First year-Introduction to English Literature

By: Hayder Gebreen

Chapter One:

General Meaning: This should be expressed simply in one or at the most

two sentences. It should be based on a reading of the whole poem. Very
often, but not always, a poem title will give you some indication of its
general meaning.

Detailed Meaning: This should be given stanza by stanza. but you should
not paraphrase the poem or worry about the meaning of individual words.
The detailed meaning may be written as a continuous paragraph, but you
must take every care to be accurate and to express yourself in simple
sentences.

Intention: is an experience or attempt the authors conveys in every literary

work to arouse certain feelings in the readers.

Chapter Two:
Literary Device: is a technique used by writers uses to produce a special
effect in their writing and to convey his or her messages in a simple manner
to the readers. In other words, a strategy used in the making of a narrative to
relay information to the audience and, particularly, to "develop" the
narrative, usually in order to make it more complete, complicated, or
interesting.

Literary Devices

A- Structural Devices B-Sense Devices C- Sound Devices

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First year-Introduction to English Literature
By: Hayder Gebreen

A-Structural devices:
Contrast, illustration, repetition: these indicate the way a whole
poem has been built and become apparent as soon as the
meaning of the poem has been found.
1- Contrast: This is one of the most common of all structural
devices. It occurs when we find two completely opposite pictures
side by side. Sometimes the contrast is immediately obvious
(direct) and sometimes implied (indirect).
Example: Contrast of the most direct kind can be found in Cargoes
when the last ship differs greatly from the first two.
Example: Contrast of the most indirect kind can be found in the
two poems Break, Break, Break and Lucy the contrast between life
and death is implied.
2-Illustration: This is an example which usually takes the form of a
vivid picture by which a poet may make an idea clear.
Example: Cargoes consists of three such pictures each of which
represents the poet's view of different ages.
Example: in Break, Break, Break there are pictures of the fisher-
man's boy, the sailor lad and the stately ships .
3-Repetition: Poets often repeat single lines or whole stanzas at
intervals to emphasize a particular idea. Repetition is to be found
in poetry which is aiming at special musical effects or when a poet
wants us to pay very close attention to something. Example: Note
the repetition of the word 'water' in these lines from the Ancient
Mariner:
Water, water, everywhere.
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First year-Introduction to English Literature
By: Hayder Gebreen

B-SENSE DEVICES:
1-Simile: This is a direct comparison and can be recognized by the
use of the words like and as.
Example: Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
2-Metaphor: This is an indirect comparison or implied, the words
like and as are not used.
Example: My love is a red rose
3-Personification: This occurs when inanimate objects are given a
human form, or when they are made to speak.
Example: “Ah, William, we’re weary of weather,”
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
“Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?”
The sunflowers in this poem are talking to William Blake, telling
him that they want to be moved because they are tired of being
outside in the weather.
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First year-Introduction to English Literature
By: Hayder Gebreen

C- SOUND DEVICES:
Alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, assonance, rhythm. These
have difficult names but they are not as hard as they look. All of
them add considerably to the musical quality a poem has when it
is read aloud.
1-Alliteration: This is the repetition of the same consonant sound
at the beginning of the words.
The fair breeze blew,
the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.
2-Onomatopoeia: occurs in words which imitate sounds and thus
suggest the object described: words like cuckoo.
3-Rhyme: This usually occurs at line endings in poetry and consists
of words which have the same sound.
Example: Neither Out Far nor in Deep (By Robert Frost)
The people along the sand (A)
All turn and look one way. (B)
They turn their back on the land. (A)
They look at the sea all day. (B)
As long as it takes to pass (C)
A ship keeps raising its hull; (D)
The wetter ground like glass (C)
Reflects a standing gull. (D)
This is an ABABCDCD pattern of rhyme scheme, in which
each stanza applies this format. For instance, in the first stanza, “sand”
rhymes with the word “land,” and “way” rhymes with the word “day.”

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First year-Introduction to English Literature
By: Hayder Gebreen

4-Assonance: assonance, or “vowel rhyme,” is the repetition of

vowel sounds across a line of text or poetry. The words have to be
near enough to each other that the similar vowel sounds are
noticeable. It is often employed deliberately to avoid the jingling
sound of a too-insistent rhyme pattern.
Example: Think about the long “o” sound in:
Go slow on the road
Or the short “e” sound in:
Sell the wedding bells
5-Rhythm: In literature, rhythm is the pattern of stressed and
unstressed beats. Rhythm is most commonly found in poetry,
though it is also present in some works of drama and prose. The
rhythm of a poem can be analyzed through the number of
syllables in the line, and the arrangement of syllables based on
whether they are long or short, accented or unaccented.
Example: Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmer’s DAY?
Thou ART more LOVEly AND more TEMPerATE:
Rough WINDS do SHAKE the DARling BUDS of MAY,
And SUMmer’s LEASE hath ALL too SHORT a DATE:

William Shakespeare wrote many sonnets, and generally used

iambic pentameter in his lines. Arguably his most famous sonnet,
“Sonnet 18,” indeed follows this rhythm. As explained above,
iambic pentameter has ten syllables per line, starting with an
unstressed syllable and alternating every other syllable with
stress. This means that the lines end on a stressed syllable.