150 Examples of Literary Resources

The literary resources they are strategies and stylistic tools that a writer uses, both in prose and in poetry, to enhance the expressive possibilities of writings and endow them with originality and beauty. It is about the search by the authors for new ways of saying, different from those used in the common language that we use for conventional communication. For example: metaphor, metonymy, polysyndeton, paranomasia, epithet.

The use of these resources, in the particular way that each writer does it, imprints a particular tone on his work and configures his personal style.

Types of literary devices

Literary resources can be classified into: lexical-semantic resources, phonic resources and morphosyntactic or grammatical resources.

Lexical-semantic resources. They are those that focus on idiomatic games and different uses of words and syntax.

phonic resources. They are those that focus on the sound of words and the effect they produce to complement the meaning of the word. poem.

Morphosyntactic/ grammatical resources

. They are those that produce games with the structure of the sentence or the form of the words to, in this way, find different and beautiful ways of enunciating.

Examples of literary devices

examples of metaphor

1. The time is gold.
2. The lament of the guitars.
3. Her velvet lips.
4. Nerves of steel.
5. Your eyes are two stars.

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examples of antithesis

1. "Are short love and so long oblivion”. (Pablo Neruda)
2. "When I want to cry I don't cry Y sometimes i cry unintentionally”. (Ruben Dario)
3. "You are like the Rose of Alexandria, opens from night and close from day”. (popular saying).
4. "To my loneliness I go
   of my loneliness I come
   where alive and where I die
   I'm not even good neither evil with me".
   (Lope de Vega)
5. “My harness Are the weapons
   me break, the quarrel
   me bed, the hard ones rocks
   me sleep, forever to ensure”.
   (Anonymous)

dilogy examples

1. “freckled in the customs and in the face”. (Francisco Quevedo)
2. "Is love force so strong / that force absolutely right”. (Jorge Manrique)
3. “-I have scolded a hotelier.
   –Why? where? when? What?
   –because where when i eat they serve badly, I despair”.
   (Go away)
4. "Comrade you know
   may count on me
   not until two or until ten
   otherwise count on me”.
   (Mario Benedetti)
5. “I would like to go to China / to guide me a bit". (Blas de Otero)

apostrophe examples

1. "You, infinite sky, when will be the day that you show me your mysteries?" (Gustavo Adolfo Becquer)
2. Life, what can I give you?
   to my God who lives in me,
   if it's not losing you
   for the better to enjoy Him?
   (Saint Teresa of Jesus)
3. “Oh sad dark clouds
   how strong you walk, get me out of these sadnesses
   and take me to the depths
   from the sea to where you are going!”
   (Gil Vicente)
4. “Come, gentle night, tender and dark night, give me my Romeo and, when I die, cut him into a thousand stars. small: the firmament will look so beautiful that the world, in love with the night, will stop worshiping the sun hurtful". (Shakespeare)
5. "And he took off his robe,
   and she appeared naked all...
   Oh passion of my life, poetry
   Naked, mine forever!”
   (Juan Ramon Jimenez)

Examples of comparison or simile

1. He was shaking like a leaf.
2. He has a heart as hard as stone.
3. His kisses were sweet as honey.
4. His teeth were white as pearls.
5. The child is meek as a lamb.

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Examples of epithet

1. Where a water clear with sound
   crossed the fresh and green meadow
   which one is left White lily when she loses
   his candy life among the grass green
   For you the green grass, the cool wind
   the White lily and red pink
   Y candy I liked spring…”.
   (Garcilaso de la Vega)
2. "There move fierce war
   blind kings.
   (pronceda)
3. “high, the clouds, as innocent eyewitnesses”.
   (Morejon)
4. "The prickly brambles and punctual coal bins”.
   (Miguel de Cervantes)
5. “Take from your happy spring".
   (Garcilaso de la Vega)

