Poetic Devices: Understanding Literary Techniques and Attitudes

Attitudes in lyrics correspond to the mood of the poet and can be mainly three:

• Attitude Point: The lyrical speaker captures something external, internalizes it, and expresses it in a narrative or descriptive manner, trying to maintain objectivity.
• Apostrophe: The poet addresses an external entity directly, creating intensity and drama. The lyrical speaker moves between subjective and objective perspectives.
• Carmina or Lyric Song: This is the attitude of excellence, where the poet expresses their inner soul with subjectivity prevailing.

Literary Figures

Literary figures are resources used to transform language in poetry. They give language elasticity and evocative power, expressing new meanings beyond the referential.

Figures of Speech

• Hyperbaton (Transposition): Reversing the grammatical order of words.
• Anaphora: Repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of each expression or phrase.
• Pun (Commutation): Repeating a phrase, reversing its order, and with a different meaning.
• Ellipsis: The omission of one or more words to communicate concisely.
• Epithet: Adding an adjective that qualifies the noun, expressing inherent qualities. Subjective epithets reflect the speaker's perspective, such as "dark swallows."
• Interrogation: Asking a question to emphasize a point.
• Support: Asking and answering oneself.
• Hyperbole: Exaggerating a thought, person, or thing.
• Impersonation: Giving life to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.
• Periphrasis (Circumlocution): Referring to things indirectly, avoiding their direct names.
• Alliteration: Using words with the same initial letter for a phonic effect.
• Polysyndeton: Using repeated coordinating conjunctions to intensify the expression.
• Oxymoron: Combining mutually exclusive words in a phrase.
• Simile (Comparison): Explicitly expressing a similarity between two terms.
• Metaphor: Transferring the meaning of a word to another based on resemblance. It's a crucial trope in poetry, removing the explicit comparison element.
• Metonymy (Transnominación): Designating something by the name of another with which it has a relation of succession or immediate cause.
• Synecdoche: Calling something by the name of another with which it has a connection.

Types of Synecdoche

• Part for the whole: "I have not got a roof to live."
• The whole for the part: "The police arrived."
• The singular for the plural: "The Italian is very elegant."
• The plural for the singular: "So the Gospels say."

• Synesthesia: Combining sensory qualities from different senses to create new meanings.
• Enumeration: Rapidly naming objects or circumstances for emphasis. Chaotic enumeration involves unexpected and illogical groupings of words.
• Antithesis: Opposing one thought to another for emphasis and clarity.
• Epiphonema: A reflection or exclamation at the end of a poem.
• Paradox: Reconciling seemingly contradictory terms or ideas.
• Grading (Climax): Presenting ideas in ascending or descending order.
• Concession: Pretending to accept an idea and then refuting it with greater force.