In this lesson, we are focusing on the aesthetic effects of stylistic and rhetorical devices. These devices also affect a reader’s comprehension, memory, and attitude. It is often difficult to draw a clear line between aesthetic effects and what we might call the logical effects of these devices.

photo of a receptionist desk at a museum or art space. Signs that contain the words “Sensory Labs, Touch Lab, Taste Lab, Sight Lab, Smell Lab, Sound Lab, and Image works” hang above a fancy, crescent-shaped desk

Source: Sensory, Stephh922, Flickr

As you respond, you should try to keep the distinction in mind, but you might also find it appropriate to refer to the effects of these devices on comprehension (making the text easier to understand), memory (making the text unforgettable), and attitude (making the text valuable to the reader).

Visual imagery and imagery that appeals to the other senses has the immediate effect of bringing us pleasure, pain, or other sensations. As readers, we like to be able to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at the same time we are thinking about ideas and information. When an author is presenting information or ideas and includes sensory details, the text is usually more pleasurable to read.

All of the devices we are studying in this lesson heighten aesthetic pleasure by creating images or using sensory details, primarily images and details based on seeing and hearing. In the following passages from Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury uses many rhetorical and stylistic devices to add aesthetic enjoyment to his text. Read each passage and answer the question that follows .

Passage 1


photo of yellowed, old piano keys

Source: Old Piano Keys, adamhenning, Flickr


About seven o’clock you could hear the chairs scraping back from the tables, someone experimenting with a yellow-toothed piano, if you stood outside the dining-room window and listened. Matches being struck, the first dishes bubbling in the suds and tinkling on the wall racks, somewhere, faintly, a phonograph playing.

Which of the following phrases contains an image—something that makes you hear, taste, touch, smell, or see what is being described?

Try again.
“About seven o’clock”
Correct!
“dishes . . . tinkling on the wall racks”
Try again.
the dining-room window

Passage 2

photo of a large fern hanging on a porch

Source: fern, Amanda Krueger, Flickr


It wasn’t important to anyone what the adults talked about; it was only important that the sounds came and went over the delicate ferns that bordered the porch on three sides; it was only important that the darkness filled the town like black water being poured over the houses, and that the cigars glowed and that the conversations went on, and on.

Which of the following phrases contains an image—something that makes you hear, taste, touch, smell, or see what is being described?

Try again.
“what the adults talked about”
Correct!
“like black water being poured over the houses”
Try again.
“the conversations went on, and on.”

Passage 3

young woman sitting on a porch at night knitting

Source: knitting, GIRLintheCAFE, Flickr




Sitting on the summer-night porch was so good, so easy and so reassuring that it could never be done away with. These were rituals that were right and lasting: the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the darkness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chilled Eskimo Pies, the coming and going of all the people.

Which of the following phrases contains an image—something that makes you hear, taste, touch, smell, or see what is being described?

Try again.
“so easy and so reassuring”
Try again.
“rituals that were right and lasting”
Correct!
“the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the darkness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chilled Eskimo Pies, the coming and going of all the people.”

Passage 4

photo of a boy lying on the grass as dark nears. He pets a dog that lies near his head.

Source: Doug and Treble, Sydigill, Flickr




Oh, the luxury of lying in the fern night and the grass night and the night of susurrant, slumbrous voices weaving the dark together. The grownups had forgotten he was there, so still, so quiet Douglas lay, noting the plans they were making for his and their own futures.

Which of the following phrases contains an image—something that makes you hear, taste, touch, smell, or see what is being described?

Correct!
“voices weaving the dark together”
Try again.
“had forgotten he was there”
Try again.
“for his and their own futures”

Click the link to open the graphic organizer. Use it to practice responding to the aesthetic effects of stylistic and rhetorical devices. You can save, download, and print this file. When you are finished using the graphic organizer, go to the next section in this lesson. Graphic Organizer Instructions