examples of hyperbole

1. "The dictator (...) whose power had been so great that he once asked what time it is and they had answered the ones you ordered, my general." (Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Autumn of the Patriarch)
2. "The man was tall and so skinny that he always seemed to be in profile." (Mario Vargas Llosa. The War of the End of the World)
3. Seeing you smile at the window
   let the believer fall on his knees…”
   (Carlos Pezoa Veliz)
4. “She has turned the flow of her tears
   in the water of the rivers that cross the two Castillas,
   capable of causing flooding...
   (Francisco Quevedo)
5. “She knew, because she had felt it in her own flesh, how powerful the fire of a look can be. She is capable of turning on the sun itself.”
   (Laura Esquivell, Like water for Chocolate)

examples of metonymy

1. He ate two plates. (Container on contents: two-course meal)
2. With that work he earns his bread. (Effect for cause: the money with which he buys bread / sustenance)
3. He loves Bach. (Work by its author: the music of the composer Johan Sebastian Bach)
4. That canvas must be worth a fortune. (The matter for the object: the painting must be valuable)
5. There wasn't a soul. (The part for the whole: Not a person)

Examples of sensory images

1. “[…] one winter day, when I returned home, my mother, seeing that I was coldshe, she proposed to take, contrary to my custom, a little tea. […]. And immediately, mechanically, overwhelmed by the dull day and before the prospect of a sad day to come, I brought a spoonful of tea to my lips in which he had left a small piece of cupcake to soften. But at the very moment that the sip mixed with the cake crumbs touched my palateI shuddered, attentive to what was happening in me extraordinary. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated, without the notion of its cause […]”. (Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time)
2. “Platero is small, hairy, soft; so soft on the outside, that he would be said to be all cotton, that he has no bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes are hard as two black glass beetles. I let him loose and he goes to the meadow and warmly caresses, barely touching them, the pink, light blue and yellow flowers…”. (Juan Ramón Giménez, Platero and me)
3. “…I will always remember your nakedness in my hands,
   your smell of enjoyed sandalwood
   nailed by the morning sun;
   your girlish laugh,
   or stream,
   or bird;
   your long and loving hands
   like a treacherous lily to its former colors.”
   (Rock Dalton)
4. She "flowed down his chin, wet his shirt collar and ended up, in a kind of big wet spot, on his chest." (Roberto Bolaño, distant star)
5. "She put on a beanbag because she was shivering, and I, to give her some warmth, put my long arm on her hunched shoulders." (Mario Benedetti, bridges like hares)

rhetorical question examples

1. "Who can take me out?
   of this my cruel moment
   i can barely stand
   for having a dead body?
   (Claudia Prado)
2. “How does that rose you have lit live?
   next to your heart?
   (Gustavo Adolfo Becquer)
3. “Are there brambles in bloom
   among the gray rocks,
   and white daisies
   among the fine grass?
   Do the banks already have nightingales?
   (Antonio Machado)
4. "What is life?
   you ask me while you make me fall in love,
   you forget me, you ruin me”.
   (p. of the castle)
5. “Death walks freely
   despite spring.
   Where the green joy
   if a bad wind turns it black?
   Will death be necessary
   to implant spring?
   (Rafael Alberto)

examples of irony

1. «He left prison with such honor that two hundred cardinals accompanied him; except that none were called eminence.' (F. of Quevedo)
2. “I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am because I hate plants.” (Whitney Brown).
3. "They ate an eternal meal, without beginning or end…". (F. of Quevedo)
4. "I'm so smart that sometimes I don't understand a word I say." (Oscar Wilde).
5. Lady Nancy Astor is reported to have once told Winston Churchill that if he were her husband, she would poison her tea. In response, Churchill reportedly said, "Ma'am, if I were her husband, she would drink it."

