, linguistic resources that are used for rhetorical purposes, to adorn, highlight and embellish the message.

However, rhetorical devices are not exclusively literary but were also used very frequently in commercial advertisements. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to explain what the most common literary figures, accompanied by examples.

Index

1. Literary figure: allegory
2. Simile or comparison
3. Literary figure: encirclement
4. Oxymoron
5. Synesthesia
6. Epithet
7. Pleonasm
8. Enumeration
9. Chiasmus
10. Lot

Allegory is a set of related metaphors that can only be understood and deciphered through the context, which acts as a link between one metaphor and another.

It is one of the most difficult rhetorical figures to identify as it is a succession of interlocking symbols that Sometimes they are not entirely clear because they develop, in a parallel way to the metaphor, between a real plane A and a plane imaginary B.

Here we give you different examples of this literary figure so you can know what we mean:

• Our lives are the rivers
• What are they going to give in the sea [...]
• There go the manors
• There the flowing rivers
• There the other halflings [...]

In this other lesson from a TEACHER we discover youwhat are rhetorical figures and we give you some examples.

One of the most frequent literary figures is the simile or comparison, rhetorical resource that consists of explicitly comparing one reality with another, or one object with another. The relationship established between the two is represented by words such as "like", "like this", "same as", "so that", etc .:

• Oh sonorous loneliness! My serene heart opens, like a treasure, to the blowing of your breeze.

Encasing is the disorder of a whole stanza which occurs when the metric rhythm of the verse is altered. Thus, the verse, instead of ending with the corresponding pause, continues in the next verse, so that the metric pause moves to the next verse, as observed in:

• One afternoon I left and cold / of winter. Schoolboys / they study. Monotony / from to rain on the windows

It is one of the most curious literary resources that exist in Spanish.l. The oxymoron consists of the union of two words with opposite meanings so that, although it may seem contradictory, one complements the other, such as Dark light or deafening silence.

Here you have one complete list of literary resources.

It is the literary resource through which concepts that are perceived by different senses from each other; that is, a transfer of sensations occurs, for example, a word related to sight ("gaze") is used together with another associated with taste or touch ("kissing"). Let's see it through an example:

That the soul that can speak with the eyes / You can also kiss with your eyes.

The epithet is an adjective that is usually placed just before the noun and add an unspoken information and, therefore, dispensable and unnecessary because it is public knowledge. The main function of the epithet is to enhance the characteristics or qualities that define a noun.

Some examples are the White snow, the green field, cold ice or burning heat.

Another of the literary figures that we will see in this lesson is the pleonasm, which is a grammatical structure that contains some redundant or repetitive word, which is usually used to emphasize and add more expressiveness to the message.

Surely you have heard phrases like I saw it with my own eyes, go up, go down or get up early. These expressions are pleonasms because the second term is redundant since its meaning is implicit in the previous term.

The enumeration is a rhetorical figure consisting of add terms from coordinates and also through juxtaposition. It usually accompanies the anaphora in poetic compositions, and it is one of the most recurrent literary devices in poetic texts. Let's see an example:

Pass out, dare, be furious

rough, tender, liberal, elusive,

encouraged, deadly, deceased, alive [...]

It is a literary figure that part of repetition mixed with parallelism, since a chiasmus is a kind of crossed parallelism; that is, two terms are repeated, first in the order A B and then in the reverse order, B A, as in the following example:

Loaded fruit trees / golden wheat fields

This chiasm has the substantive structure (A: fruit trees) + adjective (B: loaded) and in the next verse to the contrary, that is, adjective (A: golden) + noun (B: wheat fields).

The litote is that literary device through which the value of a term is attenuated denying the opposite of what it means. In everyday language we tend to use litotes quite often as Not well instead of saying directly That's wrong. More examples are as follows: The party was not bad at all (it was very good) or Saying that is not very accurate (it's wrong to say that). The litote is also related to the euphemistic uses of words.

If you want to read more articles similar to Most Common Literary Figures - With Examples!, we recommend that you enter our category of Literary concepts.