Dec 16, 2009

Guide to Literary Terms | Device

Device - a term used to describe any literary technique deliberately employed to achieve a specific effect such as: in medias res in novels; parallelism in rhetoric; alliteration, simile, and metaphor in poetry; soliloquy in drama; and hyperbole, paradox, and oxymoron in conceits.

The term is from the Middle English devis via Middle French from the Old French deviser, meaning “to divide, regulate, or tell.”

see: alliteration, conceit, drama, figure of speech, hyperbole, in medias res, metaphor, novel, oxymoron, paradox, parallelism, poetry, rhetoric, simile, soliloquy