Kids Corner: Comparing and Analysing poetry - Literary techniques

Part four of analysing and comparing poetry for GCSE and A-Level is Literary techniques! A literary technique is just another way of saying a ‘trick’, ‘method’, ‘style’, or ‘way’ of writing. We name them because a lot of authors use the same methods of writing to effect how the reader feels. Let’s look at some examples of literary techniques:

• Pathetic fallacy – reflecting the thoughts, feelings, or personality of a character in the weather

• Anaphora – repeating the same phrase at the beginning of each line or paragraph.

• Metaphor – Saying Thing A is Thing B (The Child was a lion!)

• Direct address – speaking directly to the audience/reader

• This is not a full list there are so very many!

You will always need to identify and compare the literary techniques used in the two poems you are given in an exam. This can be difficult because you may have very different techniques. What can help is to find areas where the authors are describing the same idea, and then compare the techniques used to do that. Here are some ideas of what you can compare in your exam:

• Compare what emotions they give the reader

• Compare how intense the description is

• Compare if the feelings conveyed to you are positive or negative

• Compare how technical the approaches are (one uses simple nouns and adjectives and the other uses onomatopoeia and simile)

• Compare which techniques work best with the theme of the poem.

If you missed parts 1-3, have a look at those in Kids Corner in the blog on WrightEnglish.com! The last part is coming next week!