Apostrophe is a literary device that addresses someone or something absent, dead, or non-human as if they were present or human. It provides examples from poems where Death and Romeo are addressed directly despite being abstractions or absent. The document defines apostrophe and illustrates it with quotes from poems by John Donne and Shakespeare that directly address Death and Romeo respectively.

1. Apostrophe

2. addressing someone absent as if
s/he were present, someone dead
as if s/he were alive or something
and someone non-human as if
human.
Apostrophe

3. Example:
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty
and dreadful, for, thou art not soe, For, those, whom thou
think’st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet
canst thou kill me.”
-John Donne, “Death be not Proud”
Death, an abstraction is being addressed to by the persona in
the poem as if it were a person.

4. “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou
Romeo?"
The above sentence is a line from the
soliloquy delivered by Juliet. In the scene,
she is found standing on the balcony and
thinking about Romeo, who is not there
with her at that moment
Example: