| Term | Definition |
|---|
| abstract | typically complex, discusses intangible qualities, seldom uses examples |
| academic | dry, theoretical writing |
| accent | stressed part of a word |
| aesthetic | appealing to the senses; coherent sense of taste |
| allegory | every aspect has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself |
| alliteration | repeating initial consonant sounds |
| allusion | reference to another famous work |
| anachronism | misplaced in time |
| analogy | a comparison |
| anecdote | short narrative |
| antecedent | what pronoun refers to |
| anthropomorphism | when inanimate objects, animals or natural phenomena are given human characteristics |
| anticlimax | action produces far smaller results than led to expect |
| antihero | protagonist who is markedly unheroic |
| aphorism | short and usually witty saying |
| apostrophe | figure of speech in which speaker talks directly to something nonhuman |
| archaism | using deliberately old-fashioned language |
| aside | speech actor makes to the audience as if stepping out of the action on stage |
| aspect | trait or characteristic |
| assonance | repeating vowel sounds |
| atmosphere | emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene |
| ballad | a long, narrative poem with naïve folksy quality |
| pathos | writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy |
| bathos | writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears from every little hiccup |
| black humor | using disturbing themes in comedy |
| bombast | pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language |
| burlesque | broad parody (about a style or form) |
| cacophony | using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds |
| cadence | beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense |
| canto | section division in a long work of poetry |
| caricature | portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality |
| catharsis | cleaning of emotion audience feels after living vicariously through the experiences onstage |
| chorus | group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it |
| classic | typical; accepted masterpiece |
| coinage | a new word, usually one invented on the spot |
| neologism | coinage |
| colloquialism | words used in everyday English, not part of schoolbook English |
| complex, dense | more than one possibility in the meaning of words |
| conceit | startling or unusual metaphor; metaphor developed and expanded over several lines |
| controlling image | when metaphor dominates and shapes the entire work |
| connotation | everything that the word suggests or implies outside the literal meaning |
| denotation | a word's literal meaning |
| consonance | repetition of consonant sounds within words |
| couplet | a pair of lines that end in rhyme |
| decorum | a character's speech must be styled according to her social station and the occasion |
| diction | author's choice of words |
| syntax | ordering and structuring of the author's words |
| dirge | a song for the dead |
| dissonance | grating of incompatible sounds |
| doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme |
| dramatic irony | when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not |
| elegy | a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner |
| elements | basic techniques of each genre of literature |
| enjambment | continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet to the next with no pause |
| epic | a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style |
| epitaph | lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place |
| euphemism | words that take the place of harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality |
| euphony | when sounds blend harmoniously |
| explicit | to say or write something clearly and directly |
| farce | extremely broad humor |
| feminine rhyme | lines rhymed by their final two syllables (SU) |
| foil | a secondary character that highlights the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast |
| foot | basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry |
| foreshadowing | an event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later |
| free verse | poetry without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern |
| genre | a subcategory of literature |
| gothic | sensibility of mysterious, gloomy castles on cliffs, eyeballs following you, weird screams in the attic |
| hubris | excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall |
| hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement |
| implicit | to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly |
| in medias res | in the midst of things |
| interior monologue | mental talking that goes inside the characters head |
| inversion | switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase |
| lament | a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss |
| lampoon | satire |
| irony | statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean |
| loose sentence | complete before its end |
| periodic sentence | not grammatically complete until its end |
| lyric | a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world |
| masculine rhyme | rhyme ending on the final stress syllable |
| means, meaning | what makes sense, what's important |
| melodrama | cheesy theatre, hero is very good, villain oh-so-bad, and heroine oh-so-pure |
| metaphor | analogy that states one thing is another |
| simile | analogy like a metaphor but softens the full-out equation of things |
| metonym | a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with |
| nemesis | protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty |
| objectivity | treatment of subject matter is impersonal or outside view of events |
| subjective | treatment uses the interior or personal view of a single observer who has emotional responses |
| onomatopoeia | words that sound like what they mean |
| opposition | pair of elements that contrast sharply |
| oxymoron | phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction |
| parable | a story that instructs |
| paradox | a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself but doesn't |
| parallelism | repeated syntactical similarities used for effect |
| paraphrase | restate phrases and sentences in your own words |
| parenthetical phrase | phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence |
| parody | when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness |
| pastoral | poem set in tranquil nature (about shepherds) |
| persona | narrator in a non-first-person novel |
| personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities or form |
| plaint | a poem or speech expressing sorrow |
| point of view | perspective from which the action of a novel is presented |
| prelude | introductory poem to a longer work of verse |
| protagonist | main character |
| pun | usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings |
| refrain | line or set of lines repeated several times in a poem |
| requiem | a song of prayer for the dead |
| rhapsody | intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise |
| rhetorical question | a question that suggests an answer |
| satire | attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes to lessen those characteristics |
| soliloquy | a speech spoken by a character alone on stage |
| stanza | paragraph of poetry |
| stock characters | standard or cliched character types |
| subjunctive mood | "if"..."were" |
| suggest | to imply, infer, indicate |
| summary | simple retelling |
| suspension of disbelief | demand made of a theatre audience to accept the limitations of a staging and supply the details with imagination |
| symbolism | literary device in which an object represents an idea |
| technique | author's methods and tools |
| theme | main idea of the overall work |
| thesis | main position of an argument |
| tragic flaw | weakness of character in an otherwise good individual that ultimately leads to his demise |
| travesty | bizarre parody |
| truism | a way-too-obvious truth |
| utopia | an idealize place |
| zeugma | the use of a word to modify two or more words |
Combine with other sets
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