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A Brief History of English Literature

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 18, 2018 • ( 14 )

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of English. The period is a long one and it is generally considered that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100. Many of the poems of the period are pagan, in particular Widsith and Beowulf.

The greatest English poem, Beowulf is the first English epic. The author of Beowulf is anonymous. It is a story of a brave young man Beowulf in 3182 lines. In this epic poem, Beowulf sails to Denmark with a band of warriors to save the King of Denmark, Hrothgar. Beowulf saves Danish King Hrothgar from a terrible monster called Grendel. The mother of Grendel who sought vengeance for the death of her son was also killed by Beowulf. Beowulf was rewarded and became King. After a prosperous reign of some forty years, Beowulf slays a dragon but in the fight he himself receives a mortal wound and dies. The poem concludes with the funeral ceremonies in honour of the dead hero. Though the poem Beowulf is little interesting to contemporary readers, it is a very important poem in the Old English period because it gives an interesting picture of the life and practices of old days.

The difficulty encountered in reading Old English Literature lies in the fact that the language is very different from that of today. There was no rhyme in Old English poems. Instead they used alliteration.

Besides Beowulf , there are many other Old English poems. Widsith, Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Wife’s Lament, Husband’s Message, Christ and Satan, Daniel, Andreas, Guthlac, The Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon etc. are some of the examples.

Two important figures in Old English poetry are Cynewulf and Caedmon. Cynewulf wrote religious poems and the four poems, Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, Christ and Elene are always credited with him. Caedmon is famous for his Hymn.

Alfred enriched Old English prose with his translations especially Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Aelfric is another important prose writer during Old English period. He is famous for his Grammar, Homilies and Lives of the Saints. Aelfric’s prose is natural and easy and is very often alliterative.

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Middle English Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer Poet Geoffrey Chaucer was born circa 1340 in London, England. In 1357 he became a public servant to Countess Elizabeth of Ulster and continued in that capacity with the British court throughout his lifetime. The Canterbury Tales became his best known and most acclaimed work. He died in 1400 and was the first to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.

Chaucer’s first major work was ‘The Book of the Duchess’, an elegy for the first wife of his patron John of Gaunt. Other works include ‘Parlement of Foules’, ‘The Legend of Good Women’ and ‘Troilus and Criseyde’. In 1387, he began his most famous work, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, in which a diverse group of people recount stories to pass the time on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.

William Langland , (born c. 1330—died c. 1400), presumed author of one of the greatest examples of Middle English alliterative poetry, generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegorical work with a complex variety of religious themes. One of the major achievements of Piers Plowman is that it translates the language and conceptions of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by the layman. In general, the language of the poem is simple and colloquial, but some of the author’s imagery is powerful and direct.

PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA

In Europe, as in Greece, the drama had a distinctly religious origin. The first characters were drawn from the New Testament, and the object of the first plays was to make the church service more impressive, or to emphasize moral lessons by showing the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days of the Roman Empire the Church found the stage possessed by frightful plays, which debased the morals of a people already fallen too low. Reform seemed impossible; the corrupt drama was driven from the stage, and plays of every kind were forbidden. But mankind loves a spectacle, and soon the Church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden plays in the famous Mysteries and Miracles.

MIRACLE AND MYSTERY PLAYS

In France the name miracle was given to any play representing the lives of the saints, while the mystère represented scenes from the life of Christ or stories from the Old Testament associated with the coming of Messiah. In England this distinction was almost unknown; the name Miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays having their origin in the Bible or in the lives of the saints; and the name Mystery, to distinguish a certain class of plays, was not used until long after the religious drama had passed away.

The earliest Miracle of which we have any record in England is the Ludus de Sancta Katharina, which was performed in Dunstable about the year 1110. It is not known who wrote the original play of St. Catherine, but our first version was prepared by Geoffrey of St. Albans, a French schoolteacher of Dunstable. Whether or not the play was given in English is not known, but it was customary in the earliest plays for the chief actors to speak in Latin or French, to show their importance, while minor and comic parts of the same play were given in English.

For four centuries after this first recorded play the Miracles increased steadily in number and popularity in England. They were given first very simply and impressively in the churches; then, as the actors increased in number and the plays in liveliness, they overflowed to the churchyards; but when fun and hilarity began to predominate even in the most sacred representations, the scandalized priests forbade plays altogether on church grounds. By the year 1300 the Miracles were out of ecclesiastical hands and adopted eagerly by the town guilds; and in the following two centuries we find the Church preaching against the abuse of the religious drama which it had itself introduced, and which at first had served a purely religious purpose. But by this time the Miracles had taken strong hold upon the English people, and they continued to be immensely popular until, in the sixteenth century, they were replaced by the Elizabethan drama.

The early Miracle plays of England were divided into two classes: the first, given at Christmas, included all plays connected with the birth of Christ; the second, at Easter, included the plays relating to his death and triumph. By the beginning of the fourteenth century all these plays were, in various localities, united in single cycles beginning with the Creation and ending with the Final Judgment. The complete cycle was presented every spring, beginning on Corpus Christi day; and as the presentation of so many plays meant a continuous outdoor festival of a week or more, this day was looked forward to as the happiest of the whole year.

Probably every important town in England had its own cycle of plays for its own guilds to perform, but nearly all have been lost. At the present day only four cycles exist (except in the most fragmentary condition), and these, though they furnish an interesting commentary on the times, add very little to our literature. The four cycles are the Chester and York plays, so called from the towns in which they were given; the Towneley or Wakefield plays, named for the Towneley family, which for a long time owned the manuscript; and the Coventry plays, which on doubtful evidence have been associated with the Grey Friars (Franciscans) of Coventry. The Chester cycle has 25 plays, the Wakefield 30, the Coventry 42, and the York 48. It is impossible to fix either the date or the authorship of any of these plays; we only know certainly that they were in great favor from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The York plays are generally considered to be the best; but those of Wakefield show more humor and variety, and better workmanship. The former cycle especially shows a certain unity resulting from its aim to represent the whole of man’s life from birth to death. The same thing is noticeable in Cursor Mundi , which, with the York and Wakefield cycles, belongs to the fourteenth century.

After these plays were written according to the general outline of the Bible stories, no change was tolerated, the audience insisting, like children at “Punch and Judy,” upon seeing the same things year after year. No originality in plot or treatment was possible, therefore; the only variety was in new songs and jokes, and in the pranks of the devil. Childish as such plays seem to us, they are part of the religious development of all uneducated people. Even now the Persian play of the “Martyrdom of Ali” is celebrated yearly, and the famous “Passion Play,” a true Miracle, is given every ten years at Oberammergau.

THE MORAL PERIOD OF THE DRAMA

The second or moral period of the drama is shown by the increasing prevalence of the Morality plays. In these the characters were allegorical personages,–Life, Death, Repentance, Goodness, Love, Greed, and other virtues and vices. The Moralities may be regarded, therefore, as the dramatic counterpart of the once popular allegorical poetry exemplified by the Romance of the Rose . It did not occur to our first, unknown dramatists to portray men and women as they are until they had first made characters of abstract human qualities. Nevertheless, the Morality marks a distinct advance over the Miracle in that it gave free scope to the imagination for new plots and incidents. In Spain and Portugal these plays, under the name auto , were wonderfully developed by the genius of Calderon and Gil Vicente; but in England the Morality was a dreary kind of performance, like the allegorical poetry which preceded it.

To enliven the audience the devil of the Miracle plays was introduced; and another lively personage called the Vice was the predecessor of our modern clown and jester. His business was to torment the “virtues” by mischievous pranks, and especially to make the devil’s life a burden by beating him with a bladder or a wooden sword at every opportunity. The Morality generally ended in the triumph of virtue, the devil leaping into hell-mouth with Vice on his back.

The best known of the Moralities is “Everyman,” which has recently been revived in England and America. The subject of the play is the summoning of every man by Death; and the moral is that nothing can take away the terror of the inevitable summons but an honest life and the comforts of religion. In its dramatic unity it suggests the pure Greek drama; there is no change of time or scene, and the stage is never empty from the beginning to the end of the performance. Other well-known Moralities are the “Pride of Life,” “Hyckescorner,” and “Castell of Perseverance.” In the latter, man is represented as shut up in a castle garrisoned by the virtues and besieged by the vices.

Like the Miracle plays, most of the old Moralities are of unknown date and origin. Of the known authors of Moralities, two of the best are John Skelton, who wrote “Magnificence,” and probably also “The Necromancer”; and Sir David Lindsay (1490-1555), “the poet of the Scotch Reformation,” whose religious business it was to make rulers uncomfortable by telling them unpleasant truths in the form of poetry. With these men a new element enters into the Moralities. They satirize or denounce abuses of Church and State, and introduce living personages thinly disguised as allegories; so that the stage first becomes a power in shaping events and correcting abuses.

THE INTERLUDES

It is impossible to draw any accurate line of distinction between the Moralities and Interludes. In general we may think of the latter as dramatic scenes, sometimes given by themselves (usually with music and singing) at banquets and entertainments where a little fun was wanted; and again slipped into a Miracle play to enliven the audience after a solemn scene. Thus on the margin of a page of one of the old Chester plays we read, “The boye and pigge when the kinges are gone.” Certainly this was no part of the original scene between Herod and the three kings. So also the quarrel between Noah and his wife is probably a late addition to an old play. The Interludes originated, undoubtedly, in a sense of humor; and to John Heywood (1497?-1580?), a favorite retainer and jester at the court of Mary, is due the credit for raising the Interlude to the distinct dramatic form known as comedy.

Heywood’s Interludes were written between 1520 and 1540. His most famous is “The Four P’s,” a contest of wit between a “Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pedlar and a Poticary.” The characters here strongly suggest those of Chaucer. Another interesting Interlude is called “The Play of the Weather.” In this Jupiter and the gods assemble to listen to complaints about the weather and to reform abuses. Naturally everybody wants his own kind of weather. The climax is reached by a boy who announces that a boy’s pleasure consists in two things, catching birds and throwing snowballs, and begs for the weather to be such that he can always do both. Jupiter decides that he will do just as he pleases about the weather, and everybody goes home satisfied.

All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a mingling of prose and wretched doggerel, and add nothing to our literature. Their great work was to train actors, to keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to prepare the way for the true drama.

ELIZABEHAN POETRY AND PROSE

After the death of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400, a century has gone without great literary outputs. This period is known as Barren Age of literature.

Even though there are many differences in their work, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey are often mentioned together. Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Sonnet in England whereas Surrey wrote the first blank verse in English.

Thomas Wyatt followed the Italian poet Petrarch to compose sonnets. In this form, the 14 lines rhyme abbaabba (8) + 2 or 3 rhymes in the last six lines.

The Earl of Surrey’s blank verse is remarkable. Christopher Marlow, Shakespeare, Milton and many other writers made use of it.

Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets (1557) is the first printed anthology of English poetry. It contained 40 poems by Surrey and 96 by Wyatt. There were 135 by other authors. Some of these poems were fine, some childish.

In 1609, a collection of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets was printed. These sonnets were addressed to one “Mr. W.H.”. The most probable explanation of the identity of “W.H.” is that he was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

Other people mentioned in the sonnets are a girl, a rival poet, and a dark-eyed beauty. Shakespeare’s two long poems, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece are notable.

One of the most important poets of Elizabethan period is Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). He has been addressed “the poets’ poet”. His pastoral poem, The Shepeard’s Calendar (1579) is in 12 books, one for each month of the year. Spenser’s Amoretti, 88 Petrarchan sonnets clebrates his progress of love. The joy of his marriage with Elizabeth Boyle is expressed in his ode Epithalamion. His Prothalamion is written in honour of the double marriage of the daughters of the Earl of Worester. Spenser’s allegorical poem, The Faerie Queene is his greatest achievement. Spenser invented a special metre for The Faerie Queene . The verse has nine lines and the rhyme plan is ababbcbcc. This verse is known as the ‘Spenserian Stanza’.

Sir Philip Sidney is remembered for his prose romance, Arcadia . His critical essay Apology for Poetry, sonnet collection Astrophel and Stella are elegant.

Michael Drayton and Sir Walter Raleigh are other important poets of Elizabethan England. Famous Elizabethan dramatist Ben Jonson produced fine poems also.

The University Wits John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Green, Christopher Marlow, and Thomas Nash also wrote good number of poems. John Lyly is most widely known as the author of prose romance entitled Euphues. The style Lyly used in his Euphues is known as Euphuism. The sentences are long and complicated. It is filled with tricks and alliteration. Large number of similes are brought in.

John Donne’s works add the beauty of Elizabethan literature. He was the chief figure of Metaphysical Poetry. Donne’s poems are noted for its originality and striking images and conceits. Satires, Songs and Sonnets, Elegies, The Flea, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, A Valediction: of weeping etc. are his famous works.

Sir Francis Bacon is a versatile genius of Elizabethan England. He is considered as the father of English essays. His Essays first appeared in 1597, the second edition in 1612 and the third edition in 1625. Besides essays, he wrote The Advancement of Learning, New Atlantis and History of Henry VII.

Bacon’s popular essays are Of Truth, Of Friendship, Of Love, Of Travel, Of Parents and Children, Of Marriage and Single Life, Of Anger, Of Revenge, Of Death, etc.

Ben Jonson’s essays are compiled in The Timber or Discoveries. His essays are aphoristic like those of Bacon. Jonson is considered as the father of English literary criticism.

Many attempts were carried out to translate Bible into English. After the death of John Wycliff, William Tyndale tried on this project. Coverdale carried on the work of Tyndale. The Authorized Version of Bible was published in 1611.

ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

The English dramas have gone through great transformation in Elizabethan period. The chief literary glory of the Elizabethan age was its drama. The first regular English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister written by Nicholas Udall. Another comedy Gammar Gurton’s Needle is about the loss and the finding of a needle with which the old woman Gammar Gurton mends clothes.

The first English tragedy was Gorboduc , in blank verse. The first three acts of Gorboduc writtern by Thomas Norton and the other two by Thomas Sackville.

The University Wits contributed hugely for the growth of Elizabethan drama. The University Wits were young men associated with Oxford and Cambridge. They were fond of heroic themes. The most notable figures are Christopher Marlow, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Nash, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, and George Peele.

Christopher Marlow was the greatest of pre-Shakespearean dramatist. Marlow wrote only tragedies. His most famous works are Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, The Massacre at Paris, and Doctor Faustus. Marlow popularized the blank verse. Ben Jonson called it “the mighty line of Marlow”.

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy is a Senecan play. It resembles Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Its horrific plot gave the play a great and lasting popularity.

The greatest literary figure of English, William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon on April 26, 1564. He did odd jobs and left to London for a career. In London, he wrote plays for Lord Chamberlain’s company. Shakespeare’s plays can be classified as the following

1.The Early Comedies: in these immature plays the plots are not original. The characters are less finished and the style lacks the genius of Shakespeare. They are full of wit and word play. Of this type are The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

2.The English Histories: These plays show a rapid maturing of Shakespeare’s technique. His characterization has improved. The plays in this group are Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V.

3. The Mature Comedies: The jovial good humour of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, the urban worldywise comedy of Touchstone in As You Like It, and the comic scenes in The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing etc. are full of vitality. They contain many comic situations.

4.The Sombre Plays: In this group are All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Trolius and Cressida . These plays show a cynical attitude to life and are realistic in plot.

5. The Great Tragedies : Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth , and King Lear are the climax of Shakespeare’s art. These plays stand supreme in intensity of emotion, depth of psychological insight, and power of style.

6. The Roman Plays: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus etc. follow the great tragic period. Unlike Marlow, Shakespeare is relaxed in the intensity of tragedy.

7. The Last Plays: The notable last plays of Shakespeare are Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

The immense power and variety of Shakespeare’s work have led to the idea that one man cannot have written it all; yet it must be true that one man did. Thus Shakespeare remains as the greatest English dramatist even after four centuries of his death.

Other dramatist who flourished during the Elizabethan period is Ben Jonson. He introduced the “comedy of humours’’, which portrays the individual as dominated by one marked characteristic. He is best known for his Every Man in his Humour. Other important plays of Jonson are Every Man out of his Humour, Volpone or the Fox, and The Alchemist,

John Webster’s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are important Elizabethan dramas. Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, Beaumont and Fletcher etc. are other noted Elizabethan playwrights.

John Milton and His Time

John Milton (1608- 1674) was born in London and educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge. After leaving university, he studied at home. Milton was a great poet, polemic, pamphleteer, theologian, and parliamentarian. In 1643, Milton married a woman much younger than himself. She left Milton and did not return for two years. This unfortunate incident led Milton to write two strong pamphlets on divorce. The greatest of all his political writings is Areopagitica, a notable and impassioned plea for the liberty of the press.

Milton’s early poems include On Shakespeare, and On Arriving at the Age of Twenty-three. L’Allegro( the happy man and Il Penseroso (the sad man) two long narrative poems. Comus is a masque written by Milton when he was at Cambridge.

His pastoral elegy Lycidas is on his friend, Edward King who drowned to death on a voyage to Ireland. Milton’s one of the sonnets deals with the theme of his blindness.

Milton is remembered for his greatest epic poem Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost contained twelve books and published in 1677. Milton composed it in blank verse. Paradise Lost covers the rebellion of Satan(Lucifer) in heaven and his expulsion. Paradise Lost contains hundreds of remarkable lines. Milton coined many words in this poem.

Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are other two major poems of Milton.

Milton occupies a central position in English literature. He was a great Puritan and supported Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War. He wrote many pamphlet in support of parliament.

LYRIC POETS DURING MILTON’S PERIOD (THE CAVALIER POETS)

Milton’s period produced immense lyric poetry. These lyrical poets dealt chiefly with love and war.

Richard Lovelace’s Lucasta contains the best of his shorter pieces. His best known lyrics, such as To Althea, from Prison and To Lucasta, going in the Wars, are simple and sincere.

Sir John Suckling was a famous wit at court. His poems are generous and witty. His famous poem is Ballad upon a Wedding.

Robert Herrick wrote some fresh and passionate lyrics. Among his best known shorter poems are To Althea, To Julia, and Cherry Ripe.

Philip Massinger and John Ford produced some notable in this period.

