Lyrical Poetry: Key Elements and Literary Devices
Genre: Lyrical Poetry
Elements of a Lyrical Creation
Lyrical Subject: A circumstance or being causing a certain mood in the poet.
Temple of Mind: The emotion or mood of the poet.
Reason Lyric: The concept or the idea present in a certain poetic composition. This idea or concept represents the most important message, usually being an abstract noun, such as sadness, love, loneliness, homesickness, anxiety, etc. In other words, it refers to the feeling that arises from mood and circumstance.
Lyric Speaker: The fictional character or being created by the poet to convey to the reader their reality, their own way of seeing and feeling. That is, they are delivering the content of the poem, conveying these impressions, feelings, and emotions to the reader. They take care to show the reality of the poet.
Lyrical Attitude: The way the lyrical voice relates to the different referents of the poem, in which the lyric speaker expresses their emotions.
- Types:
- Declarative: Describes a place.
- Apostrophe: Refers to a “you”.
- Carmine: Refers to the lyrical speaker’s interiority, their feelings.
Literary Figures
Hyperbaton: Grammatical disorder.
Anaphora: Repetition at the beginning of the verses.
Ellipsis: Omission of words.
Epithet: Giving a characteristic to a noun (e.g., “dark black”).
Alliteration: Repetition of a sound (letter).
Polysyndeton: Many links (a word is repeated for emphasis).
Oxymoron: Rating a noun with an opposite adjective (contrary words are put together).
Synecdoche: A generalization is made backward.
- Types:
- The Part for the Whole:
A city of ten thousand people (population: not a ghost town, supposedly wandered spectra only), there was not a soul (or person); the ball enters the net (the goal).
- The Whole for the Part:
Wash the car (the body).
- The Plural for the Singular:
The gold of the Indies.
- The Singular for the Plural:
The English are phlegmatic, the Spanish choleric.
Antithesis: Counter-claim in a thought.
Synesthesia: Changing the sensory qualities of an object.
Hyperbole: Exaggeration.
Asyndeton: Telling a story without taking up connections, almost everything is occupied by verbs.
Comparison: Using the connector “and” to contrast two ideas.
Metaphor: Comparison without the connector “and”.
Metonymy: Giving a new name to something.
Types:
- Cause for the Effect:
Lack of bread (lack of work).
- Effect for Cause:
Children are the joy of the house (cause happiness).
- Container for Content:
Have a drink (take the contents of a cup).
He ate two meals (eat the contents of two dishes).
Pipe smoking (smoking a pipe’s content).
- Symbol for Thing Symbolized:
He swore allegiance to the flag (swear allegiance to the country).
- Author for Book:
A Picasso (a painting by Picasso).
- Physical for Moral:
Heartless (no feelings).
Pun: Play on words, changing the logical order.
Grading: A series of verbs or rather events that occur gradually as a cause and effect.
Epiphoneme: A brief statement that closes a text, concluding with an overview (synthesizes all with a final sentence).