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Examples of litote

1. “He saw (Don Quixote de la Mancha) not far from the road.. a sale that was as if he saw a star that not to the portals, but to the fortresses of his surrender he directed him…” (Miguel de Cervantes)
2. “The eight pieces of this book do not require more elucidation. The eighth ("The garden of paths that fork") is police; the readers of it will attend the execution and all the preliminaries of a crime, the purpose of which they do not ignore but that they will not understand, it seems to me, until the last paragraph. The others are fantastic; one –”The lottery in Babylon”– not entirely innocent of symbolism. I am not the first author of the narration “The library of Babel”; those curious about his history and his prehistory can interrogate a certain page of number 59 of Sur, which records the heterogeneous names of Leucippus and Lasswitz, Lewis Carroll and Aristotle. In “The Circular Ruins” everything is unreal: in “Pierre Menard, author of ‘Quixote’” it is the fate that the protagonist imposes on herself. The list of writings that I attribute to him not too funny but it is not arbitrary; it is a diagram of his mental history… ”. (Jorge Luis Borges)
3. “God give the glory of him to Boscán,
   and Garcilaso poet,
   what with no small effort,
   and for his gallant style
   they held this mushroom.”
   (Cristobal de Castillejo)
4. “And you will be plunged / in evils non finibles and in oblivion”. (Fray Luis de Leon).
5. "A not broken dream,
   I want a pure, happy, free day;
   I don't want to see the frown
   vainly severe
   of whom the blood exalts or the money”.
   (Fray Luis de Leon)

examples of synesthesia

1. “In sound colors suspended
   the eyes hear, the ears look…”
   (Francisco Lopez de Zarate)
2. “I listen with my eyes to the dead…”. (Francisco Quevedo)
3. "From the wet leaves, from the damp earth, a delicious aroma sprouted then, and the rainwater collected in the hollow of your hand had the taste of that aroma...". (Louis Cernuda)
4. "Your name tastes like grass to me." (Joan Manuel Serrat)
5. “What violet tranquility along the evening path!” (J. R. Jimenez)

examples of oxymoron

1. "The quiet music, the sound solitude". (Saint John of the Cross)
2. “Blind sight, dark light,
   sad glory, dead life”.
   (Rodrigo Cota de Maguaque)
3. "Leave me alone, peaceful furious,
   hidalgo villain, shy arrogant,
   crazy sane, ignorant philosopher,
   blind lynx, safe cautious…”.
   (Lope de Vega)
4. “Beatriz was tall, frail, very slightly stooped; there was in her walk (if the oxymoron is tolerable) a kind of graceful awkwardness, a beginning of ecstasy”. (Jorge Luis Borges)
5. “In the figure called oxymoron, an epithet is applied to a word that seems to contradict it; thus the Gnostics spoke of a dark light; the alchemists, of a black sun”. (Jorge Luis Borges)

Examples of personification

1. “A dream I dreamed last night
   little dream of my soul,
   she dreamed of my loves,
   that she in my arms she had them.
   I saw such a white lady come in
   much more than cold snow.
   "Where did you get in, love?"
   How did you get my life?
   The doors are closed,
   windows and shutters.
   I am not love, lover:
   but the Death that God sends you.
   —Ay, Death so rigorous,
   let me live one day!
   —One day it cannot be,
   you have one hour to live”.
   (Anonymous)
2. “Wine, first, pure,
   dressed in innocence
   And I loved her like a child.
   And she took off her robe,
   and she appeared naked all...
   Oh passion of my life, poetry
   Naked, mine forever!”
   (Juan Ramon Jimenez)
3. "Faint king, bishop bias, fierce
   queen, direct rook and ladino pawn
   on the black and white of the road
   seek and wage their armed battle.
   They don't know that the pointed hand
   of the player governs his fate,
   they do not know that an adamantine rigor
   she holds her agency and her journey.”
   (Jorge Luis Borges)
4. “Children of the world, she is
   mother Spain with her belly on her back;
   is our teacher with her splints,
   she is mother and teacher,
   cross and wood, because she gave you the height
   vertigo and division and addition, children;
   is with her, procedural parents!”.
   (Cesar Vallejo)
5. "A tortoise, who saw the flight of an eagle, also felt the desire to fly. She went to visit the eagle and asked him to teach her at the price he wanted. The eagle told him that it was impossible, however, he insisted and urged him. Then he picked it up and, lifting it up into the air, dropped it on a rock. where it crashed, broke and died.” (Aesop)

Examples of tautology

1. “Heat is produced by a substance called caloricum.” (Moliere)
2. "What cannot be, cannot be, and it is also impossible." (Raphael War)
3. “Let the wicked continue to do evil and let the vile continue to debase themselves; let the righteous continue to practice justice and let the saint continue to sanctify himself.” (The Bible)
4. "Green I want you green
   green wind green branches
   The boat over the sea
   the horse on the mountain.
   (Federico Garcia Lorca)
5. "Rosa is a rose, is a rose, is a rose." (Gertrude Stein)