Many prose writers flourished during Milton’s age. Sir Thomas Browne is the best prose writer of the period. His ReligioMedici is a curious mixture of religious faith and scientific skepticism. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Errors is another important work.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, Thomas Fuller’s The History of the Holy War are other important prose works during this period. Izaac Walton’s biography of John Donne is a very famous work of Milton’s period. His Compleat Angler discusses the art of river fishing.

RESTORATION DRAMA AND PROSE

The Restoration of Charles II (1660) brought about a revolution in English literature. With the collapse of the Puritan Government there sprang up activities that had been so long suppressed. The Restoration encouraged levity in rules that often resulted in immoral and indecent plays.

John Dryden (1631-1700)

Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration. In his works, we have an excellent reflection of both the good and the bad tendencies of the age in which he lived. Before the Restoration, Dryden supported Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration, Dryden changed his views and became loyal to Charles II. His poem Astrea Redux (1660) celebrated Charles II’s return.

Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis( Miracle Year) describes the terrors of Great Fire in London in 1666. Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy in his famous satirical allegory, Abasalom and Achitophel. John Dryden is now remembered for his greatest mock-heroic poem, Mac Flecknoe. Mac Flecknoe is a personal attack on his rival poet Thomas Shadwell.

Dryden’s other important poems are Religio Laici, and The Hind and the Panther.

John Dryden popularized heroic couplets in his dramas. Aurengaxebe, The Rival Ladies, The Conquest of Granada, Don Sebastian etc. are some of his famous plays.

His dramatic masterpiece is All for Love. Dryden polished the plot of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in his All for Love.

As a prose writer, Dryden’s work, An Essay on Dramatic Poesie is worth mentioning.

John Bunyan’s greatest allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Holy War,

Comedy of Manners

Restoration period produced a brilliant group of dramatists who made this age immortal in the history of English literature. These plays are hard and witty, comic and immoral. It was George Etheredge who introduced Comedy of Manners. His famous plays are She Would if She Could, The Man of Mode and Love in a Tub.

William Congreve is the greatest of Restoration comedy writers. His Love for Love, The Old Bachelor, The Way of the World and The Double Dealer are very popular.

William Wycherley is another important Restoration comedy playwright. His Country Wife, and Love in a Wood are notable plays.

Sir John Vanbrugh’s best three comedies are The Provoked Wife, The Relapse and The Confederacy.

ENGLISH POETS, 1660-1798

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Alexander Pope was the undisputed master of both prose and verse. Pope wrote many poems and mock-epics attacking his rival poets and social condition of England. His Dunciad is an attack on dullness. He wrote An Essay on Criticism ( 1711) in heroic couplets. In 1712, Pope pubished The Rape of the Lock, one of the most brilliant poems in English language. It is a mock-heroic poem dealing with the fight of two noble families.

An Essay on Man, Of the Characters of Women, and the translation of Illiad and Odyssey are his other major works.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote two popular poems in heroic couplets. They are The Traveller and The Deserted Village.

James Thompson is remembered for his long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes in his poem The Seasons. He wrote another important poem The Castle of Indolence.

Edward Young produced a large amount of literary work of variable quality. The Last Day, The Love of Fame, and The Force of Religion are some of them.

Robert Blair ’s fame is chiefly dependent on his poem The Grave. It is a long blank verse poem of meditation on man’s morality.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is one of the greatest poets of English literature. His first poem was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Then after years of revision, he published his famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Its popularity had been maintained to the present day. Other important poems of Thomas Gray are Ode on a Favourite Cat, The Bard and The Progress of Poesy.

William Blake (1757-1827) is both a great poet and artist. His two collections of short lyrics are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. His finest lyric is The Tiger.

Robert Burns is known as the national poet of Scotland. A Winter Night, O My Love is like a Red Red Rose, The Holy Fair etc. are some of his major poems.

William Cowper, William Collins, and William Shenstone are other notable poets before the Romanticism.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

DANIEL DEFOE (1659-1731)

Daniel Defoe wrote in bulk. His greatest work is the novel Robinson Crusoe. It is based on an actual event which took place during his time. Robinson Crusoe is considered to be one of the most popular novels in English language. He started a journal named The Review. His A Journal of the Plague Year deals with the Plague in London in 1665.

Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison worked together for many years. Richard Steele started the periodicals The Tatler, The Spectator, The Guardian, The English Man, and The Reader. Joseph Addison contributed in these periodicals and wrote columns. The imaginary character of Sir Roger de Coverley was very popular during the eighteenth century.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is one of the greatest satirists of English literature. His first noteworthy book was The Battle of the Books . A Tale of a Tub is a religious allegory like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. His longest and most famous work is Gulliver’s Travels. Another important work of Jonathan Swift is A Modest Proposal.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is very much famous for his Dictionary (1755). The Vanity of Human Wishes is a longish poem by him. Johnson started a paper named The Rambler. His The Lives of the Poets introduces fifty-two poets including Donne, Dryden, Pope, Milton, and Gray. Most of the information about Johnson is taken from his friend James Boswell’s biography Life of Samuel Johnson.

Edward Gibbon is famous for the great historical work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His Autobiography contains valuable material concerning his life.

Edmund Burke is one of the masters of English prose. He was a great orator also. His speech On American Taxation is very famous. Revolution in France and A Letter to a Noble Lord are his notable pamphlets.

The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Earl of Chesterfield, Thomas Gray and Cowper are good prose works in Eighteenth century literature.

The Birth of English Novel

The English novel proper was born about the middle of the eighteenth century. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) is considered as the father of English novel. He published his first novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded in 1740. This novel is written in the form of letters. Thus Pamela is an ‘epistolary novel’. The character Pamela is a poor and virtuous woman who marries a wicked man and afterwards reforms her husband. Richardson’s next novel Clarissa Harlowe was also constructed in the form of letters. Many critics consider Clarissa as Richardson’s masterpiece. Clarissa is the beautiful daughter of a severe father who wants her to marry against her will. Clarissa is a very long novel.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) is another important novelist. He published Joseph Andrews in 1742. Joseph Andrews laughs at Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. His greatest novel is Tom Jones . Henry Fielding’s last novel is Amelia.

Tobias Smollett wrote a ‘picaresque novel’ titled The Adventures of Roderick Random. His other novels are The Adventures of Ferdinand and Humphry Clinker.

Laurence Sterne is now remembered for his masterpiece Tristram Shandy which was published in 1760. Another important work of Laurence Sterne is A Sentimental journey through France and Italy. These novels are unique in English literature. Sterne blends humour and pathos in his works.

Horace Walpole is famous both as a letter writer and novelist. His one and only novel The Castle of Otranto deals with the horrific and supernatural theme.

Other ‘terror novelists’ include William Beckford and Mrs Ann Radcliffe.

EARLY NINTEENTH CENTURY POETS (THE ROMANTICS)

The main stream of poetry in the eighteenth century had been orderly and polished, without much feeling for nature. The publication of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 came as a shock. The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the beginning of the romantic age. They together with Southey are known as the Lake Poets, because they liked the Lake district in England and lived in it.

William Wordsworth ((1770-1850) was the poet of nature. In the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. He defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions”. His views on poetical style are the most revolutionary.

In his early career as a poet, Wordsworth wrote poems like An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. The Prelude is the record of his development as a poet. It is a philosophical poem. He wrote some of the best lyric poems in the English language like The Solitary Reaper, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Ode on the Itimations of Immorality, Resolution and Independence etc. Tintern Abbey is one of the greatest poems of Wordsworth.

Samuel Tylor Coleridge (1772-1814) wrote four poems for The Lyrical Ballads. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the most noteworthy. Kubla Khan, Christabel, Dejection an Ode, Frost at Midnight etc. are other important poems. Biographia Literaria is his most valuable prose work. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare are equally important.

Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was based on his travels. Don Juan ranks as one of the greatest of satirical poems. The Vision of Judgment is a fine political satire in English.

PB Shelley (1792-1822) was a revolutionary figure of Romantic period. When Shelley was studying at Oxford, he wrote the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism which caused his expulsion from the university. Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam and Alastor are his early poems. Prometheus Unbound is a combination of the lyric and the drama. Shelley wrote some of the sweetest English lyrics like To a Skylark, The Cloud, To Night etc. Of his many odes, the most remarkable is Ode to the West Wind. Adonais is an elegy on the death of John Keats.

John Keats (1795-1821) is another great Romantic poet who wrote some excellent poems in his short period of life. His Isabella deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two wicked brothers. The unfinished epic poem Hyperion is modelled on Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Eve of St Agnes is regarded as his finest narrative poem. The story of Lamia is taken from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Endymion, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn are very famous . His Letters give give a clear insight into his mind and artistic development.

Robert Southey is a minor Romantic poet. His poems, which are of great bulk, include Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Holly-tree. 4

LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY POETS (Victorian Poets)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) is a chief figure of later nineteenth century poetry. His volume of Poems contain notable poems like The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters, Ulysses, Morte d’ Arthur. The story of Morte d’ Arthur is based on Thomas Malory’s poem Morte d’ Arthur. In Memoriam(1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. In Memoriam is the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest poetry he ever produced. Maud and Other Poems was received with amazement by the public. Idylls of the King, Enoch Arden, Harold etc. are his other works.

Robert Browning (1812-89) is an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic monologues made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. He popularized ‘dramatic monologue’. The Ring and the Book is an epic-length poem in which he justifies the ways of God to humanity Browning is popularly known by his shorter poems, such as Porphyria’s Lover , Rabbi Ben Ezra , How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix , and The Pied Piper of Hamelin . He married Elizabeth Barrett, another famous poet during the Victorian period. Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea Del Sarto and My Last Duchess are famous dramatic monologues.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School. Arnold is sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. Arnold valued natural scenery for its peace and permanence in contrast with the ceaseless change of human things. His descriptions are often picturesque, and marked by striking similes. Thyrsis, Dover Beach and The Scholar Gipsy are his notable poems.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator in the late nineteenth century England. Rossotti’s poems were criticized as belonging to the ‘Fleshy School’ of poetry. Rossetti wrote about nature with his eyes on it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wife of Robert Browning wrote some excellent poems in her volume of Sonnets from the Portuguese.

AC Swinburne followed the style of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne’s famous poems works are Poems and Ballads and tristram of Lyonesse.

Edward Fitzgerald translated the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald’s translation is loose and did not stick too closely to the original.

Rudyard Kipling and Francis Thompson also wrote some good poems during the later nineteenth century.

Nineteenth Century Novelists (Victorian Novelists)

Jane Austen 1775-1817 is one of the greatest novelists of nineteenth century English literature. Her first novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) deals with the life of middle class people. The style is smooth and charming. Her second novel Sense and Sensibility followed the same general lines of Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion are some of the other famous works. Jane Austen’s plots are skillfully constructed. Her characters are developed with minuteness and accuracy.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is considered as one of the greatest English novelists. Dickens has contributed some evergreen characters to English literature. He was a busy successful novelist during his lifetime. The Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are two early novels. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby , David Copperfield, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are some of the most famous novels of Charles Dickens. No English novelists excel Dickens in the multiplicity of his characters and situations. He creates a whole world people for the readers. He sketched both lower and middle class people in London.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta and sent to England for education. William Thackeray is now chiefly remembered for his novel The Vanity Fair. While Dickens was in full tide of his success, Thackeray was struggling through neglect and contempt to recognition. Thackeray’s genius blossomed slowly. Thackeray’s characters are fearless and rough. He protested against the feeble characters of his time. The Rose and the Ring, Rebecca and Rowena, and The Four Georges are some of his works.

The Bront ë s Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were the daughters of an Irish clergy man Patrick Bront ë, who held a living in Yorkshire. Charlotte Bront ë ’ s first novel, The Professor failed to find a publisher and only appeared after her death. Jane Eyre is her greatest novel. the plot is weak and melodramatic. This was followed by Shirley and Villette. Her plots are overcharged and she is largely restricted to her own experiments.

Emily Brontë wrote less than Charlottë. Her one and only novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is unique in English literature. It is the passionate love story of Heathcliff and Catherine.

Anne Bronte ’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are much inferior to those of her sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.

George Eliot (1819-1880) is the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede was her first novel. Her next novel, The Mill on the Floss is partly autobiographical. Silas Marner is a shorter novel which gives excellent pictures of village life. Romola, Middle March and Daniel Deronda are other works of George Eliot.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) published his first work Desperate Remedies anonymously. Under the Greenwood Tree, one of the lightest and most appealing of his novels established him as a writer. It was set in the rural area he was soon to make famous as Wessex. Far From the Madding Crowd is a tragi-comedy set in Wessex. The rural background of the story is an integral part of the novel, which reveals the emotional depths which underlie rustic life. The novel, The Return of the Native is a study of man’s helplessness before the mighty Fate. The Mayor of Casterbridge also deals with the theme of Man versus Destiny. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure aroused the hostility of conventional readers due to their frank handling of sex and religion. At the beginning Tess of the D’Urbervilles was rejected by the publishers. The outcry with the publication of Jude the Obscure led Hardy in disgust to abandon novel writing. Thomas Hardy’s characters are mostly men and women living close to the soil.

Mary Shelley , the wife of Romantic poet PB Shelley is now remembered as a writer of her famous novel of terror, Frankestein. Frankestein can be regarded as the first attempt at science fiction. The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s another work.

Edgar Allan Poe was a master of Mystery stories. Poe’s powerful description of astonishing and unusual events has the attraction of terrible things. Some of his major works are The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Mystery of Red Death.

Besides poetry collections like The Lady of the Last Ministrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and The Lord of the Isles, Sir Walter Scott produced enormous number of novels. Waverly, Old Mortality, The Black Dwarf, The Pirate, and Kenilworth are some of them. He was too haste in writing novels and this led to the careless, imperfect stories. He has a great place in the field of historical novels.

Frederick Marryat ’s sea novels were popular in the nineteenth century. His earliest novel was The Naval Officer. All his best books deal with the sea. Marryat has a considerable gift for plain narrative and his humour is entertaining. Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful and Japhet in Search of His Father are some of his famous works.

R.L. Stevenson ’s The Tr easure Island, George Meredith ’s The Egoist, Edward Lytton ’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Charles Reade ’s Mask and Faces, Anthony Trollope ’s The Warden, Wilkie Collins ’s The Moonstone, Joseph Conard ’s Lord Jim, Nathaniel Hawthrone ’s The Scarlet Letter etc. are some of other famous works of nineteenth century English literature.

Other Nineteenth Century Prose

Charles Lamb is one of the greatest essayists of nineteenth century. Lamb started his career as a poet but is now remembered for his well-known Essays of Elia. His essays are unequal in English. He is so sensitive and so strong. Besides Essays of Elia, other famous essays are Dream Children and Tales from Shakespeare. His sister, Mary Lamb also wrote some significant essays.

William Hazlitt ’s reputation chiefly rests on his lectures and essays on literary and general subjects. His lectures, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, The English Poets and The English Comic Writers are important.

Thomas De Quincey ’s famous work is Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is written in the manner of dreams. His Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets contain some good chapters on Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Thomas Carlyle is another prose writer of nineteenth century. His works consisted of translations, essays, and biographies. Of these the best are his translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, his The Life of Schiller, and his essays on Robert Burns and Walter Scott.

Thomas Macaulay (Lord Macaulay) wrote extensively. He contributed for The Encyclopedia of Britannica and The Edinburgh Review. His History of England is filled with numerous and picturesque details.

Charles Darwin is one of the greatest names in modern science. He devoted almost wholly to biological and allied studies. His chief works are The Voyage of the Beagle, Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man.

John Ruskin ’s works are of immense volume and complexity. His longest book is Modern Painters. The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice expound his views on artistic matters. Unto this Last is a series of articles on political economy.

Samuel Butler , the grandson of Dr. Samuel Butler was inspired by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Evolution Old and New, Unconcious Memory, Essays on Life, Art and Science, The Way of All Flesh etc. rank him as one of the greatest prose writers of ninteenth century. He was an acute and original thinker. He exposed all kinds of reliogious, political, and social shams and hypocrisies of his period.

Besides being a great poet, Mathew Arnold also excelled as an essayist. His prose works are large in bulk and wide in range. Of them all his critical essays are probably of the greatest value. Essays in Criticism, Culture and Anarchy, and Literature and Dogma have permanent value.

Lewis Carroll , another prose writer of ninteenth century is now remembered for her immortal work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Ever since its publication, this novel continues to be popular among both the children and adult readers.

Chapter 13 Twentieth-century novels and other prose

The long reign of Queen Victoria ended in 1901. There was a sweeping social reform and unprecedented progress. The reawakening of a social conscience was found its expression in the literature produced during this period.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay but soon moved to Lahore. He worked as a news reporter in Lahore. Kipling was a prolific and versatile writer. His insistent proclamation of the superiority of the white races, his support for colonization, his belief in the progress and the value of the machine etc. found an echo on the hearts of many of his readers. His best-known prose works include Kim, Life’s Handicap, Debits and Credits, and Rewards and Fairies. He is now chiefly remembered for his greatest work, The Jungle Book.

E.M Forster wrote five novels in his life time. Where Angels Fear to Tread has well-drawn characters. Other novels are The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. A Passage to India is unequal in English in its presentation of the complex problems which were to be found in the relationship between English and native people in India. E.M Forster portrayed the Indian scene in all its magic and all its wretchedness.

H.G Wells began his career as a journalist. He started his scientific romances with the publication of The Time Machine. The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon and The Food of the Gods are some of his important science romances. Ann Veronica, Kipps and The History of Mr Polly are numbered among his sociological novels.

D.H Lawrence was a striking figure in the twentieth century literary world. He produced over forty volumes of fiction during his period. The White Peacock is his earliest novel. The largely autobiographical and extremely powerful novel was Sons and Lovers. It studies with great insight the relationship between a son and mother. By many, it is considered the best of all his works. Then came The Rainbow, suppressed as obscene, which treats again the conflict between man and woman. Women in Love is another important work. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a novel in which sexual experience is handled with a wealth of physical detail and uninhibited language. Lawrence also excelled both as a poet and short story writer.

