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 alexandrine | a line of poetry made up of six iambs |
| allegory | a story in which the characters, settings, and events stand for abstract or moral concepts |
| alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to one another |
| allusion | a reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or popular culture |
| analogy | a comparison of two things to show that they are alike in certain respects |
| antagonist | the character or force that opposes or blocks the protagonist, or main character, in a narrative |
| antithesis | a contrast of ideas expressed in a grammatically balanced statement |
| aphorism | a concise sometimes witty saying that expresses a principle, truth, or observation about life |
| apostrophe | a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding |
| aside | private words that a character in a play speaks to the audience or to another character and that are not supposed to be overheard by others on stage |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together |
| atmosphere | the mood or feeling in a literary work |
| autobiography | a written account of the author's own life |
| ballad | a song or songlike poem that tells a story |
| biography | an account of the series of events making up a person's life |
| blank verse | unrhymed verse (usually in iambic pentameter) |
| cadence | the natural rise and fall of the voice |
| caesura | a pause or break within a line of poetry, usually indicated by the natural rhythm of the language |
| canto | a subdivision in a long poem, corresponding to a chapter in a book |
| carpe diem | a Latin phrase that literally m;eans "seize the day" - that is, "make the most of present opportunities." |
| character | an individual in a story or play |
| classicism | a movement in art, literature, and music that advocates imitating the principles manifested in the art and literature of ancient ("classical") Greece and Rome |
| cliche | an expression that was fresh and apt when first coined but is now so overused that it has become hackneyed and stale |
| climax | the point of greatest emotional intensity or suspense in a plot - in drama it is the turning point or crisis |
| comedy | in general, a story that ends happily |
| conceit | a fanciful and elaborate figure of speech that makes a surprising connection between two seemingly dissimilar things |
| conflict | a struggle or clash between opposing characters, forces, or emotions |
| connotations | all the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests |
| consonance | the repetition of final consonant sounds after different vowel sounds |
| couplet | two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme |
| denotation | the literal, dictionary definition of a word |
| denouement | the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work |
| deus ex machina | any artificial or contrived device used at the end of a plot to resolve or untangle the complications |
| dialect | a way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people |
| dialogue | conversation between two or more people |
| diary | a day-by-day record of events and thoughts kept by an individual |
| diction | a writer's or speaker's choice of words |
| dissonance | a harsh, discordant combination of sounds |
| dramatic monologue | a poem in which a character addresses one or more listeners who remain silent or whose replies are not revealed |
| elegy | a poem that mourns the death of a person or laments something lost |
| end-stopped line | a line of poetry in which the meter and the meaning conclude with the end of the line |
| epic | a long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society |
| epigram | a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement |
| epiphany | in a literary work, a moment of sudden insight or revelation that a character experiences |
| epitaph | an inscription on a tombstone or a commemorative poem written about a person who has died |
| epithet | an adjective or other descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characrterize a person place, or thing |
| essay | a short piece of nonfiction prose that examines a single subject from a limited point of view |
| fable | a very brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral, or a practical lesson about life |
| falling action | events after the climax, leading to the resolution |
| farce | a type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in farfetched, silly situations |
| figurative language | language that intentionally departs from the normal construction or meaning of words in order to create a certain effect or to make an analogy between two seemingly dissimilar things - includes all figures of speech |
| flashback | a scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to "flash backward" and tell what happened at an earlier time |
| foil | a character who sets off another character by strong contrast |
| foreshadowing | the use of clues to hint at what is going to happen later in the plot |
| frame story | an introductory narrative within which one or more of the characters proceed to tell a story |
| free verse | poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme |
| gothic | a term used to describe literary works that contain primitive, medieval, wild, mysterious, or natural elements |
| hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or create a comic effect |
| iambic pentameter | a line of poetry made up of five iambs |
| imagery | language that appeals to the senses |
| incremental repetition | a device widely used in ballads whereby a line or lines are repeated with slight variations from stanza to stanza |
| in medias res | the technique of starting a story in the middle and then using a flashback to tell what happened earlier` |
| irony | a contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality - between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected and what really happens, or between what appears to be true and what really is true |
| verbal irony | occurs when a writer or speaker says one thing but really means something quite different - often the opposite of what he or she has said |
| situational irony | occurs when what actually happens is the opposite of what is expected or appropriate |
| dramatic irony | occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know |
| journal | a day-by-day record of events and personal impressions kept by an individual - like a diary |
| kenning | in Anglo-Saxon poetry, a metaphorical phrase or compound word used to name a person, place, thing, or event indirectly |
| lyric poetry | poetry that focuses on expressing emotions or thoughts, rather than on telling a story |
| metaphor | a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things without using the connective words - like, as than, or resembles |
| dead metaphor | a metaphor that has become so common that it is no longer recognized as a figure of speech |
| extended metaphor | a metaphor that is extended, or developed, over several lines of writing or even throughout an entire poem |
| mixed metaphor | the incongruous mixture of two or more metaphors |
| metaphysical poetry | a term applied to the poetry of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similarly difficult and abstract style |
| meter | a generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry - measured in units called feet which consist of one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables |
| metonymy | a figure of speech in which something closely related to a thing or suggested by it is substituted for the thing itself |
