Literary Devices-Irony-Figure of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

3.  Irony:

  When the speaker intends something and in reality, it happens just opposite to it, that is called irony. This may be found in the use of words giving just opposite effect or meaning to what the speaker has thought or wished. We find the use of dramatic irony in plenty in Shakespeare’s plays and In Greek tragedy also.

There are three types of irony: Verbal, Situational and Dramatic

   In verbal irony, the speaker intentionally uses the words which he does not really mean to say. He may exaggerate (overstate/inflate) or overestimate the character of a thing or person.   

 

If you say, “You are a great scholar” to someone and, in your opinion, you intend to make fun of the person only to please yourself or you may intend to please others while the person for whom you have uttered the words is rather flattered and pleased at the words, it is an example of verbal irony.

 

Here, we may note the difference between sarcasm and verbal irony. In sarcasm, mostly, the person directly hits the listener to cause pain or insult to the listener by using harsh words.

                                    

Irony becomes dramatic when the audience knows what is going to happen and the characters do not know.  For example, in Act 1, Scene 4, King Duncan says that he trusts Macbeth.

But the audience knows what Macbeth intends and what he is going to do to the King in near future. So this is the best example of dramatic irony.

 

Ironies may occur in stories also. For example, in the story ‘The Tiger King’, a living tiger could not kill the king, but a wooden tiger happened to be the cause of his tiger. In such a case, it will be a situational irony.

 

In simple words, we may say that the use of irony to highlight the difference between the appearance and the reality of things.  In situational irony, the actual result of a situation is totally different from what was expected.

 

Literary Devices-Assonance-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

2. Assonance:

 Assonance is produced when some words beginning with or having the same vowel sounds are placed next to each other or almost in proximity (nearby). 

The purpose of the poet or the writer by using assonance is to produce rhythm and music in the lines written. 

In assonance, the vowel sounds produced by letters matter, but not the letters. There is a slight difference between assonance and consonance. 

It is that the consonance is produced by the repetition of the consonant sounds while assonance is produced by the repetition of the vowel sounds.

Examples:

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (From the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

 

See the long ‘o’ sound in the lines below:

 

“Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poem came.”

 

"I lie down by the side of my bride" [The sound if /i/ in the words ‘lie’, ‘side’ and ‘bride’ are the examples of Assonance.

 

In the following line, the long /a:/ sound produces the effect of assonance:

 

"Hear the lark and harden to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground"

 

Literary Devices-Onomatopoeia-Poetic Devices-Figures of Speech

 

1.Onomotapoeia: 

It is a figure of speech very much used in literary works to create an illusion of the actual sound of the things being described.

 For example, the word ‘thunder’ creates the illusion of the sound produced by the clouds. Similarly, we have the words used for the illusion of the sound/voice/noise created by the words like ‘roar’ for by the lions, ‘howling’ by the wolves, etc., buzzing by the bees, ‘boom’ by an explosion of some fireworks, etc., thud by the falling of a thing, grumbling by human beings, ‘tick-tick’ for the clock, ‘gong’ for the hitting on a big-bell, ‘ding-dong’ for some musical instrument, etc.

We have a long list of the words used under the name of this literary device. But a few of them are mew, moan, groan, mumble, mutter, whisper, whooping, knell, hush, churning, throbbing, screech, chatter, etc.

Examples:

 (i)‘He saw nothing and heard nothing but he could feel his heart pounding and then he heard the clack on stone and the leaping, dropping clicks of a small rock falling.’

(Taken from Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For whom the Bell Tolls’

 

(ii) They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. (From Robert Frost’s Birches)