James Joyce is a serious novelist, whose concern is chiefly with human relationships- man in relation to himself, to society, and to the whole race. He was born in Dublin, Ireland. His first work, Dubliners, is followed by a largely autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is an intense account of a developing writer. The protagonist of the story, Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce himself. The character Stephen Dedalus appears again in his highly complex novel, Ulysses published in 1922. Joyce’s mastery of language, his integrity, brilliance, and power is noticeable in his novel titled Finnefan’s Wake.

Virginia Woolf famed both as a literary critic and novelist. Her first novel, The Voyage Out is told in the conventional narrative manner. A deeper study of characters can be found in her later works such as Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando. In addition to her novels, Virginia Woolf wrote a number of essays on cultural subjects. Woolf rejected the conventional concepts of novel. She replaced emphasis on incident, external description, and straight forward narration by using the technique “ Stream of Consciousness ”. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf popularized this writing technique.

George Orwell became a figure of outstanding importance because of Animal Farm. It is a political allegory on the degeneration of communist ideals into dictatorship. Utterly different was Nineteen Eighty-Four on the surveillance of state over its citizen. Burmese Days and The Road to Wigan Pier are other works.

William Golding deals with man’s instinct to destroy what is good, whether it is material or spiritual. His best known novel is Lord of the Flies . The Scorpion God, The Inheritors and Free Fall are other notable works.

Somerset Maugham was a realist who sketched the cosmopolitan life through his characters. The Moon and Sixpence, Mrs. Craddock and The Painted Veil are some of his novels. His best novel is Of Human Bondage. It is a study in frustration, which had a strong autobiographical element.

Kingsly Amis ’s Lucky Jim, Take a Girl like You, One Fat Englishman , and Girl are notable works in the twentieth century.

Twentieth Century Drama

After a hundred years of insignificance, drama again appeared as an important form in the twentieth century. Like the novelists in the 20 th century, most of the important dramatists were chiefly concerned with the contemporary social scene. Many playwrights experimented in the theatres. There were revolutionary changes in both the theme and presentation.

John Galsworthy was a social reformer who showed both sides of the problems in his plays. He had a warm sympathy for the victims of social injustice. Of his best-known plays The Silver Box deals with the inequality of justice, Strife with the struggle between Capital and Labour, Justice with the meaninglessness of judiciary system.

George Bernard Shaw is one of the greatest dramatists of 20 th century. The first Shavian play is considered to be Arms and the Man. It is an excellent and amusing stage piece which pokes fun at the romantic conception of the soldier. The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and The Man of Destiny are also noteworthy. Man and Superman is Shaw’s most important play which deals the theme half seriously and half comically. Religion and social problems are again the main topics in Major Barbara. The Doctor’s Dilemma is an amusing satire. Social conventions and social weaknesses were treated again in Pygmalion , a witty and highly entertaining study of the class distinction. St Joan deals with the problems in Christianity. The Apple Cart, Geneva, The Millionaire, Too True to be Good and On the Rocks are Shaw’s minor plays.

J M Synge was the greatest dramatist in the rebirth of the Irish theatre. His plays are few in number but they are of a stature to place him among the greatest playwrights in the English language. Synge was inspired by the beauty of his surroundings, the humour, tragedy, and poetry of the life of the simple fisher-folk in the Isles of Aran. The Shadow of the Glen is a comedy based on an old folktale, which gives a good romantic picture of Irish peasant life. It was followed by Riders to the Sea, a powerful, deeply moving tragedy which deals with the toll taken by the sea in the lives of the fisher-folk of the Ireland. The Winker’s Wedding and The Well of the Saints are other notable works.

Samuel Beckett, the greatest proponent of Absurd Theatre is most famous for his play, Waiting for Godot. It is a static representation without structure or development, using only meandering, seemingly incoherent dialogue to suggest despair of a society in the post-World War period. Another famous play by Beckett is Endgame.

Harold Pinter was influenced by Samuel Beckett. His plays are quite short and set in an enclosed space. His characters are always in doubt about their function, and in fear of something or someone ‘outside’. The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, A Night Out, The Homecoming and Silence are his most notable plays.

James Osborne’ s Look Back in Anger gave the strongest tonic to the concept of Angry Young Man . Watch it Come Down, A Portrait of Me, Inadmissible Evidence etc. are his other major works.

T.S Eliot wrote seven dramas. They are Sweeney Agonistes, The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman.

Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and The Silver Tassie marked Sean O’Casey out as the greatest new figure in the inter-War years. His own experience enabled him to study the life of the Dublin slums with the warm understanding.

Another leading playwright of 20 th century was Arnold Wesker. Wesker narrated the lives of working class people in his plays. Roots, Chicken Soup with Barley and I’m Talking about Jerusalem are his famous works.

Bertolt Brecht, J.B Priestley, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Fry, Peter Usinov, Tom Stoppard, Bernard Kops, Henry Livings, Alan Bennett et al are other important playwrights of twentieth century English literature.

Chapter 15 Twentieth Century Poetry

The greatest figure in the poetry of the early part of the Twentieth century was the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Like so many of his contemporaries, Yeats was acutely conscious of the spiritual barrenness of his age. W.B Yeats sought to escape into the land of ‘faery’ and looked for his themes in Irish legend. He is one of the most difficult of modern poets. His trust was in the imagination and intuition of man rather than in scientific reasoning. Yeats believed in fairies, magic, and other forms of superstition. He studied Indian philosophy and Vedas. An Irish Seaman Foresees His Death, The Tower, The Green Helmet etc. are his major poems.

With possible excepion of Yeats, no twentieth century poet has been held in such esteem by his fellow-poets as T.S Eliot. Eliot’s first volume of verse, Prufrock and Other Observations portrays the boredom, emptiness, and pessimism of its days. His much discussed poem The Waste Land(1922) made a tremendous impact on the post-War generation, and it is considered one of the important documents of its age. The poem is difficult to understand in detail, but its general aim is clear. The poem is built round the symbols of drought and flood, representing death and rebirth. The poem progresses in five movements, “The Burial of the Dead”, “The Game of the Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”, and “What the Thunder Said”. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday is probably his most difficult. Obscure images and symbols and the lack of a clear, logical structure make the poem difficult.

W.H Auden was an artist of great virtuosity, a ceaseless experimenter in verse form, with a fine ear for the rhythm and music of words. He was modern in tone and selection of themes. Auden’s later poems revealed a new note of mysticism in his approach to human problems. He was outspokingly anti-Romantic and stressed the objective attitude.

Thomas Hardy began his career as a poet. Though he was not able to find a publisher, he continued to write poetry. Hardy’s verses consist of short lyrics describing nature and natural beauty. Like his novels, the poems reveal concern with man’s unequal struggle against the mighty fate. Wessex Poems, Winter Words, and Collected Poems are his major poetry works.

G.M Hopkins is a unique figure in the history of English poetry. No modern poet has been the centre of more controversy or the cause of more misunderstanding. He was very unconventional in writing technique. He used Sprung-rhythm, counterpoint rhythm, internal rhythms, alliteration, assonance, and coinages in his poems.

Dylan Thomas was an enemy of intellectualism in verse. He drew upon the human body, sex, and the Old Testament for much of his imagery and complex word-play. His verses are splendidly colourful and musical. Appreciation of landscape, religious and mystical association, sadness and quietness were very often selected as themes for his verses.

Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes composed some brilliant poems in the 20 th century. Plath’s mental imbalance which brought her to suicide can be seen in her poetry collections titled Ariel, The Colossus, and Crossing the Water. Ted Hughes was a poet of animal and nature. His major collection of poetry are The Hawk in the Rain, Woodwo, Crow, Crow Wakes and Eat Crow.

R.S Thomas, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Peter Porter, Seamus Heaney et al are also added the beauty of 20 th century English poetry.

The First World War brought to public notice many poets, particularly among the young men of armed forces, while it provided a new source of inspiration for writers of established reputation. Rupert Brooke, Slegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen are the major War poets. Rupert Brooke ’s famous sonnet “If I should die, think only this of me” has appeared in so many anthologies of twentieth century verse. Brooke turned to nature and simple pleasures for inspiration. Sassoon wrote violent and embittered poems. Sassoon painted the horrors of life and death in the trenches and hospitals. Wilfred Owen was the greatest of the war poets. In the beginning of his literary career, Owen wrote in the romantic tradition of John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Owen was a gifted artist with a fine feeling for words. He greatly experimented in verse techniques.

Famous English Speeches and Their Importance

The power of words has shaped history, influenced societies, and inspired generations. Throughout history, numerous English speeches have resonated beyond their immediate audience, leaving an indelible mark on the fabric of society. This article explores some of the most iconic English speeches, delving into their context, content, and the impact they have had both at the time and in the years that followed.

The Timeless Influence of Oratory

Oratory, the art of effective public speaking, has been a critical tool for leaders and visionaries to convey their ideas, rally support, and make lasting changes. The English language, with its rich vocabulary and expressive potential, has been the medium for many significant speeches. These oratories not only reflect the times in which they were given but also continue to influence contemporary thought and discourse.

The Power of Churchill’s Words

“we shall fight on the beaches”.

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during World War II, was known for his stirring oratory, which played a vital role in bolstering British morale during the war’s darkest hours. Among his many speeches, “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” delivered to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, stands out. This speech was given after the British Expeditionary Force’s evacuation from Dunkirk, a moment that was both a retreat and a miraculous escape.

Context and Content

Churchill’s speech was a masterful blend of realism and defiance. He did not shy away from acknowledging the dire situation Britain faced but simultaneously infused a spirit of unyielding resilience. The speech’s most famous line, “We shall fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender,” encapsulated the British resolve to stand against Nazi Germany, regardless of the odds.

Impact and Legacy

This speech is not just remembered for its immediate effect on British morale but also for how it has come to symbolize steadfast resistance in the face of adversity. Churchill’s words continue to be referenced and quoted, showcasing the enduring power of well-crafted rhetoric.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream

“i have a dream”.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, a defining moment in the American Civil Rights Movement. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., King shared his vision of a future where people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

King’s speech was a poignant and poetic call for equality and freedom. Its power lay not just in the words but in the emotion and conviction with which they were delivered. The refrain “I have a dream” became a rallying cry for change and has since become synonymous with the fight against racial injustice.

The speech galvanized the civil rights movement and is credited with helping to pave the way for significant legislative changes, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its influence extends beyond the United States, inspiring global movements for equality and justice. King’s dream remains a touchstone in discussions about race and equality, demonstrating the enduring impact of his words.

The Eloquence of Elizabeth I

“the tilbury speech”.

In 1588, Queen Elizabeth I delivered a rousing speech to her troops at Tilbury, who were preparing to repel the Spanish Armada. This speech is noteworthy not only for its content but also because it was delivered by a female monarch during a time when women were often excluded from public political life.

Facing the threat of invasion, Elizabeth’s speech was a powerful assertion of her leadership and a demonstration of unity and strength. Her declaration, “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king,” was a remarkable statement of her resolve and capability as a leader.

Elizabeth’s speech is remembered as a symbol of strong leadership and national unity. It is often cited in discussions about gender and leadership, highlighting how Elizabeth used her position to challenge contemporary notions of gender roles.

John F. Kennedy’s Call to Action

“ ask not what your country can do for you ”.

John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address on January 20, 1961, is remembered for its stirring call to action and its challenge to the American public. The speech’s most famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” has become a timeless call to civic responsibility and public service.

Kennedy’s speech came at a crucial time in American history, with the Cold War in full swing and a burgeoning civil rights movement. His words were aimed at inspiring a sense of collective responsibility and urging Americans to contribute to the greater good of the nation and the world. The speech was notable for its forward-looking optimism and its appeal to unity and shared purpose.

Kennedy’s inaugural address helped to inspire a generation to public service and played a significant role in shaping the national and international policies of the 1960s. The phrase “Ask not what your country can do for you” continues to resonate as a symbol of selfless service and is often referenced in political discourse, emphasizing the importance of individual contribution to societal progress.

Nelson Mandela’s Defiant Stand

“i am prepared to die”.

Delivered during his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela’s “I Am Prepared to Die” speech was a powerful and eloquent defense of his actions and beliefs in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. This speech not only encapsulated his personal resolve but also the broader aspirations of the anti-apartheid movement.

In facing the possibility of the death penalty, Mandela used the courtroom as a platform to justify the necessity of armed struggle against an oppressive regime. He articulated his vision for a democratic and free society, where all South Africans, regardless of race, could live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. The most poignant part of the speech, where Mandela declared he was prepared to die for his ideals, underscored his unwavering commitment to justice.

Mandela’s speech became a manifesto for the anti-apartheid movement and played a significant role in drawing international attention to the plight of South Africans under apartheid. His words and his subsequent long imprisonment became central symbols of the struggle against racial oppression. The speech remains a powerful example of the use of oratory to advance human rights and social justice.

Barack Obama’s Message of Hope

“yes we can”.

Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech, given after the New Hampshire primary in 2008, became a defining moment in his presidential campaign and a symbol of hope and change for many Americans and people around the world. The repetitive and rhythmic refrain “Yes We Can” captured a spirit of optimism and unity.

The speech was notable for its inclusive language and its appeal to a sense of shared destiny. Obama used simple yet powerful rhetoric to inspire a sense of possibility and to rally support for his vision of a more united and equitable America. The refrain “Yes We Can” was both a statement of collective ability and a call to action.

Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech played a significant role in his election as the first African American President of the United States. The speech, and the phrase itself, became emblematic of his presidency and his approach to governance. It continues to be used as an example of how powerful and positive rhetoric can be used to unite people and bring about change.

Each of these speeches, in their own way, has contributed to the shaping of history and the English language. They have demonstrated the power of words to inspire, to challenge, and to bring about change. From Churchill’s unwavering defiance to Obama’s optimistic vision, these speeches continue to resonate because they speak to universal truths and aspirations. They remind us of the power of speech not just to reflect reality but to shape it, and of the ongoing importance of eloquent and effective communication in our world.

Rhetorical Mastery in Famous Speeches

English speeches of great historical significance are not only remembered for their content but also for their masterful use of rhetorical techniques. These techniques, which include the use of repetition, metaphor, and emotional appeal, have played a crucial role in making these speeches memorable and impactful.

Techniques That Resonate

Churchill’s use of repetition in “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” Mandela’s poignant use of antithesis in “I Am Prepared to Die,” and King’s vivid metaphors in “I Have a Dream” are prime examples of how language can be artfully employed to persuade, motivate, and inspire. These techniques not only enhance the emotional impact of the speeches but also contribute to their lasting memorability.

The Art of Persuasion

Understanding these rhetorical strategies provides insight into how speakers have historically persuaded and influenced their audiences. It reveals the art behind the oratory, highlighting how strategic language choices can significantly impact the effectiveness of a message.

The Linguistic Legacy

The influence of these famous speeches extends beyond their immediate political or social contexts, leaving a lasting imprint on the English language and literature. Phrases like “I have a dream” and “Yes We Can” have entered common parlance, illustrating how powerful speech can transcend its original setting to become part of everyday language.

Language and Literature

These speeches have also found their way into educational curricula, serving as exemplary texts for studying language, rhetoric, and history. They offer rich material for linguistic analysis and are often used to teach persuasive writing and speaking skills.

Speeches in Education and Public Speaking

The study of these famous speeches is integral to education, particularly in the fields of English, history, and political science. They serve as powerful tools for teaching students about the impact of effective communication and the importance of public speaking.

Training the Next Generation of Orators

By analyzing these speeches, students learn not only about historical events and figures but also about the art of crafting and delivering a message. These speeches are used in public speaking courses to teach techniques such as voice modulation, pacing, and audience engagement.

Inspiration for Aspiring Speakers

For those learning English as a second language (ESL), these speeches offer rich examples of the language’s expressive potential. They provide inspiration and models for aspiring speakers to develop their own style and voice.

Famous English speeches have played an instrumental role in shaping history, influencing language, and inspiring generations. Their enduring importance lies not just in their historical significance but also in their continued relevance and ability to resonate across time and cultures. As we continue to study and draw inspiration from these speeches, we are reminded of the enduring power of words to effect change and the vital role of effective communication in our society.

Contemporary Relevance of Iconic Speeches

The impact of these historic speeches extends into the contemporary era, influencing modern politics, media, and public discourse. Their enduring relevance highlights the timeless nature of effective communication and the universal appeal of messages rooted in fundamental human values and aspirations.

Influence on Modern Politics

Politicians and public figures continue to draw inspiration from these speeches. The rhetorical devices, persuasive techniques, and emotional appeals used in iconic speeches like those by Churchill, King, and Obama serve as a blueprint for crafting compelling political messages today. Their speeches are often referenced or echoed in contemporary political discourse, underlining the timeless principles they represent.

Media and Popular Culture

In popular culture, these speeches have been immortalized through various mediums, including films, documentaries, and books. Their dramatization in movies and documentaries has helped bring their context and significance to a broader audience, thereby educating and inspiring future generations.

A Tool for Social Change

Furthermore, the messages conveyed in these speeches continue to resonate in modern social movements. Phrases like “I have a dream” or “Yes We Can” are often invoked in campaigns for equality, justice, and social change, demonstrating the enduring power of these words to mobilize and unite people for a common cause.

Celebrating and Remembering the Speeches

The legacy of these speeches is preserved and celebrated through various means. Memorials, museums, and educational programs are dedicated to the figures behind these speeches, ensuring that their messages and the values they stood for are not forgotten.

Educational Programs and Memorials

Educational institutions often include these speeches in their curriculum, recognizing their value not only as historical documents but also as tools for teaching rhetoric, communication, and history. Memorials and museums dedicated to figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela offer interactive experiences that bring their speeches and their historical contexts to life.

Annual Commemorations and Events

Annual commemorations and events are held in honor of these speeches and their speakers, often coinciding with significant historical dates related to them. These events serve as reminders of the progress made since these speeches were delivered, as well as the ongoing challenges in fulfilling the visions they articulated.

The famous English speeches explored in this article are more than just words from the past; they are living documents that continue to influence and shape our present and future. Their study offers invaluable lessons in the power of language, the art of persuasion, and the role of leadership in effecting change. As we reflect on these speeches, we are reminded of the potential each of us has to use our voice to make a difference, to inspire change, and to contribute to the betterment of our world.

