Twelfth Night Literary Devices and Examples

Pun	“Hunting the hart…my heart that’s being hunted”
Rhyme	“Away before me to sweet beds of flowers/Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers”
Malapropism	“Accost, Sir Andrew, accost”
Aside	“(aside) Yet a barful strife – Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.”
Time (of year)	“A good Lenten answer” “Let summer bear it out”
Personification	“She bore a mind that envy could not but call fair”
Synecdoche	“methought her eyes had lost her tongue”
Apostrophe	“O, time thou must untangle this, not I”
Simile	“But let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek”
Allusion	“Thy Fates open their hands”
Oxymoron	“The Fortunate Unhappy”
Situational Irony	the Fool is the most intelligent, while the people in power look the most foolish
Soliloquy	Sebastian’s lines in Act IV, Scene 3 describing his situation with Olivia

Q&A SummaryStory