| Term | Definition |
|---|
| allegory | a story or poem in which characters, settings, and even events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities. |
| alliteration | the repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together |
| allusion | a reference to someone or something known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or some other branch of culture. |
| ambiguity | a technique by which a writer deliberately suggests two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work. |
| analogy | a comparison made between two things to show how they are alike. |
| anecdote | a very brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something. |
| anti-transcendentalism | the opposite (somewhat) of transcendentalism |
| aphorism | a brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life. |
| apostrophe | a technique by which a writer addresses an inanimate object, an idea, or a person who is either dead or absent. |
| blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| caesura | a pause or break within a line of poetry |
| conceit | an elaborate metaphor or other figure of speech that compares two things that are startlingly different |
| connotation | the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in action to its strict dictionary definition |
| dialect | a way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or of the inhabitants of a certain geographical area. |
| epistle | A poem addressed to a patron, friend, or family member, thus a kind of "letter" in verse |
| foil | a character who acts as a contrasts to another character |
| foot | a metrical unit of poetry |
| foreshadowing | the use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot |
| free verse | poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme |
| hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration, or overstatement for effect. |
| iamb | a metrical foot in poetry that has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word protect |
| iambic pentameter | a line of poetry that contains five iambic feet |
| imagery | the use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience |
| internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry or within consecutive lines |
| inversion | the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase |
| irony | in general, a discrepancy between appearances and reality |
| lyric poem | a poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thoughts of a speaker |
| metaphor | a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of such specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles |
| meter | a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry |
| naturalism | a nineteenth-century literary movement that was an extension of realism and that claimed to portray life exactly as it was. |
| octave | an eight line people, or the first eight lines of a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet. |
| parable | a relatively short story that teaches a moral, or lesson, about how to lead a good life. |
| paradox | a statement that appears self-contradictory, but that reveals a kind of truth |
| parallelism | the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structure |
| personification | a figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. |
| plain style | a way of writing that stresses simplicity and clarity of expression |
| pun | a "play on words" based on the multiple meanings of a single word or on words that sound alike but mean different things |
| quatrain | a poem consisting of four lines or a four line poem that can be considered as a unit |
| rationalism | a literary movement that was based on reason and intuition rather than spiritual aspects |
| realism | a style of writing, developed in the nineteenth century, that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing or romanticizing |
| regionalism | literature that emphasizes a specific geographic settings and that reproduces the speech, behavior, and attitudes of the people who live in that region |
| rhetorical question | a question asked for an effect, not actually requiring an answer |
| romance | in general, a story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and is successful |
| romanticism | a revolt against rationalism that affected literature and the other arts, beginning in the late eighteenth century and remaining strong through most of the nineteenth century |
| satire | a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or instructions in an attempt to bring about a change |
| sestet | six lines of poetry, especially the last six lines of a Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet |
| simile | a figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles. |
| symbol | a person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself |
| transcendentalism | a nineteenth-century movement in the Romantic tradition, which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition, which transcends reason and sensory experience. |
| understatement | a statement that says less than what is meant |
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