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Literary Techniques for your Speech, with Examples Analyzed

March 2, 2021 - Dom Barnard

Planned use of language has a major impact on how your speech is received by the audience. Saying the right words at the right time, and in the right way, can achieve a specific impact.

Use language to achieve impact

Careful use of language has produced many powerful speeches over the years. Here are a few literary devices you can employ for your next speech.

Rhetorical Questions

Start your next presentation with an open question. It engages the audience and gets them thinking about your speech early on. Use questions throughout and leave pauses after, letting the audience think about an answer.

Pause at the Right Moment

This adds impact to sentence just before or after the pause. This is a good literary technique to use for the key message of your speech. Don’t be afraid to wait 3-5 seconds before speaking, adding maximum impact to your words.

Messages and words are remembered best in groups of three. The power of three is used in all aspects of speaking in public and by the media. Couple words in groups of three with alliteration for maximum impact, such as “They grew up with a long, lasting, love for each other.”

Repeat the Key Point

A technique used frequently by politicians, a word needs to be said on average 5 times before the audience begins to take in what is being said.

Dramatic Contrast

Contrasting two points, such as “Ten years ago we had a reputation for excellence. Today, we are in danger of losing that reputation.”

For additional literary techniques, check out these links:

Stylistic Devices (Rhetorical Devices, Figures of Speech)
BBC Literary Techniques

Spend time planning which of these language techniques you will use in your speech. You can add these in after your first draft of the speech has been written.

Two great speeches analyzed

1. martin luther king – i have a dream, transcript snippet.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

Literary devices and techniques used

Anaphora – Repetition of the “I have a dream” phrase at the beginning of each sentence.

Metonymy – The phrase “The let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia… Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee… Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi“, King uses these well-known racist locations to enhance his point.

Hyperbole – King uses the words ‘all’ and ‘every’ many times, exaggerating his point, “when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city”

Alliteration – used throughout the speech, alliterations add a poetic quality to the speech, for example this sentence “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Amplification – King repeats many of his points a second time, with greater emphasis and explanation the second time, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”

Speeches which mastered literary techniques

Martin Luther King, Jr. – I Have A Dream
Winston Churchill – We shall fight on the beaches
John F. Kennedy – Inaugural Address
Margaret Thatcher – The Lady’s Not For Turning
Barack Obama – The Audacity Of Hope
Elizabeth Gilbert – Your Creative Genius
J. K. Rowling – Harvard Commencement Address

For addition detail on these speeches, check out this article on speeches that changed the world.

2. Winston Churchill – We shall fight on the beaches

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end.

We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

And if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Anaphora – The repetition of the phrase “we shall fight” can be seen in the transcript snippet. This adds dramatic emphases on the words he is saying in these paragraphs.

Alliteration – Churchill uses repetition of letters to emphasize the dark time Europe was in, “I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts” and “your grisly gang who work your wicked will.”

Antistrophe – The repetition of words at the end of successive sentences, “the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace“.

Hypophora – Churchill asks various questions and then answers them himself, “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air” and “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word, it is victory”.

Rule of Three – Churchill uses this literary technique in many of his speeches, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” and “Never before in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many, to so few”.

Easy to use literary techniques for your next speech

Rhetoric Question

Start your next speech with a rhetoric question – “Who here has used a virtual reality headset?”

Repetition of Phrase

Repeat a key phrase around 5 times throughout the speech, the phrase should be short – “Virtual reality is changing the world”.

Use the Rule of Three

Emphasize a product or service by describing it with three words – “Our software is faster, cheaper and easier to use”. For greatest impact on your audience, combine this with alliteration.

Ask a question then immediately answer it – “How many virtual reality headsets were sold last month? Over 2 million.”

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The 31 Literary Devices You Must Know

General Education

Need to analyze The Scarlet Letter or To Kill a Mockingbird for English class, but fumbling for the right vocabulary and concepts for literary devices? You've come to the right place. To successfully interpret and analyze literary texts, you'll first need to have a solid foundation in literary terms and their definitions.

In this article, we'll help you get familiar with most commonly used literary devices in prose and poetry. We'll give you a clear definition of each of the terms we discuss along with examples of literary elements and the context in which they most often appear (comedic writing, drama, or other).

Before we get to the list of literary devices, however, we have a quick refresher on what literary devices are and how understanding them will help you analyze works of literature.

What Are Literary Devices and Why Should You Know Them?

Literary devices are techniques that writers use to create a special and pointed effect in their writing, to convey information, or to help readers understand their writing on a deeper level.

Often, literary devices are used in writing for emphasis or clarity. Authors will also use literary devices to get readers to connect more strongly with either a story as a whole or specific characters or themes.

So why is it important to know different literary devices and terms? Aside from helping you get good grades on your literary analysis homework, there are several benefits to knowing the techniques authors commonly use.

Being able to identify when different literary techniques are being used helps you understand the motivation behind the author's choices. For example, being able to identify symbols in a story can help you figure out why the author might have chosen to insert these focal points and what these might suggest in regard to her attitude toward certain characters, plot points, and events.

In addition, being able to identify literary devices can make a written work's overall meaning or purpose clearer to you. For instance, let's say you're planning to read (or re-read) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. By knowing that this particular book is a religious allegory with references to Christ (represented by the character Aslan) and Judas (represented by Edmund), it will be clearer to you why Lewis uses certain language to describe certain characters and why certain events happen the way they do.

Finally, literary techniques are important to know because they make texts more interesting and more fun to read. If you were to read a novel without knowing any literary devices, chances are you wouldn't be able to detect many of the layers of meaning interwoven into the story via different techniques.

Now that we've gone over why you should spend some time learning literary devices, let's take a look at some of the most important literary elements to know.

List of Literary Devices: 31 Literary Terms You Should Know

Below is a list of literary devices, most of which you'll often come across in both prose and poetry. We explain what each literary term is and give you an example of how it's used. This literary elements list is arranged in alphabetical order.

An allegory is a story that is used to represent a more general message about real-life (historical) issues and/or events. It is typically an entire book, novel, play, etc.

Example: George Orwell's dystopian book Animal Farm is an allegory for the events preceding the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist era in early 20th century Russia. In the story, animals on a farm practice animalism, which is essentially communism. Many characters correspond to actual historical figures: Old Major represents both the founder of communism Karl Marx and the Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin; the farmer, Mr. Jones, is the Russian Czar; the boar Napoleon stands for Joseph Stalin; and the pig Snowball represents Leon Trotsky.

Alliteration

Alliteration is a series of words or phrases that all (or almost all) start with the same sound. These sounds are typically consonants to give more stress to that syllable. You'll often come across alliteration in poetry, titles of books and poems ( Jane Austen is a fan of this device, for example—just look at Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility ), and tongue twisters.

Example: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers." In this tongue twister, the "p" sound is repeated at the beginning of all major words.

Allusion is when an author makes an indirect reference to a figure, place, event, or idea originating from outside the text. Many allusions make reference to previous works of literature or art.

Example: "Stop acting so smart—it's not like you're Einstein or something." This is an allusion to the famous real-life theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.

Anachronism

An anachronism occurs when there is an (intentional) error in the chronology or timeline of a text. This could be a character who appears in a different time period than when he actually lived, or a technology that appears before it was invented. Anachronisms are often used for comedic effect.

Example: A Renaissance king who says, "That's dope, dude!" would be an anachronism, since this type of language is very modern and not actually from the Renaissance period.

Anaphora is when a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of multiple sentences throughout a piece of writing. It's used to emphasize the repeated phrase and evoke strong feelings in the audience.

Example: A famous example of anaphora is Winston Churchill's "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech. Throughout this speech, he repeats the phrase "we shall fight" while listing numerous places where the British army will continue battling during WWII. He did this to rally both troops and the British people and to give them confidence that they would still win the war.

Anthropomorphism

An anthropomorphism occurs when something nonhuman, such as an animal, place, or inanimate object, behaves in a human-like way.

Example: Children's cartoons have many examples of anthropomorphism. For example, Mickey and Minnie Mouse can speak, wear clothes, sing, dance, drive cars, etc. Real mice can't do any of these things, but the two mouse characters behave much more like humans than mice.

Asyndeton is when the writer leaves out conjunctions (such as "and," "or," "but," and "for") in a group of words or phrases so that the meaning of the phrase or sentence is emphasized. It is often used for speeches since sentences containing asyndeton can have a powerful, memorable rhythm.

Example: Abraham Lincoln ends the Gettysburg Address with the phrase "...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth." By leaving out certain conjunctions, he ends the speech on a more powerful, melodic note.

Colloquialism

Colloquialism is the use of informal language and slang. It's often used by authors to lend a sense of realism to their characters and dialogue. Forms of colloquialism include words, phrases, and contractions that aren't real words (such as "gonna" and "ain't").

Example: "Hey, what's up, man?" This piece of dialogue is an example of a colloquialism, since it uses common everyday words and phrases, namely "what's up" and "man."

An epigraph is when an author inserts a famous quotation, poem, song, or other short passage or text at the beginning of a larger text (e.g., a book, chapter, etc.). An epigraph is typically written by a different writer (with credit given) and used as a way to introduce overarching themes or messages in the work. Some pieces of literature, such as Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick , incorporate multiple epigraphs throughout.

Example: At the beginning of Ernest Hemingway's book The Sun Also Rises is an epigraph that consists of a quotation from poet Gertrude Stein, which reads, "You are all a lost generation," and a passage from the Bible.

Epistrophe is similar to anaphora, but in this case, the repeated word or phrase appears at the end of successive statements. Like anaphora, it is used to evoke an emotional response from the audience.

Example: In Lyndon B. Johnson's speech, "The American Promise," he repeats the word "problem" in a use of epistrophe: "There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem."

A euphemism is when a more mild or indirect word or expression is used in place of another word or phrase that is considered harsh, blunt, vulgar, or unpleasant.

Example: "I'm so sorry, but he didn't make it." The phrase "didn't make it" is a more polite and less blunt way of saying that someone has died.

A flashback is an interruption in a narrative that depicts events that have already occurred, either before the present time or before the time at which the narration takes place. This device is often used to give the reader more background information and details about specific characters, events, plot points, and so on.

Example: Most of the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a flashback from the point of view of the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, as she engages in a conversation with a visitor named Lockwood. In this story, Nelly narrates Catherine Earnshaw's and Heathcliff's childhoods, the pair's budding romance, and their tragic demise.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is when an author indirectly hints at—through things such as dialogue, description, or characters' actions—what's to come later on in the story. This device is often used to introduce tension to a narrative.

Example: Say you're reading a fictionalized account of Amelia Earhart. Before she embarks on her (what we know to be unfortunate) plane ride, a friend says to her, "Be safe. Wouldn't want you getting lost—or worse." This line would be an example of foreshadowing because it implies that something bad ("or worse") will happen to Earhart.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement that's not meant to be taken literally by the reader. It is often used for comedic effect and/or emphasis.

Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." The speaker will not literally eat an entire horse (and most likely couldn't ), but this hyperbole emphasizes how starved the speaker feels.

Imagery is when an author describes a scene, thing, or idea so that it appeals to our senses (taste, smell, sight, touch, or hearing). This device is often used to help the reader clearly visualize parts of the story by creating a strong mental picture.

Example: Here's an example of imagery taken from William Wordsworth's famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud":

When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Irony is when a statement is used to express an opposite meaning than the one literally expressed by it. There are three types of irony in literature:

Verbal irony: When someone says something but means the opposite (similar to sarcasm).
Situational irony: When something happens that's the opposite of what was expected or intended to happen.
Dramatic irony: When the audience is aware of the true intentions or outcomes, while the characters are not . As a result, certain actions and/or events take on different meanings for the audience than they do for the characters involved.
Verbal irony: One example of this type of irony can be found in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." In this short story, a man named Montresor plans to get revenge on another man named Fortunato. As they toast, Montresor says, "And I, Fortunato—I drink to your long life." This statement is ironic because we the readers already know by this point that Montresor plans to kill Fortunato.
Situational irony: A girl wakes up late for school and quickly rushes to get there. As soon as she arrives, though, she realizes that it's Saturday and there is no school.
Dramatic irony: In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , Romeo commits suicide in order to be with Juliet; however, the audience (unlike poor Romeo) knows that Juliet is not actually dead—just asleep.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is the comparing and contrasting of two or more different (usually opposite) ideas, characters, objects, etc. This literary device is often used to help create a clearer picture of the characteristics of one object or idea by comparing it with those of another.

Example: One of the most famous literary examples of juxtaposition is the opening passage from Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities :

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …"

Malapropism

Malapropism happens when an incorrect word is used in place of a word that has a similar sound. This misuse of the word typically results in a statement that is both nonsensical and humorous; as a result, this device is commonly used in comedic writing.

Example: "I just can't wait to dance the flamingo!" Here, a character has accidentally called the flamenco (a type of dance) the flamingo (an animal).

Metaphor/Simile

Metaphors are when ideas, actions, or objects are described in non-literal terms. In short, it's when an author compares one thing to another. The two things being described usually share something in common but are unalike in all other respects.

A simile is a type of metaphor in which an object, idea, character, action, etc., is compared to another thing using the words "as" or "like."

Both metaphors and similes are often used in writing for clarity or emphasis.

"What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." In this line from Romeo and Juliet , Romeo compares Juliet to the sun. However, because Romeo doesn't use the words "as" or "like," it is not a simile—just a metaphor.

"She is as vicious as a lion." Since this statement uses the word "as" to make a comparison between "she" and "a lion," it is a simile.

A metonym is when a related word or phrase is substituted for the actual thing to which it's referring. This device is usually used for poetic or rhetorical effect .

Example: "The pen is mightier than the sword." This statement, which was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839, contains two examples of metonymy: "the pen" refers to "the written word," and "the sword" refers to "military force/violence."

Mood is the general feeling the writer wants the audience to have. The writer can achieve this through description, setting, dialogue, and word choice .

Example: Here's a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit: "It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats -- the hobbit was fond of visitors." In this passage, Tolkien uses detailed description to set create a cozy, comforting mood. From the writing, you can see that the hobbit's home is well-cared for and designed to provide comfort.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word (or group of words) that represents a sound and actually resembles or imitates the sound it stands for. It is often used for dramatic, realistic, or poetic effect.

Examples: Buzz, boom, chirp, creak, sizzle, zoom, etc.

An oxymoron is a combination of two words that, together, express a contradictory meaning. This device is often used for emphasis, for humor, to create tension, or to illustrate a paradox (see next entry for more information on paradoxes).

Examples: Deafening silence, organized chaos, cruelly kind, insanely logical, etc.

A paradox is a statement that appears illogical or self-contradictory but, upon investigation, might actually be true or plausible.

Note that a paradox is different from an oxymoron: a paradox is an entire phrase or sentence, whereas an oxymoron is a combination of just two words.

Example: Here's a famous paradoxical sentence: "This statement is false." If the statement is true, then it isn't actually false (as it suggests). But if it's false, then the statement is true! Thus, this statement is a paradox because it is both true and false at the same time.

Personification

Personification is when a nonhuman figure or other abstract concept or element is described as having human-like qualities or characteristics. (Unlike anthropomorphism where non-human figures become human-like characters, with personification, the object/figure is simply described as being human-like.) Personification is used to help the reader create a clearer mental picture of the scene or object being described.

Example: "The wind moaned, beckoning me to come outside." In this example, the wind—a nonhuman element—is being described as if it is human (it "moans" and "beckons").

Repetition is when a word or phrase is written multiple times, usually for the purpose of emphasis. It is often used in poetry (for purposes of rhythm as well).

Example: When Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the score for the hit musical Hamilton, gave his speech at the 2016 Tony's, he recited a poem he'd written that included the following line:

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

Satire is genre of writing that criticizes something , such as a person, behavior, belief, government, or society. Satire often employs irony, humor, and hyperbole to make its point.

Example: The Onion is a satirical newspaper and digital media company. It uses satire to parody common news features such as opinion columns, editorial cartoons, and click bait headlines.

A type of monologue that's often used in dramas, a soliloquy is when a character speaks aloud to himself (and to the audience), thereby revealing his inner thoughts and feelings.

Example: In Romeo and Juliet , Juliet's speech on the balcony that begins with, "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is a soliloquy, as she is speaking aloud to herself (remember that she doesn't realize Romeo's there listening!).

Symbolism refers to the use of an object, figure, event, situation, or other idea in a written work to represent something else— typically a broader message or deeper meaning that differs from its literal meaning.

The things used for symbolism are called "symbols," and they'll often appear multiple times throughout a text, sometimes changing in meaning as the plot progresses.

Example: In F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby , the green light that sits across from Gatsby's mansion symbolizes Gatsby's hopes and dreams .

A synecdoche is a literary device in which part of something is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. It's similar to a metonym (see above); however, a metonym doesn't have to represent the whole—just something associated with the word used.

Example: "Help me out, I need some hands!" In this case, "hands" is being used to refer to people (the whole human, essentially).

While mood is what the audience is supposed to feel, tone is the writer or narrator's attitude towards a subject . A good writer will always want the audience to feel the mood they're trying to evoke, but the audience may not always agree with the narrator's tone, especially if the narrator is an unsympathetic character or has viewpoints that differ from those of the reader.

Example: In an essay disdaining Americans and some of the sites they visit as tourists, Rudyard Kipling begins with the line, "Today I am in the Yellowstone Park, and I wish I were dead." If you enjoy Yellowstone and/or national parks, you may not agree with the author's tone in this piece.

How to Identify and Analyze Literary Devices: 4 Tips

In order to fully interpret pieces of literature, you have to understand a lot about literary devices in the texts you read. Here are our top tips for identifying and analyzing different literary techniques:

Tip 1: Read Closely and Carefully

First off, you'll need to make sure that you're reading very carefully. Resist the temptation to skim or skip any sections of the text. If you do this, you might miss some literary devices being used and, as a result, will be unable to accurately interpret the text.

If there are any passages in the work that make you feel especially emotional, curious, intrigued, or just plain interested, check that area again for any literary devices at play.