Examples of synonyms

1. “Treacherous, disloyal, fement,
   cruel, unruly and tyrannical:
   cowardly, greedy, bastards,
   obstinate, ferocious and villainous;
   adulterers, infamous, known
   by industrious, more cowardly hands”.
   (Miguel de Cervantes)
2. "Glory, success, popularity, the mirage of being known, esteemed and admired... is presented differently in the eyes of writers."
   (Pio Baroja)
3. "Lie! I have no doubts, no jealousy,
   Neither restlessness, nor anguish, nor pain, nor yearning,
   If the moisture of tears shines in my eyes,
   It's because of the effort of laughing so much…”.
   (Juana Ibarbouru)
4. “I went to your house and did not find you in the
   park, in the square, in the cinema I looked for you”.
   (Manna)
5. "I warn you and I announce that today I resign
   to your dirty business."
   (Shakira)

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alliteration examples

1. “To the winged souls of the roses”. (Miguel Hernandez)
2. “Of ends, fleeting, fugitive, fires melted in your founded skin”. (Jaime Siles)
3. "Clear morning hours,
   in which a thousand bugles of gold
   say the divine target:
   Hail to the celestial sonorous sun”.
   (Ruben Dario)
4. “You break through the ceiling
   with your hoarse snoring
   gone in musical -re.
   I grab you rampant,
   and I reaffirm how rare it is
   rip your clothes,
   rip your clothes like a raptor.
   And more claims.
   you turn red-brown
   when you beg furiously for my rage”.
   (Felix Rosario Ortiz)
5. "Hear the sordid sound of the undertow, infamous mob of nocturnal birds." (Gongora)

examples of onomatopoeia

1. “O formidable Japanese monster with forge eyes,
   nourished by flames and mineral oils,
   hungry for horizons and starry prey
   your heart expands in its taf-taf diabolical
   and your sturdy tires swell for the dances
   Let them dance on the white highways of the world."
   (Filippo Marinetti)
2. “Kikiriki,
   I'm here,
   said the rooster
   hummingbird”.
   (Glory Fountains)
3. “Knock Knocksilence knocks at the door
   Knocking down everything that its path crosses
   TIC Tac, the clock claims
   Silent silence in my head.
   crick crick, the cricket insult
   That hurts the soul with his words
   cruuujjjjjjjthe walls respond
   Framing my sorrow in tears.
   shhhhhthe waterfall begins
   To break feelings of the heart
   Splash, the pikeman sounds
   To the most negative emotion.
   fffuuuuthe wind resounds
   Remembering a dark night
   Wow, the hound is with me
   Friend who cares and seeks.
   Zzzz the dream appears
   More try and try to listen
   The sound of silence that proclaims
   The pain of not being able to love you.
   (Michael von Dangel)
4. "By the wayside
   There is a stone fountain,
   And a little clay pot –Glu Glu–
   That no one takes."
   (Antonio Machado)
5. “¡OhSinamaica! how to describe you
   Caribbean maiden with indigenous features
   lagoon princess
   Spoiled daughter of the sun's rays
   ¡OhSinamaica! how to describe you
   Owner of a long hair of palm trees
   Here I go, running through your skin
   Color of the dunes
   Admiring your smile from Salinas
   An exotic Indian is what you are, Karouya.”
   (Reynaldo Fernandez)

Examples of cramp

1. “I would like to have a friend
   called Tenta.
   and always be with tent”.
   (Glory Fountains)
2. "Crusaders make crusaders,
   shields Paint Shields,
   and gamblers, very naked,
   with dice they win Counties;
   Ducats leave Ducats,
   and Majesty crowns:
   truth!".
   (Luis de Gongora)
3. And my voice that matures
   and my voice burn
   and my forest matures
   and my voice hard burning”.
   (Xavier Villaurrutia)
4. "The sweet lament of the shepherds,
   the sweet lick late the pastors".
   (Garcilaso de la Vega)
5. Parid, beautiful fleur-de-lys,
   in affliction so strange,
   yes paris, paris to Spain,
   but Paris, to Paris”.
   (Anonymous)

