Literary Devices: Metaphor, Antithesis, Personification

Metaphor

A metaphor identifies a word with another, replacing an idea with a more expressive one. If a comparison uses a comparative link (such as "like" or "as"), it becomes a metaphor.

• The cypress is a water fountain.
• The sigh escaping from your strawberry mouth. (Strawberry = red and sweet.)

Sometimes, the actual term of the metaphor appears; this is a pure metaphor.

• The sweet mouth that invites you to taste a joke among distilled pearls...

"Pearls" is a metaphor for "teeth".

Antithesis

Antithesis relates two words that oppose each other.

• Sleep was yesterday; tomorrow is land!
• Shortly before, nothing, and shortly after, smoke!

It was - is, sleep - land, yesterday - morning, shortly before - shortly after. Opposing words are used to attract attention.

Personification (Prosopopoeia)

Personification attributes human qualities to inanimate or irrational beings.

With my stones, soften their natural hardness and break; the trees seem to bend; birds that are heard when singing, with a different voice, condole, and I guess I die singing.

Epithet

An epithet uses adjectives, usually placed before nouns, to add liveliness and color, but they do not add any new meaning.

• For you, the green grass, the cool wind,
• white lily and pink,
• sweet spring wanted.

Hyperbaton

Hyperbaton changes the normal order of words in a sentence.

• This, then, yawn formidable land the melancholy emptiness.

The logical order would be: "The melancholic yawning emptiness of this formidable land."

Anaphora

Anaphora repeats a word or words at the beginning of sentences.

• I left for you my woods...
• I stopped trembling, I left a jolt.
• I left my shadow...
• I left sad doves near a river.
• I stopped to smell the sea, I stopped seeing you.

Asyndeton

Asyndeton is the deliberate suppression of conjunctions or links connecting sentences or words.

• Come, run, fly,
• high mountain passes, took the plain,
• not forgive the spur,
• not give peace at hand,
• withering wag iron ins

Polysyndeton

Polysyndeton is the union of several sentences or words with unnecessary links.

• And there it is recognized, and grows and launches,
• and advances and foams up, and jumps and trusts,
• and cleaves and late in the running water, singing,...