It's also a good idea to reread any parts you thought were confusing or that you didn't totally understand on a first read-through. Doing this ensures that you have a solid grasp of the passage (and text as a whole) and will be able to analyze it appropriately.

Tip 2: Memorize Common Literary Terms

You won't be able to identify literary elements in texts if you don't know what they are or how they're used, so spend some time memorizing the literary elements list above. Knowing these (and how they look in writing) will allow you to more easily pinpoint these techniques in various types of written works.

Tip 3: Know the Author's Intended Audience

Knowing what kind of audience an author intended her work to have can help you figure out what types of literary devices might be at play.

For example, if you were trying to analyze a children's book, you'd want to be on the lookout for child-appropriate devices, such as repetition and alliteration.

Tip 4: Take Notes and Bookmark Key Passages and Pages

This is one of the most important tips to know, especially if you're reading and analyzing works for English class. As you read, take notes on the work in a notebook or on a computer. Write down any passages, paragraphs, conversations, descriptions, etc., that jump out at you or that contain a literary device you were able to identify.

You can also take notes directly in the book, if possible (but don't do this if you're borrowing a book from the library!). I recommend circling keywords and important phrases, as well as starring interesting or particularly effective passages and paragraphs.

Lastly, use sticky notes or post-its to bookmark pages that are interesting to you or that have some kind of notable literary device. This will help you go back to them later should you need to revisit some of what you've found for a paper you plan to write.

What's Next?

Looking for more in-depth explorations and examples of literary devices? Join us as we delve into imagery , personification , rhetorical devices , tone words and mood , and different points of view in literature, as well as some more poetry-specific terms like assonance and iambic pentameter .

Reading The Great Gatsby for class or even just for fun? Then you'll definitely want to check out our expert guides on the biggest themes in this classic book, from love and relationships to money and materialism .

Got questions about Arthur Miller's The Crucible ? Read our in-depth articles to learn about the most important themes in this play and get a complete rundown of all the characters .

For more information on your favorite works of literature, take a look at our collection of high-quality book guides and our guide to the 9 literary elements that appear in every story !

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

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Hannah received her MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California. From 2013 to 2015, she taught English in Japan via the JET Program. She is passionate about education, writing, and travel.

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Shakespeare

“ Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow ”

From: Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5

Spoken by: Macbeth

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

These dramatic, harrowing lines appear in Macbeth and are spoken by Macbeth when he finds out that his wife, Lady Macbeth , is dead. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow” is one of the best-known monologues in all of Shakespeare’s dramatic works. Some notable quotes from this speech include “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” and “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”

The soliloquy is about the futility of life and how no matter what one does, they’re eventually going to die. It is universally unavoidable. These lines also signify the beginning of the end for Macbeth who will soon find himself facing his death at the hands of Macduff .

“ The quality of mercy is not strain’d ”

From: The Merchant of Venice Act 4, Scene 1

Spoken by: Portia

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Portia gives this speech in act 4, scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice. She has disguised herself as a male lawyer, Balthazar, to defend Antonio from Shylock . The latter has demanded a “pound of flesh” from Antonio as compensation for an unpaid debt. She attempts and fails to appeal to Shylock’s humanity. He is completely without mercy.

She does her best to convince him though, telling him that mercy is a quality essential to all of humankind and that giving forgiveness is something to be proud of. It is not a weakness—the speech opens with it is “ not strained .” This is a characteristically Shakespearean turn of phrase in that it’s suggesting two things at once. It refers to applying it with force as well as its being “unconstrained.” Mercy shouldn’t have limits.

“ Is this a dagger which I see before me ”

From: Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There’s no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder, Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [a bell rings] I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

Macbeth speaks these lines in the second act of the play. He’s contemplating his future and what he’s going to do to after it. He decides to kill King Duncan , who’s sleeping that night in Macbeth’s castle. The famous opening lines allude to the metaphorical dagger Macbeth sees hanging in front of him. He wonders if it’s really there or if his guilty mind is making him see it. In the last lines, he hears a bell and uses an apostrophe , speaking to Duncan who can’t hear him. He tells Duncan not to hear the ringing, “for it is a knell” that summons him to “heaven or hell.” For those familiar with the play, this speech and Macbeth’s choice to kill Duncan is seen as a turning point. It’s the action that seals his fate.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend my your ears!”

From: Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2

Spoken by: Marc Antony

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest– For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men– Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

Marc Antony’s speech from act 3, scene 2 of Julius Caesar is incredibly clever. He’s been given the right to speak at Caesar’s funeral as long as he doesn’t say anything against the men who killed Caesar. He manages to use irony to allude to the conspirators without directly naming them and their actions. In this passage, some of the best-known lines refer to Brutus as an “honourable man,” something Marc Antony quite clearly doesn’t believe.

“ What light through yonder window breaks? ”

From: Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2

Spoken by: Romeo

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou her maid art far more fair than she: Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks: Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!

Romeo begins this speech when he sees Juliet standing at her window, or perhaps her balcony depending on one’s interpretation of the play. He returns to images he used previously in the play, referring to her warmth and comparing her to “the sun.” Romeo continues this extended metaphor , bringing in the moon and how resentful “she” feels in the sight of Juliet’s beauty. The speech ends with Romeo asserting his desire to be “a glove” on Juliet’s hand so that he might “touch that cheek.”

“This sceptred isle”

From: Richard II Act 2, Scene 1

Spoken by: John of Gaunt

Methinks I am a prophet new inspir’d, And thus expiring do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder: Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home,– For Christian service and true chivalry,– As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son: This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leas’d out,–I die pronouncing it,– Like to a tenement or pelting farm: England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds: That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. Ah! would the scandal vanish with my life, How happy then were my ensuing death.

In these lines from Richard II, John of Gaunt is on his death bed, lamenting the fact that England has lost much of its glory. Under the reign of Richard II, the country is changing. Despite this, it still has much to be respected, from its ability to defend itself and the moat of water surrounding it. Depending on how one reads this passage, it may or may not come across as genuine. Readers interpret Gaunt’s words differently, some believing that he means what he says and others that he’s being sarcastic.

“ All the world’s a stage ”

From: As You Like It Act 2, Scene 7

Spoken by: Jacques

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

This incredibly famous speech has become synonymous with Shakespeare’s broader literary oeuvre. At its heart is a metaphor comparing everyday life to the life of an actor playing “many parts” on the stage. Just as this person enters and exits, taking on different roles, so do men and women take on different roles in their lives. They move through seven ages of life from infancy to childhood, lover, soldier, justice, old age, and then finally “childishness” again.

“Now is the winter of our discontent”

From: Richard III Act 1, Scene 1

Spoken by: Gloucester

Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the king In deadly hate the one against the other: And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up, About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’ Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.

These striking lines feature prominently in Richard III. They are some of the most commonly quoted from any Shakespeare play. The Duke of Gloucester delivers this speech at the beginning of the play, setting the tone for what’s to come next. He opens by saying that at last the winter, or the darkest times his country has seen, has been transformed into summer, a period of happiness under the reign of his brother, King Edward. He soon changes his tone though, stating that this period of peace bores him. Gloucester, who’s soon going to become Richard III, alludes to his brother’s fate in the final lines.

This speech is also famous for Shakespeare’s depiction of Gloucester’s deformity. It’s so dramatic that dogs bark at him when he walks past.

“To be or not to be”

From: Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1

Spoken by: Prince Hamlet

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause—there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

This incredibly famous soliloquy is given by Hamlet soon after the death of his father. He’s thinking about life and death and what value the two have. This leads him to consider his existence and contemplate whether or not he’d be happier dead. Life, he says, is powerless, but in death, one takes that power back and becomes active once more. The latter is desirable, and really, he says, nothing more than sleep.

“St. Crispin’s Day”

From: Henry V Act 4, Scene 3

Spoken by: King Henry

What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: If we are mark’d to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires: But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

These famous lines appear in the fourth act of Henry V, one of Shakespeare’s most commonly read history plays. The scene takes place before the Battle of Agincourt in Northern France, specifically on October 25th, 1415 (a day known as Saint Crispin’s Day). With these lines, the king tries to motivate his men to stand up as a “band of brothers” and face their enemy bravely despite the fact that they’re outnumbered. He concludes the speech, much of which is written in Shakespeare’s classic iambic pentameter , by telling everyone listening that anyone who is not there with them and is instead lying in bed will think less of themselves for not fighting on Saint Crispin’s day.

Figure of Speech

Figure of Speech Definition

What is a figure of speech? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

A figure of speech is a literary device in which language is used in an unusual—or "figured"—way in order to produce a stylistic effect. Figures of speech can be broken into two main groups: figures of speech that play with the ordinary meaning of words (such as metaphor , simile , and hyperbole ), and figures of speech that play with the ordinary arrangement or pattern in which words are written (such as alliteration , ellipsis , and antithesis ).

Some additional key details about figures of speech:

The ancient Greeks and Romans exhaustively listed, defined, and categorized figures of speech in order to better understand how to effectively use language. The names of most figures of speech derive from the original Greek or Latin.
Figures of speech that play with the literal meaning of words are called tropes , while figures of speech that play with the order or pattern of words are called schemes .
Figures of speech can take many forms. A figure of speech can involve a single word, a phrase, an omission of a word or phrase, a repetition of words or sounds, or specific sentence structures.

Figure of Speech Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce figure of speech: fig -yer of speech

Figures of Speech vs. Figurative Language

There's a lot of confusion about the difference between the terms "figures of speech" and " figurative language ." Most of the confusion stems from the fact that different people often use "figurative language" to mean slightly different things. The two most common (and most acceptable) definitions of figurative language are:

Figurative language refers to any language that contains figures of speech. According to this definition, figurative language and figures of speech are not quite the same thing, but it's pretty darn close. The only difference is that figures of speech refer to each specific type of a figure of speech, while figurative language refers more generally to any language that contains any kind of figures of speech.
Figurative language refers to words or expressions that have non-literal meanings : This definition associates figurative language only with the category of figures of speech called tropes (which are figures of speech that play with the literal meaning of words). So according to this definition, figurative language would be any language that contains tropes, but not language that contains the figures of speech called schemes.

You might encounter people using figurative speech to mean either of the above, and it's not really possible to say which is correct. But if you know about these two different ways of relating figurative language and figures of speech, you'll be in pretty good shape.

Figures of Speech, Tropes, and Schemes

The oldest and still most common way to organize figures of speech is to split them into two main groups: tropes and schemes.

Tropes are figures of speech that involve a deviation from the expected and literal meaning of words.
Schemes are figures of speech that involve a deviation from the typical mechanics of a sentence, such as the order, pattern, or arrangement of words.

The scheme/trope classification system is by no means the only way to organize figures of speech (if you're interested, you can find all sorts of different categorization methods for figures of speech here ). But it is the most common method, and is both simple and structured enough to help you understand figures of speech.

Generally, a trope uses comparison, association, or wordplay to play with the literal meaning of words or to layer another meaning on top of a word's literal meaning. Some of the most commonly used tropes are explained briefly below, though you can get even more detail on each from its specific LitCharts entry.

Metaphor : A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unrelated things by stating that one thing is another thing, even though this isn't literally true. For example, if someone says "it's raining cats and dogs," this obviously doesn't literally mean what it says—it's a metaphor that makes a comparison between the weight of "cats and dogs" and heavy rain. Metaphors are tropes because their effect relies not on the mechanics of the sentence, but rather on the association created by the use of the phrase "cats and dogs" in a non-literal manner.
Simile : A simile, like a metaphor, makes a comparison between two unrelated things. However, instead of stating that one thing is another thing (as in metaphor), a simile states that one thing is like another thing. To stick with cats and dogs, an example of a simile would be to say "they fought like cats and dogs."
Oxymoron : An oxymoron pairs contradictory words in order to express new or complex meanings. In the phrase "parting is such sweet sorrow" from Romeo and Juliet , "sweet sorrow" is an oxymoron that captures the complex and simultaneous feelings of pain and pleasure associated with passionate love. Oxymorons are tropes because their effect comes from a combination of the two words that goes beyond the literal meanings of those words.
Hyperbole : A hyperbole is an intentional exaggeration of the truth, used to emphasize the importance of something or to create a comic effect. An example of a hyperbole is to say that a backpack "weighs a ton." No backpack literally weighs a ton, but to say "my backpack weighs ten pounds" doesn't effectively communicate how burdensome a heavy backpack feels. Once again, this is a trope because its effect comes from understanding that the words mean something different from what they literally say.

Other Common Tropes

Antanaclasis
Onomatopoeia
Personification
Periphrasis
Rhetorical Question

Schemes are mechanical—they're figures of speech that tinker with words, sounds, and structures (as opposed to meanings) in order to achieve an effect. Schemes can themselves be broken down in helpful ways that define the sort of tinkering they employ.

Repetition: Repeating words, phrases, or even sounds in a particular way.
Omission: Leaving out certain words or punctuation that would normally be expected.
Changes of word order: Shifting around words or phrases in atypical ways.
Balance: Creating sentences or phrases with equal parts, often through the use of identical grammatical structures.

Some of the most commonly used schemes are explained briefly below, though you can get even more detail on each from its specific LitCharts entry.

Alliteration : In alliteration, the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “ B ob b rought the b ox of b ricks to the b asement.” Alliteration uses repetition to create a musical effect that helps phrases to stand out from the language around them.
Assonance : A scheme in which vowel sounds repeat in nearby words, such as the "ee" sound in the proverb: "the squ ea ky wh ee l gets the gr ea se." Like alliteration, assonance uses repeated sounds to create a musical effect in which words echo one another—it's a scheme because this effect is achieved through repetition of words with certain sounds, not by playing with the meaning of words.
Ellipsis : The deliberate omission of one or more words from a sentence because their meaning is already implied. In the example, "Should I call you, or you me?" the second clause uses ellipsis. While its implication is "or should you call me," the context of the sentence allows for the omission of "should" and "call." Ellipsis is a scheme because it involves an uncommon usage of language.
Parallelism : The repetition of sentence structure for emphasis and balance. This can occur in a single sentence, such as "a penny saved is a penny earned," and it can also occur over the course of a speech, poem, or other text. Parallelism is a scheme because it creates emphasis through the mechanics of sentence structure, rather than by playing with the actual meanings of words.

Other Common Schemes

Anadiplosis
Antimetabole
Brachylogia
Epanalepsis
Parenthesis
Polysyndeton

Figure of Speech Examples

Figures of speech can make language more inventive, more beautiful, more rhythmic, more memorable, and more meaningful. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that figures of speech are plentiful in all sorts of written language. The examples below show a variety of different types of figures of speech. You can see many more examples of each type at their own specific LitChart entries.

Figures of Speech Examples in Literature

Literature is riddled with figures of speech because figures of speech make language colorful and complex.

Metaphor in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca

On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains.

In this quote from Rebecca , Daphne du Maurier refers to a washed-out road as "the poor thread." This is a metaphor —and a trope—because the writer indirectly compares the thread to the road and expects that readers will understand that "thread" is not used literally.

Parallelism in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

In the famous opening line of A Tale of Two Cities , Dickens uses parallelism —a scheme in which parts of a sentence repeat—in order to emphasize the contradictions of the time in which the book is set. Dickens has manipulated his sentence structure so that the parallel clauses emphasize the oppositional nature of his words ("it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"). The figure of speech doesn't play with the meaning of words, it emphasizes them through structure and repetition, which is why it is a scheme.

Alliteration in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark"

In this manner, s electing it as the s ymbol of his wife's liability to s in, s orrow, d ecay, and d eath, Aylmer's s ombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of s oul or s ense, had given him delight.

This passage from " The Birthmark " uses alliteration to tie together all of the things that Georgiana's birthmark is supposed to symbolize. By using words that alliterate—"sin and sorrow" and "decay and death," for example—Hawthorne is making the reader feel that these ideas are connected, rather than simply stating that they are connected. Alliteration is a figure of speech—a scheme—because it uses the mechanics of language to emphasize meaning.

Verbal Irony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men,

This quote from Julius Caesar comes from Marc Antony's speech at Caesar's funeral. Antony needs to hold Brutus and his conspirators accountable for Caesar's death without contradicting the crowd's positive impression of Brutus, so Antony uses verbal irony to simultaneously please and trouble the crowd. On the surface, Antony says what the audience wants to hear (that Brutus is honorable), but it becomes clear over the course of his speech that he means the opposite of what he says (and over time he convinces the audience to believe this opposite meaning as well). This is a figure of speech (a trope) because it's based on a play on the meaning of Antony's words.

Figures of Speech Examples in Music

Figures of speech are also common in music. Schemes fit naturally with songs because both schemes and songs manipulate sound and rhythm to enhance the meanings of words. Music also uses many tropes, because using words that have meanings beyond their literal ones makes language more interesting, and it allows songwriters to create music that uses just a few words to imply a complex meaning.

Assonance and Metaphor in Rihanna's "Diamonds"

So sh ine br igh t ton igh t, you and I We're beautiful l i ke d i amonds in the sk y Eye to eye , so al i ve We're beautiful l i ke d i amonds in the sk y

Rihanna uses assonance when she repeats the " eye " sound throughout the chorus of "Diamonds." This make the words echo one another, which emphasizes the similarity between the singer, the person she's talking about, and the "diamonds in the sky" to which she's comparing them both. Assonance is a scheme because it's using the sound of words—not their meaning—to draw a parallel between different things.

Rihanna also uses the phrase "Diamonds in the sky" as a metaphor for stars. This is a trope—a phrase that means something other than what it literally says—as Rihanna obviously doesn't think that there are actually diamonds in the sky. This verse is a good example of how figures of speech can often work together and overlap. In this case, the metaphor that allows her to use "diamonds" instead of "stars" also fits into her use of assonance (because "stars" lacks the "eye" sound).

Personification in Green Day's "Good Riddance"

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

While the first line of this song uses "a fork stuck in the road" as a metaphor for a choice, the more arresting figure of speech at work here is the personification of time in the second line. By giving "time" human characteristics—the ability to grab a person and tell them where to go—Green Day is helping listeners to make sense of the power that time has over people. This is a trope because the line doesn't mean what it literally says; instead, it's asking listeners to make a comparison between the characteristics of time and the characteristics of a person.