Examples of paranomasia

1. “This wall is mere Wall is Mute look die”. (Alejandra Pizarnik)
2. “sold what have you done to me sold out”. (Luis de Gongora)
3. "The sea ​​urchin I know iris, I know hedgehog, I know curl from laughter”. (Octavio Paz)
4. "A man to shoulders from fear". (Blas de Otero)
5. “so muchinkdumb what do you attentive and what about you stunned”. (Tow)

examples of anaphora

1. “O night you led!
   oh kind night more than the dawn!
   oh night you put together!”
   (Saint John of the Cross)
2. "Hit the cross, mill
   until the wheat snows
   hit the stone, water
   until she is tame
   give the mill, air
   to the endless
   give the air, goatherd
   until it whistles softly”
   (Miguel Hernandez)
3. "We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the airfields, we will fight in the fields and in the streets, we will fight on the hills, we will never give up."
   (Winston Churchill)
4. "There are silent kisses, noble kisses
   there are enigmatic, sincere kisses
   There are kisses that are given only by souls
   there are kisses for forbidden, true”.
   (Gabriela Mistral)
5. “There are those who need a love song;
   there are those who need a song of friendship;
   there are those who need to go back to the sun
   to sing the greatest freedom”.
   (Silvio Rodriguez)

examples of anadiplosis

1. "Hey, don't be afraid, and tell my nymph,
   tell him I'm dying."
   (Esteban Manuel de Villegas)
2. "Everything happens and everything is,
   but our thing is to pass,
   spend making paths,
   paths over the sea.
   (Antonio Machado)
3. “Sometimes I think of you even dressed,
   dressed as a woman for the night,
   the night that changed so much in my life;
   my life, let me unbutton you…”
   (Javier Krahe, 20th century)
4. “They will forgive you the hours badly;
   the hours that filing are the days,
   the days that gnaw away are the years”.
   (Luis de Gongora)
5. “The Cid was very suffering, very tired of work,
   tired of so many wars that have passed through him (...)”.
   (Romance of the Cid)

Bypass Examples

1. “Yes for think get angry
   thought do not hate,
   I would think in not loving you
   for not think unlove us;
   plus thinking in my torment,
   without think where am i going,
   I think that my thought
   no think that I think me".
   (Francisco Lopez de Villalobos)
2. "How I know molt the winds,
   how I know molt the bouquets,
   that, naked in winter,
   they dress in the summer,
   we will move our dances
   by points and at every step,
   well move women
   It is not a new or strange case (…)”.
   (Miguel de Cervantes)
3. "Long live God, I have to see!
   you will see the greatest beauty
   that the eyes of the king come”.
   (Tirso de Molina)
4. “Ambassador I am of the King,
   I bring you one of him embassy”.
   (Tirso de Molina)
5. “Jorge Luis Borges knows little about tangos and ignore his ignorance, usual attitude between ignorant”.
   (Camilo Jose Cela)

Examples of epiphora

1. "The whole universe is full of spirit of the world; Everything is judged according to spirit of the world; everything is realized and everything is governed according to the spirit of the world. It will be a matter of asking whether one must also serve God according to the spirit of the world (…)”.
   (Bourdalove)
2. “The crying of the guitar begins.
   It's useless shut her up.
   It is impossible shut her up”.
   (Federico Garcia Lorca)
3. "He didn't say words,
   only a questioning body approached,
   because he did not know that desire is a question
   whose answer does not exist,
   a leaf whose branch does not exist,
   a world whose sky does not exist”.
   (Louis Cernuda)
4. "The one who praises you plushow much is true, do not make sure to revile you more than what is true”.
   (The Count Lucanor)
5. "Of fathers burglars, grow up with burglars, study for burglars…”.
   (Miguel de Cervantes)

