TWISTED WORDS From Anaphora to Zeugma, How the World's Greatest Writers Use Tricks of the Literary Trade Katharine Harmon and Rick Meyerowitz
To bring stories to vivid life, writers can choose from an arsenal of literary devices: figures of speech that push and pull words, like taffy, into new forms, shifting their meaning, emphasis, rhythm, and sound. Figurative language makes writing pop and sizzle, stutter and flow, opens the mind to new dimensions of understanding, conveys artistry. A reader's mind perks up when language isn't literal.
Of course, we are aquainted with alliteration and synonym and simile (each employed above). But how about polysyndeton, metonymy, and synecdoche? Aporia and ploce? All are figures of speech that add intrigue to literature and rhetoric. Twisted Words introduces these and dozens more bookish maneuvers in a beautiful volume designed to show what literary techniques can do to language. Literature enthusiasts and literary stylists of all kinds will learn the tricks—from anaphora to zeugma—that make writing engaging, comprehensible, and persuasive.