Anastrophe in Public Enemy's "Fight the Power"

Straight up racist that sucker was Simple and plain

In the line "Straight up racist that sucker was," Public Enemy uses anastrophe (which is the inversion of typical word order) to preserve the rhythm of the verse. Instead of saying "That sucker was straight up racist," Public Enemy chooses an odd phrasing that has one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables— " ra cist that su cker was/ Sim ple and plain ." This way, the beat falls more regularly across those two lines, which allows the rapper to make his point (that Elvis was racist) without the flow sounding awkward. Since anastrophe manipulates the order of words in order to achieve a rhythmic effect, it's a scheme.

Why Do Writers Use Figures of Speech?

Figures of speech is a category that encompasses a broad variety of literary terms, so it's difficult to give one answer to this question. Writers use different figures of speech to achieve different effects.

Schemes (figures of speech that manipulate sound, syntax, and word order) can make language more beautiful, persuasive, or memorable. Writers can use schemes to draw attention to an important passage, to create a sound that mirrors (or contrasts with) the meaning of words, or to give language a rhythm that draws the reader in. As schemes tend to work through sound and rhythm, they generally produce a visceral effect, or an effect felt in the body—broadly speaking, schemes are more sensory than intellectual.

In contrast, writers use tropes to grab the reader intellectually by adding complexity or ambiguity to an otherwise simple word or phrase. Tropes can ask the reader to make a comparison between two unlike things, they can impose human qualities on nonhumans, and they can mean the opposite of what they say. Tropes engage the intellect because the reader has to be alert to the fact that tropes do not use language at face value—a trope never means what it literally says.

All figures of speech help a writer to communicate ideas that are difficult to say in words or that are more effectively communicated non-verbally. This could be by repeating harsh consonants to create a scary atmosphere, or by using a metaphor to impose the qualities of something concrete (say, a rose) onto something more difficult to define (say, love). In general, figures of speech attempt to bring out a reader's emotion and to capture their attention by making language more colorful, surprising, and complex.

Other Helpful Figure of Speech Resources

Silva Rhetoricae on Figures of Speech : An excellent reference from BYU that explains the various ways that figures of speech have been categorized over history, including into schemes and tropes.
Silva Rhetoricae on schemes and tropes :
The Oxford Reference Page for Figure of Speech : A helpful definition of figures of speech in the context of the ancient study of rhetoric (did you know that the Roman rhetorician Quintillian defined "figure of speech" in 95 AD?)
What Are Tropes in Language? Skip to the "Distinction Between Figures and Tropes" section and read to the end—full of informative and thought-provoking discussion about tropes.
A YouTube video about tropes and schemes with pop culture examples.

The printed PDF version of the LitCharts literary term guide on Figure of Speech

Alliteration
Climax (Figure of Speech)
Figurative Language
Parallelism
Verbal Irony
Bildungsroman
Extended Metaphor
Falling Action
Climax (Plot)
Stream of Consciousness
Foreshadowing
Protagonist

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13 Speeches in English for Listening and Speaking Practice

Giving a speech in front of a whole room of people can be pretty scary. Especially if you are giving a speech in English as a non-native speaker.

But you can learn from the best.

You can watch videos of famous, effective speeches in English to learn how to do it the right way .

In this post we will share 13 amazing speeches in English that you can use to become a more confident speaker yourself.

1. Speech on Kindness by a 10-year-old Girl

2. “the effects of lying” by georgia haukom, 3. “education for all” by cameron allen, 4. gender equality speech by emma watson, 5. “rocky balboa speech” by sylvester stallone, 6. 2008 presidential acceptance speech by president barack obama, 7. “this is water” speech by david foster wallace, 8. “the great dictator speech” by charlie chaplin, 9. 2018 golden globe speech by oprah winfrey, 10. “i have a dream” speech by martin luther king jr., 11. “the gettysburg address” by abraham lincoln, 12. “britain does owe reparations” by shashi tharoor, 13. mark antony’s speech by william shakespeare.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Level: Beginner

Do you think people should be kind to one another? This speaker sure does. And she knows how to convince you of the same.

This is a perfect informative speech for beginner English learners . The speaker is a child who is able to speak fluently but with simple words . She also uses her gestures and facial expressions to communicate her emotions with the audience.

This speech is perfect for listening practice . However, learners should be aware that her pauses are not perfect. Learners should focus more on her words and the content of the speech than her intonation or pacing while practicing.

Even though the speaker is a student in the fourth grade, her speech is one of the most interactive speeches I have seen. She starts with a game and is able to make her main point through the game itself.

English learners will enjoy her speech especially because the vocabulary she uses is simple and can be easily learned. But it does not feel like a beginner wrote this speech because she uses her words so well.

If you want to learn the art of making basic arguments while speaking, you should watch this speech. She is able to convince her audience because she is able to connect with them through games and stories.

She also uses scientific studies to back up (support) her main points.

Level: Intermediate

This is a short and simple speech about why everyone in the world should get an education. Because the speaker is a child, the speech does not have complex words or sentence structures.

This is also a classic example of an informative speech. The speaker presents the main argument and the facts simply and clearly . She also gives the basic definitions of important terms in the speech itself.

This speech is perfect for English listening and speaking practice because it is so short but also full of useful information. It is also a good example of the standard American English accent .

Emma Watson is a famous English actress who is best known for her role in the “Harry Potter” movie series as Hermione. She is also a United Nations Women Goodwill Ambassador .

In this speech, she is trying to both inform and convince the audience of why men should support feminism. Feminism is a movement that asks for equal rights and opportunities for women.

She mixes her formal tone with personal stories to do this. The speech is also a good example of British English .

This is a speech taken from the movie “Rocky Balboa.” In this scene, Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone, is talking to his son.

His speech is a classic example of a motivational speech . In these kinds of speeches, a person tries to inspire someone else, especially when the listener feels hopeless or is full of shame.

The basic message of the speech is that no matter how strong a person is, he or she will always face difficulties. And even though the message does not sound positive, Stallone’s way of speaking still makes it inspiring.

Stallone is able to communicate his message with love, even though he is criticizing his son and telling him difficult facts about the world. Generally, this is called “tough love” in English.

Listeners should also notice how he uses gestures to make his point .

Compare this speech with the Oprah Winfrey and Martin Luther King speeches (later in this list). All of them inspire their audiences but have really different tones. Stallone’s speech is the most informal and personal while Martin Luther King’s speech is the most formal and written for a large audience. All these speeches are in American English.

Barack Obama was the first African American elected as president by U.S. citizens. He gave this speech after he won the election.

English learners can discover a lot from his speech. Obama talks about the most important issues Americans were facing back then and are still important to them. He also uses a kind of American English that is easy to understand . His speech is mainly about the values that he and Americans stand for.

Obama’s accent is a mixture of standard American English and the way of speaking commonly popular in African American communities. He is an expert in using pauses so that the audience can follow his words without breaking his rhythm.

As the speech is longer than most others on this list, you may want to listen to it in parts rather than beginning-to-end.

Level: Advanced

This speech is a perfect example of the mixture of casual and formal English . David Foster Wallace was an award-winning American writer who wrote about the culture of the U.S.

In this speech, he talks about the value of an education in liberal arts (general academic subjects, as opposed to technical/professional training). He believes that this kind of education teaches you how to think and think about others.

This is a good example of American English. Be aware that in some parts of the speech he also uses swear words (rude/offensive words) to create an emotional impact on the audience. This is very close to how people generally communicate with one another in daily life.

So, this speech is better for learning casual English even though it is a speech given at a university.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_rn1xzItk

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Charlie Chaplin is generally known for his gestures and facial expressions. In this movie, he proves that he can use speech as well to inspire and entertain the viewers.

The movie “The Great Dictator” is a satire about the rise of authoritarian governments in Europe. The word “authoritarian” means a person or a government that believes in controlling others and does not believe in freedom.

In this speech, Charlie Chaplin copies Adolf Hitler , but his message is exactly the opposite of Hitler’s ideas.

The interesting thing about the speech is how Chaplin uses short sentences for the most impact . There is also a lot of repetition that makes it easy for the audience to follow the speech.

Chaplin uses the tone, rhythm and pitch of his voice to make the speech interesting instead of using varied words. Chaplin’s speech can be categorized as inspirational or motivational. It does not use formal words but neither is it casual or informal.

Oprah Winfrey is an American talk show host and actor who is known around the world for her interviews. In the 2018 Golden Globe Awards, she was awarded the Cecil B. deMille award .

Her speech at the award show is about many different topics related to American society. She is the first African American woman to be awarded the prize . She talks about how watching an African American celebrity get another big entertainment award many years ago changed her life.

She also talks about sexual assault and the search for justice in American society. The MeToo movement is the main subject of the speech.

Even though the speech is in formal English , Oprah is able to make it emotional and personal .

Learners should focus on how she uses chunking in her sentences . Chunking is the technique of grouping words (called chunks) in a sentence with a slight pause between every chunk. It also helps with intonation and the rhythm of speaking.

This is one of the most well-known speeches of the last century . Martin Luther King Jr. was a leader of the civil rights movement in the U.S. The movement demanded that people of different races should be treated equally. This speech summarized the main vision of the movement using metaphors and repetition .

The speech begins by referring to the “Emancipation Proclamation.” The proclamation (official announcement) was an order by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 that freed many slaves in the U.S. Martin Luther King talks about this because most of the slaves were African Americans and it was their first step towards freedom.

Advanced learners can learn about the history and cultural conflicts of America through this speech. It is also a perfect example of the use of formal English to convince other people .

Some of the words used in this speech are no longer common in American English. “Negro” is often regarded as an insult and learners should use words like “African American” instead.

This speech, delivered by the 16th president of the U.S. (Abraham Lincoln, whom we just discussed above) is considered to be one of the best speeches in English .

Lincoln delivered this in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where many soldiers had died fighting a civil war. It was fought between Americans who wanted to ban slavery and people who did not. Lincoln was there to dedicate a graveyard to the soldiers.

In this speech, Lincoln reminds the people why this was an important war. He mentions that the U.S. was created on the values of liberty and equality. And this civil war was a test of whether a nation based on these values can last for long or not.

He honors the soldiers by saying that they have already “consecrated” the land for the people of America. (“To consecrate” means to make something sacred or holy.) He reminds the audience that they have to make sure that the idea of America as a nation of freedom continues so that the efforts of these soldiers are not wasted.

This is a very short speech . Learners can easily listen to it multiple times in a practice session. But only advanced learners can understand it since it has several difficult words in it. For instance, “score” is an outdated term used for the number 20. And when he mentions the word “fathers” in the first line he is actually referring to the leaders who had founded the country of America.

Even though Shashi Tharoor is not a native English speaker, his English is so fluent that he sounds like one. Learners from India will instantly recognize him because he is famous there for his English skills.

In this video, he is giving a speech as a part of a debate at Oxford University . He lists out arguments that support the idea that the U.K. should give reparations to its colonies. “Reparations” are payments to a country or community for some harm done to them. A colony is a region or a country that is controlled by another country by force.

Britain had a large number of colonies throughout the world between the 16th and 20th centuries. In this speech, Tharoor tries to convince his audience that the U.K. should give something for the damage they did to the countries they had colonized.

This is one of the finest examples of a formal speech in today’s English . Learners who want to go into academics can learn how to organize their arguments with evidence.

The speech is also great for vocabulary practice . Plus, Tharoor has deep knowledge of both the national history of the U.K. and the colonial history of India. Apart from the content of the speech, his way of speaking is also impressive and is similar to formal British English .

This speech is part of a play called “Julius Caesar” written by William Shakespeare. The play is based on the life and murder of Caesar who was a leader of the Roman Empire. The speech is considered to be one of the finest pieces of English literature .

It is also one of the best examples of the use of rhetoric (the art of speaking and persuasion).

Mark Antony makes this speech after Caesar is killed by other leaders of the Roman Empire. Antony was a close friend of Caesar’s and here he tries to remind the people of Rome that Caesar was actually a good man. He has to convince the people that his murderers like Brutus are actually criminals. But he has to do so without directly blaming the murderers.

Advanced learners should know this speech mainly because of its cultural value.

Many words in this speech have been replaced by other words in today’s English. “Hath” is the older form of “has” or “had.” “Thou” has also been replaced by the word “you.”

So rather than memorizing the vocabulary, learners should focus on how Damian Lewis delivers the speech instead. The intonation, tone, pitch and rhythm is similar to the formal English used today. He is also good at conveying emotions through pauses and expressions.

If you keep watching videos of native speakers talking, you’ll get used to hearing how different people talk in English. After watching these speeches, you could look for more speeches or interviews on YouTube.

A video-based immersion program can give you even more native speech to work with. FluentU , for example, features news clips and inspiring talks among its English language videos.

The best way to learn the art of speaking is to first copy great speakers. Try to speak the same words in a style that is natural and comfortable to you. These speeches in English are the perfect material to master it!

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Table Of Contents

Literature and the age

Learn about women's contributions to English literature during the 16th and 17th centuries

In a tradition of literature remarkable for its exacting and brilliant achievements, the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century of all. (The reign of Elizabeth I began in 1558 and ended with her death in 1603; she was succeeded by the Stuart king James VI of Scotland , who took the title James I of England as well. English literature of his reign as James I, from 1603 to 1625, is properly called Jacobean.) These years produced a gallery of authors of genius, some of whom have never been surpassed , and conferred on scores of lesser talents the enviable ability to write with fluency, imagination, and verve. From one point of view, this sudden renaissance looks radiant, confident, heroic—and belated, but all the more dazzling for its belatedness. Yet, from another point of view, this was a time of unusually traumatic strain, in which English society underwent massive disruptions that transformed it on every front and decisively affected the life of every individual. In the brief, intense moment in which England assimilated the European Renaissance, the circumstances that made the assimilation possible were already disintegrating and calling into question the newly won certainties, as well as the older truths that they were dislodging. This doubleness, of new possibilities and new doubts simultaneously apprehended, gives the literature its unrivaled intensity.

In this period England’s population doubled; prices rocketed, rents followed, old social loyalties dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins were first tapped. Real wages hit an all-time low in the 1620s, and social relations were plunged into a state of fluidity from which the merchant and the ambitious lesser gentleman profited at the expense of the aristocrat and the laborer, as satires and comedies current from the 1590s complain. Behind the Elizabethan vogue for pastoral poetry lies the fact of the prosperity of the enclosing sheep farmer, who sought to increase pasture at the expense of the peasantry. Tudor platitudes about order and degree could neither combat nor survive the challenge posed to rank by these arrivistes. The position of the crown, politically dominant yet financially insecure, had always been potentially unstable, and, when Charles I lost the confidence of his greater subjects in the 1640s, his authority crumbled. Meanwhile, the huge body of poor fell ever further behind the rich; the pamphlets of Thomas Harman (1566) and Robert Greene (1591–92), as well as Shakespeare ’s King Lear (1605–06), provide glimpses of a horrific world of vagabondage and crime, the Elizabethans’ biggest, unsolvable social problem .

The barely disguised social ferment was accompanied by an intellectual revolution, as the medieval synthesis collapsed before the new science , new religion, and new humanism. While modern mechanical technologies were pressed into service by the Stuarts to create the scenic wonders of the court masque , the discoveries of astronomers and explorers were redrawing the cosmos in a way that was profoundly disturbing:

And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new…. (John Donne, The First Anniversary , 1611)

The majority of people were more immediately affected by the religious revolutions of the 16th century. A person in early adulthood at the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 would, by her death in 1603, have been vouchsafed an unusually disillusioning insight into the duty owed by private conscience to the needs of the state. The Tudor church hierarchy was an instrument of social and political control, yet the mid-century controversies over the faith had already wrecked any easy confidence in the authority of doctrines and forms and had taught people to inquire carefully into the rationale of their own beliefs (as John Donne does in his third satire [c. 1596]). The Elizabethan ecclesiastical compromise was the object of continual criticism , from radicals both within (who desired progressive reforms, such as the abolition of bishops) and without (who desired the return of England to the Roman Catholic fold), but the incipient liberalism of individuals such as John Milton and the scholar and churchman William Chillingworth was held in check by the majority’s unwillingness to tolerate a plurality of religions in a supposedly unitary state . Nor was the Calvinist orthodoxy that cradled most English writers comforting, for it told them that they were corrupt, unfree, unable to earn their own salvations, and subject to heavenly judgments that were arbitrary and absolute. Calvinism deeply affects the world of the Jacobean tragedies, whose heroes are not masters of their fates but victims of divine purposes that are terrifying yet inscrutable.

The third complicating factor was the race to catch up with Continental developments in arts and philosophy. The Tudors needed to create a class of educated diplomats, statesmen, and officials and to dignify their court by making it a fount of cultural as well as political patronage. The new learning, widely disseminated through the Erasmian (after the humanist Desiderius Erasmus ) educational programs of such men as John Colet and Sir Thomas Elyot , proposed to use a systematic schooling in Latin authors and some Greek to encourage in the social elites a flexibility of mind and civilized serviceableness that would allow enlightened princely government to walk hand in hand with responsible scholarship. Humanism fostered an intimate familiarity with the classics that was a powerful incentive for the creation of an English literature of answerable dignity. It fostered as well a practical, secular piety that left its impress everywhere on Elizabethan writing. Humanism’s effect, however, was modified by the simultaneous impact of the flourishing Continental cultures , particularly the Italian. Repeatedly, crucial innovations in English letters developed resources originating from Italy—such as the sonnet of Petrarch , the epic of Ludovico Ariosto , the pastoral of Jacopo Sannazzaro , the canzone, and blank verse—and values imported with these forms were in competition with the humanists’ ethical preoccupations. Social ideals of wit, many-sidedness, and sprezzatura (accomplishment mixed with unaffectedness) were imbibed from Baldassare Castiglione ’s Il cortegiano , translated as The Courtyer by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561, and Elizabethan court poetry is steeped in Castiglione’s aristocratic Neoplatonism, his notions of universal proportion, and the love of beauty as the path to virtue. Equally significant was the welcome afforded to Niccolò Machiavelli , whose lessons were vilified publicly and absorbed in private. The Prince , written in 1513, was unavailable in English until 1640, but as early as the 1580s Gabriel Harvey , a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser , can be found enthusiastically hailing its author as the apostle of modern pragmatism . “We are much beholden to Machiavel and others,” said Francis Bacon , “that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”

So the literary revival occurred in a society rife with tensions, uncertainties, and competing versions of order and authority, religion and status, sex and the self. The Elizabethan settlement was a compromise; the Tudor pretense that the people of England were unified in belief disguised the actual fragmentation of the old consensus under the strain of change. The new scientific knowledge proved both man’s littleness and his power to command nature; against the Calvinist idea of man’s helplessness pulled the humanist faith in his dignity, especially that conviction , derived from the reading of Seneca and so characteristic of the period, of man’s constancy and fortitude , his heroic capacity for self-determination. It was still possible for Elizabeth to hold these divergent tendencies together in a single, heterogeneous culture , but under her successors they would eventually fly apart. The philosophers speaking for the new century would be Francis Bacon, who argued for the gradual advancement of science through patient accumulation of experiments, and the skeptic Michel de Montaigne (his Essays translated from the French by John Florio [1603]), who denied that it was possible to formulate any general principles of knowledge.