| mock epic | a comic narrative poem that parodies the epic by treating a trivial subject in a lofty, grand manner |
| motif | in literature, a word, character, object, image, metaphor, or idea that recurs in a work or in several words |
| motivation | the reasons for or forces behind the action of a character |
| myth | an anonymous traditional story that usually serves to explain a belief, custom, or mysterious natural phenomenon |
| narrator | one who tells, or narrates, a story |
| neoclassicism | the revival of classical standards and forms during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries |
| novel | a long fictional prose narrative, usually of more than fifty thousand words |
| octave | an eight-line stanza or poem or the first eight lines of an Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet |
| ode | a complex, generally long lyric poem on a serious subject |
| onomatopoeia | the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning |
| ottava rima | an eight-line stanza in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abababcc |
| parody | the imitation of a work of literature, art, or music for amusement or instruction |
| pastoral | a type of poem that depicts rustic life in idyllic, idealized terms |
| personification | a kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if ti were human |
| plot | the series of related events that make up a story or drama, consisting of a basic situation or exposition, conflict, complications, suspense, climax, and a resolution or denouement |
| point of view | the vantage point from which a writer tells a story |
| first-person point of view | the narrator is a character in the story using the pronoun "I" |
| limited third-person point of view | the narrator is outside the story |
| omnisicient or "all-knowing" point of view | the person telling the story knows everything that's going on in the story |
| protagonist | the main character in fiction, drama, or narrative poetry |
| rounded or dynamic characters | characters who change in some important way by the end of the story |
| flat characters | minor characters that are not very deep and do not undergo any substantial change or growth |
| pun | a play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alilke but have different meanings |
| quatrain | a four-line stanza or poem or a group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme |
| realism | in literature and art, the attempt to depict peole and things as they really are, without idealization |
| refrain | a repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines |
| resolution | the final unraveling or solution of the plot |
| rhyme | the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close together in a poem |
| end rhyme | occurs at the ends of lines |
| internal rhyme | occurs within lines |
| approximate rhyme | half rhymes, slant rhymes, or imperfect rhymes when words sound similar but do not rhyme exactly |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of rhymed lines in a poem |
| rhythm | the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language |
| romance | historically, a medieval verse narrative chronicling the adventures of a brave knight or other hero who must undertake a quest and overcome great danger for the love of a noble lady or high ideal |
| romanticism | a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that developed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a reaction against neoclassicism |
| run-on line | a line of poetry that does not contain a pause or conclusion at the end, but rather continues on to the next line |
| enjambment | the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause |
| sarcasm | a kind of particularly cutting irony, in which praise is used tauntingly to indicate its opposite in meaning |
| satire | a kind of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social reform |
| setting | the time and place of a story or play |
| short story | a brief work of fiction |
| epiphany | a revelation, sudden knowledge, or insight |
| simile | a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by using a connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles |
| soliloquy | a long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings |
| sonnet | a fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has one of several rhyme schemes |
| Petrarchan sonnet | after the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch - popularized the form of a sonnet divided into two parts: an eight-line octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and a six-line sestet with the rhyme scheme cdecde or cdcdcd |
| Shakespearean or English sonnet | three four-line units, or quatrains, followed by a concluding two-line unit, or couplet |
| Spenserian sonnet | developed by Edmund Spenser - is divided into three quatrains and a couplet, but uses a rhyme scheme that links the quatrains: abab bcbc cdcd ee |
| speaker | the imaginary voice, or persona, assumed by the author of a poem |
| Spenserian stanza | a nine-line stanza with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc |
| sprung rhythm | a term coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins to designate his unconventional use of poetic meter - based on the stressed syllables in a line without regard for the number of unstressed syllables |
| stanza | a group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit |
| stream of consciousness | a writing style that tries to depict the random flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, and associations rushing through a character's mind - sometimes called interior monologue |
| style | the manner in which writers or speakers say what they wish to say |
| suspense | the uncertainty or anxiety we feel about what is going to happen next in a story |
| symbol | a person, place, thing, or event that stands both for itself and for something beyond itself |
| symbolism | a literary movement that began in France during the late nineteenth century and advocated the use of highly personal symbols to suggest ideas, emotions, and moods |
| synaesthesia | in literature, a term used for descriptions of one kind of sensation in terms of another |
| synecdoche | symbolism; the part signifies the whole, or the whole the part (all hands on board) |
| tall tale | a type of folk literature characterized by humorous exaggeration and outlandish plot details |
| tercet | a triplet, or stanza of three lines, in which each line ends with the same rhyme |
| terza rima | an interlocking, three-line stanza form with the rhyme scheme aba bcb ded and so on |
| theme | the central idea or insight of a work of literature |
| tone | the attitude a writer takes toward the reader, a subject, or a character |
| tragedy | a play, novel, or other narrative depicting serious and important events, in which the main character comes to an unhappy end |
| tragic flaw | an error in judgment or character weakness - the downfall may result from forces beyond his or her control |
| tragic hero | character who wins some self-knowledge and wisdom, even though he or she suffers defeat, possibly even death |
| understatement | a figure of speech that consists of saying less than what is really meant or saying something with less force than is appropriate |
| villanelle | a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets (three-line stanzas), each with the rhyme scheme aba, and a final quatrain with the rhyme scheme abaa |
| wit | a quality of speech or writing that combines verbal cleverness with keen perception, especially of the incongruous |
| iambs | a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable or of one unstressed syllable followed by one stresed syllable |