Onomatopoeia is where a word’s pronunciation is used to imitate sounds, specifically the sound that it describes (e.g. “bang”). This technique can sometimes be confused with interjections. An interjection, as the name suggests, is when speech is inserted as a a… Continue Learning »
Bathos is the effect created when a considered or serious subject matter descends into the trivial or silly. These sudden transitions are often very anti-climactic, and often are used to progress or transition into a more humorous subject matter. The… Continue Learning »
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is a poem by John Keats in which emotions such as sadness and despair are explored, along with ideas related to transience and the passage of time. Keats is an extremely well known and highly regarded… Continue Learning »
‘Talking in Bed’ is a poem by Philip Larkin, which was published in 1964. The poem takes the everyday occurrence of two people lying in bed together, and then explores a whole range of thoughts and emotions associated with relationships. Larkin… Continue Learning »
A Caesura is a break in the normal flow of a sentence, phrase or metrical line. It is normally as a result of a piece of punctuation such as a comma or full stop. Types of Caesura There are a… Continue Learning »
Semantic Field is a term used to describe a group of words, all of which share a similar concept, theme or subject. Associated Terminology Semantics This is the study of meaning in language, both in a philosophical and linguistic sense…. Continue Learning »
Alliteration is the repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words. Most cases will have a series of words directly following each other, but even if there are occasional breaks in the pattern it is still… Continue Learning »
Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence from one line of a poem to the next, without any specific pause, despite the break in the line, and can even run over multiple lines or stanzas. The term originates from the… Continue Learning »
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a description is applied to something, typically in a way that would not be expected, or by switching a standard description with something more unusual. This technique is usually achieved by saying… Continue Learning »