Cutting across all of these was the persistence of popular habits of thought and expression. Both humanism and Puritanism set themselves against vulgar ignorance and folk tradition, but, fortunately, neither could remain aloof for long from the robustness of popular taste. Sir Philip Sidney , in England’s first Neoclassical literary treatise , The Defence of Poesie (written c. 1578–83, published 1595), candidly admitted that “the old song [i.e., ballad] of Percy and Douglas” would move his heart “more than with a trumpet,” and his Arcadia (final version published in 1593) is a representative instance of the fruitful cross-fertilization of genres in this period—the contamination of aristocratic pastoral with popular tale, the lyric with the ballad , comedy with romance , tragedy with satire, and poetry with prose. The language, too, was undergoing a rapid expansion that all classes contributed to and benefited from, sophisticated literature borrowing without shame the idioms of colloquial speech. An allusion in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606–07) to heaven peeping “through the blanket of the dark” would become a “problem” only later, when, for instance, Samuel Johnson complained in 1751 that such words provoked laughter rather than awe. Johnson’s was an age when tragic dignity implied politeness, when it was below the dignity of tragedy to mention so lowly an object as a blanket. But the Elizabethans’ ability to address themselves to several audiences simultaneously and to bring into relation opposed experiences, emphases, and worldviews invested their writing with complexity and power.

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The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 - Presentation Speech
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 - Prize announcement
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 - Press release
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 - Biobibliography
The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 20201

Award ceremony speech

Ellen Mattson delivering the presentation speech for the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

English Swedish

Presentation Speech by Writer Ellen Mattson, Member of the Swedish Academy , Member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, 10 December 2021.

Your Majesties, Esteemed Nobel Prize laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen

A story is told again and again in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels. It concerns a boy who disappears or is kidnapped, sold, taken like Moses from the bulrushes, or is fleeing to save his life. He grows into a young man living where he doesn’t belong, where he is forced to find ways of managing both the sorrow of ruptured contact with the past, and also the shock of encountering a society that is basically hostile. The strategies he tries are irony, withdrawal, silence and lies.

Here, lies equate to literary fiction; along with much else, Gurnah’s writing is about the genesis of writers and how stories emerge as a means of understanding what has happened, but also creating an alternative: an improved or simply different version to offer loved ones and use as a shield against revealing light. But the protection transforms over time into a sickness, a Nessus Tunic that destroys its wearer, and the young man becomes slightly older, then finally an old man fossilised in a life lie, trying to break a silence that has become a wall against the world.

Once upon a time there was a boy, so begins the story. At the dawn of time , which is how all stories begin. The writer’s job is to see that this continues, to defer to it and shepherd it to closure. Only when a story is complete can we understand the meaning of all the episodes, of the mysterious ties that bind, and the deepest sense in the final chord that everything leads up to. Only when it has subsided is the music whole and coherent. It is the story of our time and all others that is told in novels such as Pilgrims Way , Paradise, Afterlives and Desertion . It is about losing one’s place in the world then searching for a new place, resisting slavery even when it appears disguised and in tempting form. To enter Gurnah’s writing is to absorb the great oral narrative tradition’s patterns and mythologies, conflated with the premise of the art of the novel: the uniqueness of every fate. Gurnah describes exile, but never in general terms; he writes not about historical processes but about people subservient to history, their lives shaped by it, but always each in their own way, with preconditions from the distant past ‒ the dawn of time, if you will. As in A Thousand and One Nights, they tell stories to get through the night, and we recognise the voice of the old tale, but the storytellers are modern individuals; they are benificent, snobbish, super-sensitive, cowardly and heroic, as complex and contradictory as in a Shakespeare play or a Joseph Conrad novel. Here, two literary traditions meet and organically merge into a third, something exceptionally beautiful.

Everyone has a dream for their own life and must sustain that dream through challenges along the way. Ultimately, rootlessness is perhaps the only place that can be claimed. It holds those whose lives have been splintered but who have been able to retain within them what is most important and fragile.

Dear Abdulrazak Gurnah, on behalf of the Swedish Academy it is my privilege to convey to you our warmest congratulations on the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021.

Translated by Kim Loughran

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Nobel prizes 2023.

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20th Century American Speeches as Literary Texts

10 Speeches Analyzed for Readability and Rhetoric

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M.A., English, Western Connecticut State University
B.S., Education, Southern Connecticut State University

Speeches are given at a moment in history for different purposes: to persuade, to accept, to praise, or to resign. Giving students speeches to analyze can help them better understand how the speaker effectively meets his or her purpose. Giving students speeches to read or listen to also helps teachers increase their students' background knowledge on a time in history. Teaching a speech also meets the Common Core Literacy Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy Standards for History,Social Studies, Science, and the Technical Subject Areas , that require students to determine word meanings, appreciate the nuances of words, and steadily expand their range of words and phrases.

The following ten speeches have been rated as to their length (minutes/# of words), readability score (grade level/reading ease) and at least one of the rhetorical devices used (author's style). All of the following speeches have links to audio or video as well as the transcript for the speech.

"I Have a Dream" -Martin Luther King

This speech is rated at the top of "Great American Speeches" on multiple media sources. To illustrate what makes this speech so effective, there is a visual analysis on video by Nancy Duarte. On this video, she illustrates the balanced "call and response" format that MLK used in this speech.

Delivered by : Martin Luther King Date : August 28,1963 Location: Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. Word Count: 1682 Minutes: 16:22 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 67.5 Grade Level : 9.1 Rhetorical device used: So many elements in this speech are figurative: metaphors, allusions, alliterations. The speech is lyrical and King incorporates lyrics from " My Country 'tis of Thee" to create a new sets of verses. The Refrain is a verse, a line, a set, or a group of some lines repeated usually in a song or poem.

The most famous refrain from the speech:

"I have a dream today!"

"Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation"- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

While members of FDR's Cabinet were "in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific", the Japanese fleet bombed the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. If word choice is an important tool in persuasion, than FDR's word choices to declare war on the Empie of Japan are notable: severe damage, premeditated invasion, onslaught, unprovoked, and dastardly

Delivered by : Franklin Delano Roosevelt Date : December 8, 1941 Location: White House, Washington, D.C. Word Count: 518 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 48.4 Grade Level : 11.6 Minutes : 3:08 Rhetorical device used: Diction: refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary ( word choices) and style of expression in a poem or story. This famous opening line sets the tone of the speech:

" Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

"The Space Shuttle 'Challenger 'Address" -Ronald Reagan

When the space shuttle "Challenger" exploded, President Ronald Reagan canceled the State of the Union Address to deliver eulogy to the astronauts who had lost their lives. There were multiple references to history and literature including a line from a World War II era sonnet: "High Flight", by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and s lipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

Delivered by : Ronald Reagan Date : January 28, 1986 Location: White House, Washington, D.C. Word Count: 680 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 77.7 Grade Level : 6.8 Minutes: 2:37 Rhetorical device used: Historical reference or Allusion A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art to enrich the reading experience by adding meaning. Reagan referred to the explorer Sir Francis Drake who died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. Reagan compares the astronauts in this manner:

"In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He [Drake] lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it."

"The Great Society" -Lyndon Baines Johnson

After the assasination of President John F. Kennedy, President Johnson passed two important acts of legislation: The Civil Rights Act and the omnibus Economic Opportunity Act of '64. The focus of his 1964 campaign was the War on Poverty which he refers to in this speech.

A Lesson plan on the NYTimes Learning Network contrasts this speech with a news report of the War on Poverty 50 years later.

Delivered by : Lyndon Baines Johnson Date : May 22,1964 Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan Word Count: 1883 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 64.8 Grade Level : 9.4 Minutes: 7:33 Rhetorical device used: Epithet describes a place, a thing or a person in such a way that it helps in making the characteristics of a person, thing or place more prominent than they actually are. Johnson is describing how America could become The Great Society.

"The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning."

Richard M. Nixon-Resignation Speech

This speech is notable as the 1st resignation speech by an American President. Richard M. Nixon has another famous speech - "Checkers" in which he confronted criticism for the gift of a small Cocker spaniel from a constituent.

Years later, confronted in his second term by the Watergate scandal, Nixon announced he would resign the Presidency rather than, "...continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress..."

Delivered by : Richard M. Nixon Date : August 8, 1974 Location: White House, Washington, D.C Word Count: 1811 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 57.9 Grade Level : 11.8 Minutes: 5:09 Rhetorical device used: Appositive When a noun or word is followed by another noun or phrase that renames or identifies it, this is called appositive.

The appositive in this statement indicates Nixon acknowledges the error of decisions made in the Watergate Scandal.

"I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong -- and some were wrong -- they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interests of the nation."

Farewell Address-Dwight D Eisenhower

When Dwight D. Eisenhower left office, his farewell speech was notable for the concerns he expressed about the influence of expanding military industrial interests. In this speech, he reminds the audience that he will have the same responsibilities of citizenship that each of them has in meeting this challenge, " As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance..."

Delivered by : Dwight D. Eisenhower Date :January 17, 1961 Location: White House, Washington, D.C. Word Count: 1943 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 47 Grade Level : 12.7 Minutes: 15:45 Rhetorical device used: Comparison is a rhetorical device in which a writer compares or contrasts two people, places, things, or ideas. Eisenhower repeatedly compares his new role as private citzien to that of others separate from government:

"As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow."

Barbara Jordan 1976 Keynote Address DNC

Barbara Jordan was the keynote speaker to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. In her address she defined the qualities of the Democratic party as a party that was "attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal."

Delivered by : Barbara Charlene Jordan Date : July 12, 1976 Location: New York, NY Word Count: 1869 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 62.8 Grade Level : 8.9 Minutes: 5:41 Rhetorical device used: Anaphora: the deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect

" If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If -- If we as public officials propose, we must produce. If we say to the American people, "It is time for you to be sacrificial" -- sacrifice. If t he public official says that, we [public officials] must be the first to give."

Ich bin ein Berliner ["I am a Berliner"]-JF Kennedy

Delivered by : John Fitzgerald Kennedy Date : June 26, 1963 Location: West Berlin Germany Word Count: 695 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 66.9 Grade Level : 9.9 Minutes: 5:12 Rhetorical device used: E pistrophe : a stylistic device that can be defined as the repetition of phrases or words at the end of the clauses or sentences; reversed form of an anaphora.

Note that he uses this same phrase in German to capture empathy of the German audience in attendance.

"There are some who say -- There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin."

Vice Presidential Nomination, Geraldine Ferraro

This was the first acceptance speech from a woman nominated for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. Geraldine Ferraro ran with Walter Mondale during the 1984 Campaign.

Delivered by : Geraldine Ferraro Date :19 July 1984 Location: Democratic National Convention, San Francisco Word Count: 1784 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 69.4 Grade Level : 7.3 Minutes : 5:11 Rhetorical device used: Parallelism: is the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning or meter.

Ferraro sets out to show the similarity of Americans in rural and urban areas:

"In Queens, there are 2,000 people on one block. You would think we'd be different, but we're not. Children walk to school in Elmore past grain elevators; in Queens, they pass by subway stops... In Elmore, there are family farms; in Queens, small businesses."

A Whisper of AIDS: Mary Fisher

When Mary Fisher, the HIV-positive daughter of a wealthy and powerful Republican fund raiser, took the stage at the 1992 Republican National Convention Address, she called for empathy for those who had contracted AIDS. She was HIV-positive from her second husband, and she was speaking to remove the stigma many in the party gave to the disease that "was the third leading killer of young adult Americans...."

Delivered by : Mary Fisher Date : August 19, 1992 Location: Republican National Convention, Houston, TX Word Count: 1492 Readability score : Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 76.8 Grade Level : 7.2 Minutes: 12:57 Rhetorical device used: Metaphor: a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics.

This speech contains multiple metaphors including:

"We have killed each other with our ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.."

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43 of the Most Iconic Short Stories in the English Language

From washington irving to kristen roupenian.

Last year, I put together this list of the most iconic poems in the English language ; it’s high time to do the same for short stories. But before we go any further, you may be asking: What does “iconic” mean in this context? Can a short story really be iconic in the way of a poem, or a painting, or Elvis?

Well, who knows, but for our purposes, “iconic” means that the story has somehow wormed its way into the general cultural consciousness—a list of the best short stories in the English language would look quite different than the one below. (Also NB that in this case we’re necessarily talking about the American cultural consciousness, weird and wiggly as it is.) When something is iconic, it is a highly recognizable cultural artifact that can be used as a shorthand—which often means it has been referenced in other forms of media. You know, just like Elvis. (So for those of you heading to the comments to complain that these stories are “the usual suspects”—well, exactly.) An iconic short story may be frequently anthologized , which usually means frequently read in classrooms, something that can lead to cultural ubiquity—but interestingly, the correlation isn’t perfect. For instance, Joyce’s “Araby” is anthologized more often, but for my money “The Dead” is more iconic . Film adaptations and catchy, reworkable titles help. But in the end, for better or for worse, you know it when you see it. Which means that, like anything else, it all depends on your point of view—icon status is (like most of the ways we evaluate art) highly subjective.

So, having acknowledged that there’s no real way to make this list, but because this is what we’re all here to do, here are some of the most iconic short stories for American readers in the English language—and a few more that deserve to be more iconic than they are.

Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820)

I agonized over whether I should pick “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Irving’s oeuvre. Both have many, many adaptations to their name and are so ubiquitous as to have drifted into the folklore realm. The latter certainly has more memorable recent adaptations, but the former is the only one with a bridge named after it . Ah, screw it, we’ll count them both.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

Poe’s early stream-of-consciousness horror story, unreliable narrator and heart beating under the floorboards and all, is certainly one of the most adapted—and even more often referenced —short stories in popular culture, and which may or may not be the source for all of the hundreds of stories in which a character is tormented by a sound only they can hear. (Still not quite as ubiquitous as Poe himself , though . . .)

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853)

Once, while I was walking in Brooklyn, carrying my Bartleby tote bag , a woman in an SUV pulled over (on Atlantic Avenue, folks) to excitedly wave at me and yell “Melville! That’s Melville!” Which is all you really need to know about that .

Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)

I will leave it to Kurt Vonnegut, who famously wrote , “I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like “Sophisticated Lady” by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)

Odds are this was the first overtly Feminist text you ever read, at least if you’re of a certain age; it’s become a stand-in for the idea of women being driven insane by the patriarchy—and being ignored by doctors, who deem them “hysterical.” This is another one with lots of adaptations to its name, including a memorable episode of The Twilight Zone , which concludes: “Next time you’re alone, look quickly at the wallpaper, and the ceiling, and the cracks on the sidewalk. Look for the patterns and lines and faces on the wall. Look, if you can, for Sharon Miles, visible only out of the corner of your eye or… in the Twilight Zone.”

Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898)

Technically a novella, but discussed enough as a story that I’ll include it here (same goes for a couple of others on this list, including “The Metamorphosis”). It has, as a work of literature, inspired a seemingly endless amount of speculation, criticism, unpacking, and stance-taking. “In comment after comment, article after article, the evidence has been sifted through and judgments delivered,” Brad Leithauser wrote in The New Yorker . Fine, intelligent readers have confirmed the validity of the ghosts (Truman Capote); equally fine and intelligent readers have thunderously established the governess’s madness (Edmund Wilson).” And nothing that inspires so much interpretive interest could escape the many interpretations into other media: films, episodes of television, and much other literature.

Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Toy Dog” (1899)

Widely acknowledged as one of Chekhov’s best stories, if not the best, and therefore almost no students get through their years at school without reading it. Has been adapted as a film, a ballet, a play, a musical, and most importantly, a Joyce Carol Oates short story.

W. W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902)

So iconic—be careful what you wish for, is the gist—that you probably didn’t even know it started out as a short story. My favorite version is, of course, the Laurie Anderson song .

O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905)

According to Wikipedia, there have been 17 different film adaptations of O. Henry’s classic short story about a couple’s thwarted Christmas; the essential format—Della sells her hair to buy Jim a watch chain; Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs—has been referenced and replicated countless times beyond that. I even heard Dax Shepard refer to this story on his podcast the other day, and so I rest my case.

James Joyce, “The Dead” (1914)

The last story in Joyce’s collection Dubliners and one of the best short stories ever written; just ask anyone who wanted to have read some Joyce but couldn’t crack Ulysses . (Or anyone who could crack Ulysses too.) And let’s not forget the John Huston movie starring Anjelica Huston as Gretta.

Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1915)

Everyone has to read this in school, at some point—which is probably the reason why it’s been parodied, referenced, and adapted many times in just about every format . And why not? What could be more universal than the story of the man who wakes up to find himself transformed into an enormous insect?

Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” aka “The Hounds of Zaroff” (1924)

“The most popular short story ever written in English” is obviously the one about aristocrats hunting people. Widely adapted , but one of my favorite versions is the episode of Dollhouse in which a Richard Connell (no relation except the obvious) hunts Echo with a bow.

Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers” (1927)

I was tempted to include “Hills Like White Elephants” because of the number of people forced to read it to learn about dialogue (happily, there are other options ), but “The Killers,” while less often anthologized, is more influential overall, and gave us not only two full length film adaptations and a Tarkovsky short but Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain,” which I do think is a very good story to learn from, if not for dialogue, then for story-making.

Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933)

Hurston is most famous for Their Eyes Were Watching God , but those who know will tell you that this story of love, marriage, betrayal, and love again—which was also made into a 2001 film—is a classic, too.

Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948)

The short story that launched a thousand letters to The New Yorker —or if not a thousand , then at least “a torrent . . . the most mail the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction.” Still taught widely in schools, and still chilling.

J. D. Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)

The very first story to destroy many a young mind. In a good way, obviously.

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950)

Bradbury’s work has thoroughly permeated pop culture; plenty of his stories are widely adapted and referenced, so I could have chosen a few others here (“The Veldt” is my personal favorite). But every year, the image of a smart house going on long after the death of its occupants becomes more chilling and relevant an image; we can’t help but keep going back to it.

Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” (1952)

I know it’s really the Hitchcock film adaptation that’s iconic, but you wouldn’t have the Hitchcock without the du Maurier.

Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953)

Another oft-assigned (and oft-argued-over) story, this one with so many title rip-offs .

Elmore Leonard, “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953)

I know, I know, it’s “Fire in the Hole” that gave us Justified , and we’re all so very glad. But “Three-Ten to Yuma” has more name recognition—after all, it was adapted into two separate and very good films, the former of which (1957) actually created contemporary slang : in Cuba, Americans are called yumas and the United States is La Yuma .

Philip K. Dick, “The Minority Report” (1956)

As a whole, Philip K. Dick’s work has had massive influence on literature, film, pop culture, and our cultural attitudes toward technology. Most of his best-known works are novels, but when a short story gets made into a Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film, you’re basically assuring iconic status right there. (Or at least that’s how it used to work…)

James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)

Baldwin’s best known short story pops up in plenty of anthologies, and can be thanked for being the gateway drug for many budding Baldwin acolytes.

Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959)

Not only is the story itself widely known and read—just ask Rod Blagojevich ( remember him? )—that title has been rewritten and reused thousands of times for varying ends—just ask the reporter who wrote that piece about Blagojevich. Or Adrian Tomine .

John Cheever, “The Swimmer” (1964)

Cheever’s most famous story nails something essential about the mid-century American sensibility, and particularly the mid-century American suburbs, which is probably why everyone knows it (it’s also frequently anthologized). Or maybe it’s more about Burt Lancaster’s little shorts ? Either way.

Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966)

Another frequently anthologized and unwaveringly excellent short story; and look, it’s no one’s fault that Laura Dern turns everything she touches iconic.

Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (1972)

Yet another story often assigned in schools (the good ones, anyway), which hopefully means one day we’ll wake up and find out that everyone has read it.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973)

As others have pointed out before me , Le Guin’s most read and most famous short story is almost always chillingly relevant.

Donald Barthelme, “The School” (1974)

This one might only be iconic for writers, but considering it’s one of the best short stories ever written (according to me), I simply couldn’t exclude it.

Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1978)

Another staple of a writer’s education, and a reader’s; “are you really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” being a kind of bandied-about shibboleth.

Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981)

I struggled choosing a Carver story for this list—”Cathedral” is more important, and probably more read, but “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” has transcended its own form more completely, at least with its title, which has spawned a host of echoes, including Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank , to the point that I think it’s recognizable to just about everyone. A quick Google search will reveal that the framing has been used for almost everything you can think of. There’s—and I kid you not—a What We Talk About When We Talk About Books/War/Sex/God/The Tube/Games/Rape/Money/Creative Writing/Nanoclusters/Hebrew/The Weather/Defunding the Police/Free Speech/Taxes/Holes/Climate/The Moon/Waste/Cancel Culture/Impeachment/Gender/Digital Inclusions/Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease/COVID-19 . You see what I’m getting at here.

Stephen King, “The Body” (1982)

Otherwise known, to the general public, as Stand By Me .

Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” (1983)

Want to feel bad about your writing? This was the first short story Amy Hempel ever wrote.

Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman” (1985)

A very very good short story that has given rise to so many bad ones.

Mary Gaitskill, “Secretary” (1988)

Bad Behavior is iconic as a whole , but probably the story to have most acutely permeated the wider culture is “Secretary,” on account of the film adaptation starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader—despite the fact that it totally butchers the ending.

Amy Tan, “Rules of the Game” (1989)

This story originally appeared in The Joy Luck Club , Tan’s mega-bestseller, so probably almost everyone you know has read it. The film version didn’t hurt either.

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” (1990)

Why, it’s only the most anthologized short story of the last 30(ish) years. That’s why even the people you know who haven’t picked up a book in their adult lives have read it.

Denis Johnson, “Emergency” (1992)

When I left New York to go get my MFA, a friend gave me a copy of Jesus’ Son with the inscription “Because everyone in your MFA will talk about it and you don’t want to be the girl who hasn’t read it. (It’s also really good).” He was not wrong.

Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” (1997)

Everybody knows this story—even if they only know it from its (massively successful and influential, not to mention the true Best Picture Winner of 2006) film adaptation—and not for nothing, coming out when it did, it went a long way towards making some Americans more comfortable with homosexuality. Open the floodgates, baby.

Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter” (1998)

The story that made Lahiri a household name.

Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life” (1998)

Otherwise known as Arrival . (Also technically a novella.)

Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (2001)

At this point, almost everyone has read at least some Alice Munro, right? This story is one of the best from one of the greats, and was also adapted into a fantastic but heartbreaking film, Away From Her .

Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (2017)

Sure, it’s recent, so it’s not quite as ingrained as some of the others here, but it’s also the story that broke the internet —and quite possibly the only New Yorker story that thousands of people have ever read.

Finally, as is often the case with lists that summarize the mainstream American literary canon of the last 200 years, it is impossible not to recognize that the list above is much too white and male. So for our future and continuing iconography, your friends at Literary Hub suggest reading the following stories, both new and old:

Eudora Welty, “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941) Clarice Lispector, “The Imitation of the Rose” (1960) Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (1969) Ralph Ellison, “Cadillac Flambé” (1973) Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild” (1984) Bharati Mukherjee, “The Management of Grief” (1988) John Edgar Wideman, “Fever” (1990) Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991) Christine Schutt, “To Have and to Hold” (1996) ZZ Packer, “Brownies” (2003) Edward P. Jones, “Marie” (2004) Karen Russell, “Haunting Olivia” (2005) Kelly Link, “Stone Animals” (2005) Edwidge Danticat, “Ghosts” (2008) Yiyun Li, “A Man Like Him” (2008) Claire Vaye Watkins, “Ghosts, Cowboys” (2009) Ottessa Moshfegh, “Bettering Myself” (2013) Amelia Gray, “House Heart” (2013) Zadie Smith, “Meet the President!” (2013) Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch” (2014) Diane Cook, “The Way the End of Days Should Be” (2014) Kirstin Valdez Quade, “Five Wounds” (2015) NoViolet Bulawayo, “Shhhh” (2015) Mariana Enriquez, “Spiderweb” (2016) Ken Liu, “State Change” (2016) Helen Oyeyemi, “Sorry Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” (2016) Lesley Nneka Arimah, “What Is a Volcano?” (2017) James McBride, “The Christmas Dance” (2017) Viet Thanh Nguyen, “War Years” (2017) Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, “Friday Black” (2018). . .

Honestly, this list could go on forever, but let’s stop and say: more short stories of all kinds in the hands of the general public, please!

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Most speeches that become works of literature are of which speech type?

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Speech definition in literature

In literature, a speech is a public discourse performed by an orator. In other words, a person uses a public forum to inform, persuade, or entertain a group of people. Speeches help create a space for people to discuss policies that affect society, either after the decision or during the decision-making process. When a speech is widely believed to be particularly moving, it becomes classified as a work of literature.

History of public speaking

Egyptians were the first known society to formulate guidelines for effective public speaking. They believed speeches should focus on listening as much as speaking and that orators should carefully choose their words, emphasizing concepts with a sense of permanency. Their ideas about rhetoric mirrored their culture, as later eras would as well.

At its most basic, rhetoric is how we communicate. The discussion around a formal definition of rhetoric continues today because the ways we communicate change. Rhetorical analysis concentrated on oral and written communication for much of history, but visual media is now included in rhetorical studies. Applying rhetorical rules effectively in a speech requires language skills, cultural knowledge, and a working understanding of the purpose, context, and audience.

Classical Period (500-400 BC)

Ancient Greece picked up where the Egyptians left off, and as political participation was highly valued, rhetoric became a serious philosophical study.

Roman Era (30 BC-476 AD)

The Greeks’ eloquence influenced the Romans, so they began to devise their own rules of rhetoric. Their speeches included humor and diversions to create interest for the audience.

Medieval Era (400 AD-1400 AD)

Popular thought during the Medieval era considered rhetoric a way to manipulate and hide the truth. Speeches were mainly religious in nature.

Renaissance Period (1400-1600 AD)

As this period saw an increase in academic study, scholars began looking back at previous forms of speech-making. There was an increased focus on style and logic over rhetoric. Other scholars felt morality and ethics were essential parts of an effective speech.

Enlightenment Period (1600-1800 AD)

The Enlightenment took the best of the past and applied it to the present. Philosophers studied persuasiveness and rhetoric through the lens of scientific and moral reasoning. The Enlightenment period combined Rhetoric inspired by the Classical Era with new ideas about how speech delivery influenced audiences.

New School (1900-Today)

Classical rhetoric informs modern theories. Thanks to technology, speeches can now be pre-recorded and delivered over the internet in addition to live events. Podcasts, Ted Talks, YouTube, and video conferences are all ways modern speeches are delivered.

Speeches, Speech Poster Frederick Douglass, StudySmarter

Types of speeches

There are three broad types of speeches:

Entertaining: Speeches that deliver a message by stimulating their audience using humor or drama. Entertaining speeches are typical at special events such as weddings.
A definition speech explains the main points of a topic so an audience will understand it better.
A demonstration speech explains how something works.
An explanatory speech usually uses statistics or other data types to describe a topic.
A descriptive speech uses words to paint a picture of a subject.
Persuasive: Speeches that try to influence an audience to believe or do something.

Persuasive speeches

Speeches that become known as works of literature are usually persuasive. The best way to persuade an audience has been studied since the Egyptians laid a foundation for rhetoric. However, philosophers throughout history have offered different theories regarding the most effective ways to use rhetoric to persuade an audience. As a result, much of what is taught today is actually thousands of years old.

Marcus Tullius Cicero of Ancient Rome established a five-step process for writing a persuasive speech that is still widely respected and used, called the Five Canons of Rhetoric (50 BC):

Invention: How someone develops their idea. For example, to get ready for a political debate, a candidate will brainstorm about the main points they want to try to make.
Arrangement: Deciding how the orator should organize the speech. Rather than diving right into the solution to a civil rights issue, a speechwriter first introduces the problem, so the audience knows why they’re supposed to act.
Style: Language choices within the speech. For example, an orator should know their audience well enough to know whether or not humor will be appropriate.
Memory: the act of memorizing a speech. To see why this is important, consider political leaders' consequences when they slip up mid-speech or misread words on a teleprompter.
Delivery: How an orator presents the speech to the audience. People tend to trust a speaker who uses direct eye contact more than one who seems distracted because they keep looking down or off to the side.

Many of these guidelines can also be helpful when writing a paper.

Persuasive speech topics

Topics of a persuasive speech usually boil down to one of three types of debatable points:

For example, the specific details surrounding a historical event can sometimes be debated.
For example, public health is a policy issue.
For example, a speaker's arguments for or against the death penalty are influenced by their values.

Evaluating speeches

A speech analysis essay examines how successfully a speech uses rhetorical devices to appeal to its audience.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle established a formula known as the rhetorical triangle that balances three characteristics that work together to create a powerful speech:

Logos (Word): In a speech, logos is the appeal to logic. In an analysis, look at how well the speech argues its main points.
Ethos (Character): Ethos appeals to character, meaning it scrutinizes the reliability of the speech’s author. Ethos evaluates whether the speaker’s argument is credible.
Pathos (Sympathy): Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions. A speech analysis essay delves into the beliefs that underlie the argument and how they resonate with the audience.

Evaluate a speech using the rhetorical triangle and these guidelines:

What is the purpose of the speech?

Who is the target audience, and how does the speech appeal to them?

Does the speech back its claims with reliable proof?

Who is the speaker, and what is their effect on the speech?

How and where was the speech delivered?

Was the speech compelling? Why or why not?

Famous speeches in English Literature

Some speeches transcend their moment in time to become famous examples of the genre that continue to inspire others.

Demosthenes “Third Philippic” (341 BC)

Demosthenes was an Ancient Greek orator whose skills impressed Cicero three hundred years later. “Third Philippic” is the third speech Demosthenes made to his fellow Athenians to persuade them to go to war against Phillip of Macedon, who was creeping into their territory. After the speech, the Athenian Assembly immediately decided it was time to act.

Demosthenes studied for years to become one of the most respected orators in Athens (Ethos).

[I]n fact it is your indifference and carelessness that Phillip has conquered; your city he has not conquered. Nor have you been defeated–no! You have not even made a move. 2

Demosthenes calls out the Assembly’s previous inaction, which appealed to their sense of duty (pathos).

If we are going to wait for him to acknowledge a state of war with us, we are indeed the simplest of mortals; for even if he marches straight against Attica and the Piraeus, he will not admit it, if we may judge from his treatment of the other states. 2

Demosthenes provides proof of Phillip’s aggressive and devious behavior against other communities to convince the Assembly (logos).

George Washington “1783 Resignation Speech” (December 23, 1783)

George Washington commanded the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War and became the United States’ first President. He wrote this speech after the Revolutionary War was over and he had completed the duty bestowed on him.

One of the things Washington is famous for is that he didn’t seek out the offices he held. Instead, people saw his leadership qualities and asked him to serve. And when the job was done, Washington respectfully stepped away to let someone else take over (ethos).

The Successful termination of the War has verified the most sanguine expectations, and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my Countrymen, encreases with every review of the momentous contest. 3

Washington compliments the men he fought with and thanks God for their success, which is even better than the most optimistic expectations as an appeal to Congress’s peace of mind (pathos).

Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of Action. 3

He logically argues that his job is complete because the war is won, so he is ready to stand aside (logos).

Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I A Woman?” (1851)

Sojourner Truth was a formerly enslaved person who became an activist. She gave the speech “Ain’t I A Woman?” at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, which calls out popular beliefs about race and gender.

Truth’s autobiography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850), brought her national attention, and she began speaking on various topics. She helped enslaved people escape slavery, and when the Civil War started, she encouraged African American men to help fight with the Union (Ethos).

I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! 4

Truth appeals to the audience’s beliefs about motherly love to question why her race sets her apart as deserving the right to vote along with other women (pathos).

Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! . . . I could work as much and eat as much as a man–when I could get it–and bear the lash as well! 4

Truth argues that she has done as much work as any man, so if men can vote because they work, she should be allowed to vote also (logos).

Literary speeches meld rhetorical skills with creative writing. They transport the reader to their moment in history and inspire future generations to act. Literary speeches act as a time capsule that allows a glimpse into a famous (or infamous) person's thoughts and emotions and helps readers better understand their influence on society.

Speeches - Key takeaways

When a speech is especially thought-provoking, it can become classified as a work of literature.
Rhetoric looks at how we communicate. Rhetorical study requires language skills, cultural knowledge, and a working understanding of the purpose, context, and audience.
Speeches that become works of literature are typically persuasive. Persuasive speech topics can be categorized as issues of fact, issues of policy, or issues of value.
When evaluating a speech, examine its use of pathos, logos, and ethos.
Great literary speeches invoke an emotional response thousands of years after they were written.
Lincoln, Abraham. 1863 "The Gettysburg Address ." Abraham Lincoln Online. 2020
Demosthenes. 341 BC "Third Philippic." The Bibliotheke.
Washington, George. 1783 "Washington's Address to Congress Resigning His Commission." National Archives.
Truth, Sojourner. 1851 "Ain't I A Woman?" Lit2Go
Fig. 1: Poster announcing a lecture of Frederick Douglass, Public Domain, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poster_announcing_a_lecture_of_Frederick_Douglass.jpg)

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Frequently Asked Questions about Speeches

What is speech in literature?

In literature, a speech is a public discourse performed by an orator. In other words, a person uses a public forum to inform, persuade, or entertain a group of people. When a speech is widely believed to be particularly moving, it becomes classified as a work of literature.

What are the three main types of speeches?

The three main types of speeches are:

Entertaining
Informative

What are the four types of informative speeches?

The four types of informative speeches are:

Demonstration
Explanatory
Descriptive

What is a speech analysis essay?

A speech analysis essay examines how successfully a speech uses rhetorical devices to appeal to its audience.

What are some examples of famous speeches?

Some examples of famous speeches are:

Demosthenes's "Third Philippic" (341 BC)
George Washington's "Washington's Address to Congress Resigning His Commission" (1783)
Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman?" (1851)

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Figure of Speech

Definition of figure of speech.

you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

Types of Figures of Speech

Common examples of figures of speech used in conversation, understatement, common examples of figure of speech in writing, personification, writing figure of speech, figure of speech as artistic use of language, figure of speech as entertainment for reader, figure of speech as memorable experience for reader, examples of figure of speech in literature, example 1: the great gatsby (f. scott fitzgerald).

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

Example 2: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.

Example 3: Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?

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Literary Theory and Criticism

A Brief History of English Literature

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

Middle English Literature

ELIZABEHAN POETRY AND PROSE

ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

John Milton and His Time

RESTORATION DRAMA AND PROSE

Comedy of Manners

ENGLISH POETS, 1660-1798

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

EARLY NINTEENTH CENTURY POETS (THE ROMANTICS)

LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY POETS (Victorian Poets)

Nineteenth Century Novelists (Victorian Novelists)

Other Nineteenth Century Prose

Chapter 13 Twentieth-century novels and other prose

Twentieth Century Drama

Chapter 15 Twentieth Century Poetry

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