ONLY - have fun with the Bishop and the bun

 It is vital to place the word only correctly in your sentence. That position is usually just before the word it refers to or qualifies.

To see what i mean, take this simple sentence.

The Bishop gave the baboon a bun.

Now pop the word only before each word in turn.

I know you can do it by yourself - but I want to have fun also.

Only the Bishop gave the baboon a bun.

The only Bishop gave the baboon a bun.

The Bishop only gave the baboon a bun.

It's even more fun reading the sentences aloud. The last one should have a deeply apologetic tone because clearly the baboon had suffered as a result of its treat. Now carry on by yourself.

Note to any teachers reading this: your pupils will love it.

The Great Chain of Being

The concept of a chain of all creation, firmly in place and indisputable was widely upheld in the Middle Ages and through to Shakespeare.

It maintained that there is a rightful hierarchy which must not be broken and it is the exact opposite of our modern egalitarian view of life.

At the top was God and below Him came the angels. Man was next and was considered less spiritual than those above but with a capacity for reason which kept him above the category below him, animals. Plants followed and at the bottom were minerals. 

Within these groups there was also a ladder which makes quite comical reading nowadays when we do not pay attention to the exact position of prawns in a paradigm of life.

Kennings and Homeric epithets

An Anglo-Saxon kenning is a descriptive pfrase which replaces the noun: 

The ship sailed over the whale-road.

A Homeric epithet is an adjectival phrase which adds to the noun:

The ship sailed over the wine-dark sea. It usually has two words: bright-eyed; rosy fingered.

Two words you must not use in a literary essay.

 Upset and incredibly are inappropriate in formal writing. Upset is too colloquial and bland and incredibly means the opposite of what it says. 

Verbal, oral and aural

Strictly, verbal means "in words" and refers to something written whereas oral means spoken. Aural refers to the sense of hearing.

Practical Criticism

This is a method of approaching a text, often a poem, where the reader or student is given no background information about authorship, date or background. The analysis must therefore concentrate on the words on the page and devices used. It has fallen out of fashion recently since its promotion by I. A. Richards in the 1920's but it can be a useful method of ensuring a fresh response to a work.

Tautology and pleonasm

These two terms are similar in meaning as both refer to unnecessary words. Some critics regard them as interchangeable but there is a useful difference.

Tautology refers to the repetition of words with the same meaning: big, huge, large man
Pleonasm occurs when the idea contained in one word is repeated by another: huge giant.
Pleonasm could be seen as a sub-type of tautology. The adjectives are: tautologous and pleonastic
Repetition can be used effectively for emphasis.