Examples of hyperbaton

1. “There is a thicket of green willows”. (Garcilaso de la Vega)
2. "Where foamy the Sicilian sea
   the silver argent foot to Lilibeo
   pale ashen signs a plain
   of the hard trade she gives ”.
   (Luis de Gongora)
3. “Well, to his continuous tenderness
   a violent passion united.
   In a peplo of sheer gauze
   a bacchante was wrapped”.
   (Ruben Dario)
4. "And for the cruel one who rips me
   the heart with which I live,
   Thistle or nettle cultivation;
   I cultivate the white rose”.
   (Jose Marti)
5. “Grey and purple/ is my olive grove”. (Jose Moreno Villa)

examples of complexion

1. "The sea. The sea.
   The sea. Only the sea”.
   (Rafael Alberto)
2. "For
   come to taste it all,
   you don't want to like anything.
   For
   come to know everything
   you don't want to know anything about anything.
   To come to possess it all,
   don't want to own something in nothing.
   To come to be everything,
   don't want to be something at all
   To come to what you don't like,
   you have to go where you don't like;
   To come to what you don't know,
   You have to go where you don't know.
   To come to possess what you do not possess,
   you have to go where you do not have.
   To come to what you are not,
   you have to go where you are not.
   when you notice something,
   you stop throwing yourself into everything.
   To come from all to all,
   you have to leave yourself completely in everything.
   And when you come to have it at all,
   you have to have it without wanting anything”.
   (Saint John of the Cross)
3. “That the king goes through what he orders everyone to go through, justice is. That the prince, to introduce the remedy of his own, does not hesitate to strip off his majesty or humiliate himself, justice is. Let him start by himself the law that he wants to give to all, justice is. That he uses the remedy that he gives, justice is; for although he has not needed him for the apology, he has needed him for the example”. (Francisco Quevedo)
4. “Let a bald don be worth his salt
   that she ate a pellet,
   may well be.
   More than the honorable viznaga
   do not say that she was salad,
   can not be.
   Let an old man get dark
   and that dawn red,
   may well be.
   More than to believe, it narrows us
   that is a miracle and not pickled,
   can not be".
   (Luis de Gongora)
5. “If you desire honesty, what is more honest than virtue, which is the root and source of this honesty?
   If honor, to whom is honor and respect due, if not to virtue?
   If beauty, what is more beautiful than the image of virtue?
   If utility, what is more useful than virtue, because with it the highest good is achieved?
   (Fray Louis of Granada)

Examples of epanadiplosis

1. “The owner of the turtledoves, the owner…”.
   (Ruben Dario)
2. "What was he like, my God, what was he like?"
   (Juan Ramon Jimenez)
3. "Go, little soldier, go
   next to that brunette”.
   (traditional romance)
4. "Words of love, words."
   (Gerardo Diego)
5. "Last mooring, my last anxiety creaks in you."
   (Pablo Neruda)

examples of polysyndeton

1. "I hear sounds of weapons and chariots and voices and kettledrums... can't you see a gleam of infantrymen and horses and dust and smoke and a flash of steel?"
   (Giacomo Leopardi)
2. “There is a palace and a river and
   a lake and an old bridge,
   and fountains with moss and grass
   high and silence… a silence”.
   (Juan Ramon Jimenez)
3. “And the Holy One of Israel opened his hand,
   and he left them and fell into the cliff
   the chariot and the horse and knight…”.
   (Fernando de Herrera)
4. "Neither spikenards nor conch shells have such a fine complexion, nor do moon crystals shine with that brilliance."
   (Federico Garcia Lorca)
5. “…then you can't do anything
   nor wind up the clock,
   nor disheveled,
   nor order the papers”.
   (Glory Fountains)

examples of ellipses

1. With these and other laws and statutes
   we preserve ourselves and live happily;
   we are lords of the fields, of the sown,
   of the jungles, of the mountains, of the springs, of the rivers
   the mountains offer us firewood for free, the trees bear fruit;
   the vineyards grapes”.
   (Miguel de Cervantes)
2. “Not only in silver or truncated viola
   It becomes, plus you and it together
   On land, in smoke, in dust, in shadow, in nothing”.
   (Luis de Gongora)
3. "In April it rains a lot".
   (Popular proverb)
4. "The wind carries tall trees, and thoughts carry lovers".
   (song book)
5. “For a look, a world;
   for a smile, a sky;
   for a kiss... I don't know
   What would I give you for a kiss!”
   (Gustavo Adolfo Becquer)

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