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Difficulty: MediumLiterary Devices, Diction, and Style in Prose

Match each short prose excerpt on the left with the primary stylistic or literary device it demonstrates on the right.

  • Through the quiet corridor, the chef could hear the sweet, yellow aroma of fresh pineapple wafting from the pantry.Synesthesia
  • I shall say nothing of his notorious greed, nor shall I bring up his shameful betrayal of the council.Paralipsis
  • The weary traveler dragged his exhausted feet through the silent, sleepless night.Transferred Epithet
  • The captain paced the deck shouting, 'Never, never, never surrender the banner to the enemy!'Epizeuxis

Answer

The prose excerpts match their respective stylistic devices as follows: the scent described with visual and auditory terms matches Synesthesia; the statement pretending to ignore a topic while emphasizing it matches Paralipsis; the attribution of human sleeplessness to the night matches Transferred Epithet; and the immediate repetition of 'never' for emphasis matches Epizeuxis.
Each prose excerpt illustrates a specific rhetorical device: synesthesia mixes sensory perceptions ('hear yellow aroma'), paralipsis professes to skip a subject while explicitly mentioning it, transferred epithet applies an adjective ('sleepless') to a noun other than the subject experiencing it, and epizeuxis repeats a single word ('never') in immediate succession for emotional weight.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first excerpt for sensory blending.
The phrase 'hear the sweet, yellow aroma' mixes hearing and sight with smell.
Mixing distinct physical senses in literary prose is known as synesthesia.
2
Examine the rhetorical structure of the second excerpt.
The narrator asserts they will not mention greed or betrayal, yet explicitly names both.
Drawing attention to a topic under the guise of omitting it defines paralipsis.
3
Identify the relationship between the adjective and noun in the third excerpt.
'Sleepless' modifies 'night', though it is the person who experiences sleeplessness.
Shifting a descriptive word from the experiencing subject to a related object or concept creates a transferred epithet.
4
Evaluate the pattern of repetition in the fourth excerpt.
The single word 'never' is repeated back-to-back without interruption.
Immediate repetition of a word with no intervening language constitutes epizeuxis.

Key Concept

Stylistic Devices and Figures of Speech in Prose
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Topics

Literary Devices, Diction, and Style in Prose

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