Merchant of Venice Literary Devices

Soliloquy an act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when alone, especially by a character in a play.
Aside a remark or passage by a character in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play.
Simile a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid
Metaphor A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things without using the comparative world like, as, than, or resembles but using “is”
Hyperbole a figure of speech, which involves an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis.Ex: Entire paragraph from class
Apostrophe A writer or a speaker detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech. Can be started with “O”
Metonymy a word or phrase that is used to stand in for another word. Sometimes a metonymy is chosen because it is a well-known characteristic of the word.
Blank Verse a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter. In poetry and prose, it has a consistent meter with 10 syllables in each line (pentameter); where, unstressed syllables are followed by stressed ones and five of which are stressed but do not rhyme.
Couplet two lines that rhyme, but they also often have the same meter, or rhythmic structure in a verse or line. They usually can end a scene or signal for a new character to enter.
Aphorism a concise statement that is made in a matter of fact tone to state a principle or an opinion that is generally understood to be a universal truth.
Malapropism A use of an incorrect word in place of a similar sounding word that results in a nonsensical and humorous expression.
Chiaroscuro The usage of different tones, shades, or levels of music to show an emotion, such as using dark colors to show a negative tone.
Irony An event that seems deliberately contrary to what one would expect to happen, and it is often amusing
Allusion (Two Types) 1. an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; 2. an indirect or passing reference.Ex: “an allusion to Shakespeare”
Sarcasm (Tone) The use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
Personification A type of complex metaphor that features the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
Repartee conversation or speech characterized by quick, witty comments or replies.Ex: Your ugly. You too.
Bawdy (Tone) dealing with sexual matters in a comical way; humorously indecent.
Analogy A multi-level comparison based on a similarity between things/subjects that are otherwise dissimilar or a thing that is comparable to something else on significant respects.
Elision An elision is the removal of an unstressed syllable, consonants, or letters from a word or phrase to decrease the number of letters or syllables in order to mix words together. The missing letter is replaced by an apostrophe.
Parallelism Parallelism is the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning or meter.
Oxymoron a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g., faith unfaithful kept him falsely true ).
Pun (Two Types) Homophonic pun: This type of pun uses homonyms (words that sound the same) with different meanings. For example: “The wedding was so emotional that even the cake was in tiers.” The professor Walter Redfern said of this type of pun, “To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms.”Homographic pun: This type of pun uses words that are spelled the same but sound different. These puns are often written rather than spoken, as they briefly trick the reader into reading the “wrong” sound. For example, “You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless you play bass.” In this case, “tuna fish” is a homophonic pun because it is a homonym for “tune a.” The word “bass,” though, functions as a homographic pun in that the word “bass” pronounced with a long “a” refers to a type of instrument while “bass” pronounced with a short “a” is a type of fish.
July 18, 2019