Literary Devices and Poetic Forms: Definitions and Examples

**Literary Devices**

• Alliteration: The repetition of the same sounds.
• Anaphora: The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of each line or each prayer.
• Paronomasia: Aesthetic appeal is achieved by placing near paronym words and, almost always, alliteration.
• Epanadiplosis: Repeating the same word at the beginning and end of a verse, or a syntactic period, in prose.
• Hyperbaton: Disturbing the logic of the sentence.
• Parallelism: Repetition of syntactic structures or similar elements.
• Concatenation: When a syntactic structure starts with the same word that completed the previous structure.
• Metaphor: An identification that leads from the concrete and visual to the abstract and transcendent.
• Metaphorical language: Establishing an identity between two realities: the concrete and the poetic. If two-bonded (like, as it seems) it is called a simile.
• Personification: Images of metaphorical language in which animals, plants, and objects behave as human beings.
• Allegory: A continued metaphor.
• Synesthesia: Crosses sensations from the five senses.
• Synecdoche: Semantic contagion occurs.
• Antithesis: Opposes meanings to intensify the expression.
• Paradox: Expresses a contradiction that occurs in reality.
• Hyperbole: Expresses artistically exaggerated to signify the intensity of feeling.

**Poetic Forms**

• Couplet: Two-line stanza consisting of monorhymes, major or minor art.
• Tercet: Composed of three hendecasyllables with rhyme, leaving the second loose. It is called Tercerilla if it is minor art.
• Quartet: Four versos de arte mayor (verses of major art) rhyming consonant (ABBA). If it is minor art, it is called Redondilla.
• Serventesio: Four hendecasyllables or Alexandrines with rhyme (ABAB). If it is minor art, it is called Quartet.
• Copla: Popular stanza comprised of four lines of minor art, usually eight syllables, rhyming assonance in pairs, leaving the odd loose.
• Cuaderna via: Consists of four Alexandrine verses with monorhyme. It is a stanza of mester de clerecía (13th and 14th centuries).
• Quintet: Five hendecasyllable stanza with rhyme, which must meet these conditions: no more than two consecutive verses can rhyme, the last two cannot be matched, and no verse can be left loose. If it is minor art, it is called Quintilla.
• Lira: Stanza consisting of heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verses with fixed rhyme. It is typical of the Spanish Renaissance.
• Sextuplet: Stanza of six verses of rhyme and minor art in variable combination.
• Copla de pie quebrado: Created by Jorge Manrique (15th century). The third and sixth verses are tetrasyllables or pentasyllables, and the remaining are octosyllables, and it is consonant rhyme.
• Ottava Rima: Eight versos de arte mayor (verses of major art) with consonant rhyme. The first six have alternate rhyme (ABABAB) and the last two are paired (CC).
• Italian Octave: Eight versos de arte mayor (verses of major art) with consonant rhyme. If it is minor art, it is called Handbill and was widely employed in Romanticism.
• Décima: Consists of ten eight-syllable lines rhyming consonant.
• Romance: Octosyllable lines with assonance rhyme in pairs, leaving the odd loose. It proceeds from the Middle Ages of Spanish romance. If they are six-syllable verses, it is called Ballad, if heptasyllables, Romance lay, if it leads to a chorus it is called Letrilla; and if this is made up by lines of major art, it is a heroic romance.
• Silva: Heptasyllable and hendecasyllable lines combined to the taste of the poet. If it presents a regularized rhyme, it is called Estancia, and if the lines rhyme in assonance pairs, leaving the odd loose, it is called Silva romance.
• Sonnet: Consists of two quartets and two tercets. The tercets of a sonnet can be parallel (11A11B11A/11A11B11A), chained (11A11B11A/11B11C11B), or embracing (11A11B11A/11B11A11B).