Literature plays an important part in the educational world. It can be used to explain historical events in history, theories of scientists in Biology, and many other subjects. Literature also makes up a unique reading styles because of the different literary terms and rhetorical devices that it possesses such as simile, metaphor, imagery and many more. I will attempt to explain the effects these elements have on literature.
The term imagery has various applications. Generally, imagery includes all kinds of sense perception (not just visual pictures). In a more limited application, the term describes visible objects only. But the term is perhaps most commonly used to describe figurative language, which is as a theme in literature. Many of the fictional stories and that we have read throughout this semester have contained a great deal of imagery.
Simile is a direct, expressed comparison between two things essentially unlike each other, but resembling each other in at least one way using the words "like" or "as" in the comparison. In formal prose the simile is a device both of art and explanation, comparing the unfamiliar thing (to be explained) to some familiar thing (an object, event, process, etc.) known to the reader.
In a metaphor, a word is identified with something different from what the word literally denotes. A metaphor is derived from a simile in that it equates different things without using connecting terms such as like or as. .
A symbol is an image with an indefinite range of reference beyond itself. Some symbols are conventional as they have a range of significance that is commonly understood in a particular culture. Other symbols are private or personal; having a special significance derived from their particular use by an author.
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract concepts. Personification heightens a reader's emotional response to what is being described by giving it human qualities and therefore human significance.
