CREATIVE WRITINGUnit One-25 Common Literary Terms

Session 4

REVIEW

• Examples of

• Metaphor

• Meter

• Mood

• Onomatopoeia

• Oxymoron

PERSONIFICATION

• Personification-the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

• Examples-

• The wind whispered through dry grass.

• The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.

• Time and tide waits for none.

• The fire swallowed the entire forest.

PERSONIFICATION

• Examples-

“Loveliest of Trees the Cherry Now” personifies the cherry tree,

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry nowIs hung with bloom along the bough,And stands about the woodland rideWearing white for Eastertide.”

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson employs personification in her poem “Have You Got A Brook In Your Little Heart”.

“Have you got a brook in your little heart,Where bashful flowers blow,And blushing birds go down to drink,And shadows tremble so?”

PERSONIFICATION

William Blake personifies Sunflowers in his poem “Two Sunflowers Move in a Yellow Room”.

“Two SunflowersMove in the Yellow Room.‘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?”

NOW YOU TRY

• Personify something in 2-4 lines of writing

Share

PUNS

Puns- joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings.

•Let’s talk about rights and lefts. You’re right, so I left.•Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.•When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.•A boiled egg every morning is hard to beat.•Two fish are in a tank. One says to the other, “Err...so how do you drive this thing

?”

PUNS

• Examples

• Why do we still have troops in Germany? To keep the Russians in Czech.

• A horse is a very stable animal.

• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

• An elephant’s opinion carries a lot of weight.

• What is the difference between a conductor and a teacher? The conductor minds the train and a teacher trains the mind.

PUNS

• Romeo: “Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead” (Romeo and Juliet)

• Claudius: “…But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son…” Hamlet: [aside] “A little more than kin, and less than kind. (Kindred)” (Hamlet)

NOW YOU TRY

• Create something punny or share something that you’ve heard before

• Share

RHYME SCHEME

• Rhyme Scheme-the ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem or verse.

• Examples-

• Roses are red (a)

• Violets are blue (b)

• Beautiful they all may be (c)

• But I love you (b)

• The above is an “a-b-c-b” rhyme scheme.

RHYME SCHEME

• Examples

• Ode to a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley 

• In the golden lightning                   Of the sunken sun,               O'er which clouds are bright'ning,                   Thou dost float and run,Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

RHYME SCHEME

There was an Old Man with a Beard, by Edward LearThere was an Old Man with a beard,Who said, "It is just as I feared!--Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,Have all built their nests in my beard!

NOW YOU TRY

• Create a 4 line rhyme scheme

• Share

RHYTHM

• Rhythm-literary device which demonstrates the long and short patterns through stressed and unstressed syllables particularly in verse form.

• Examples

• “Tell me not, in mournful numbers”(Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

• “White founts falling in the Courts of the sun”(Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton)

RHYTHM

• Examples-

• “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,”(Evangeline by Longfellow)

• Two households, both alike in dignity,In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foesA pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;(Romeo Juliet by Shakespeare)

RHYTHM

• “I am a teapot

• Short and stout;

• This is my handle

• And this is my spout.

• When the water’s boiling

• Hear me shout;

• Just lift me up

• And pour me out”

NOW YOU TRY

• Create 2- 4 lines that contain rhythm

• Share

SIMILE

• Simile-a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox ).

• Examples-Our soldiers are as brave as lions.

• Her cheeks are red like a rose.

• He is as funny as a monkey.

• The water well was as dry as a bone.

• He is as cunning as a fox.

SIMILE

• Examples .

• impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil . . .”Joseph Conrad,

“I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.”

SIMILE

• "Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.'"(Lord Dunsany)

• "Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep."(Carl Sandburg)

•

"The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre."(D.H. Lawrence, "Each Man Shall Be Spontaneously Himself")

NOW YOU TRY

• Create 2-4 lines of simile

• Share

NOW YOU TRY

• Now use all five to create a poem