| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form. |
| Allusion | An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly |
| Antithesis | A person or thing that is the direct opposite of something or someone else |
| Anthropomorphism | The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object (only done by people) |
| Colloquialism | A word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation |
| Dialogue | Conversation between two or more people as the conversation of a book, play, movie, etc. |
| Dialect | A specific form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group |
| Diction | The choice and use of words and writing in speech or language |
| Equivocation | A sense of misleading speech. |
| Foil | A person or thing that contrasts with and so emphasizes and enhances the qualities of others |
| Foreshadowing | Warning or indicating of a future event |
| Genre | A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature |
| Hyperbole | Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally |
| Imagery | Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work |
| Irony | The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect |
| Verbal Irony | A figure of speech. When a speaker intends to mean something that contrasts with the literal or usual meaning of what he says |
| Situational Irony | An outcome that turns out to be very different than what was expected |
| Dramatic Irony | When the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning to the reader than they do to the characters |
| Metaphor | A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable |
| Extended Metaphor | A comparison between two unlike things that continues through a series of sentences |
| Implied Metaphor | A less direct metaphor |
| Metonymy | Assemblage by parts (whole meant to represent part) |
| Mood | The way that a reader is supposed to feel about a piece of writing. |
| Narrator | A person who narrates something, esp. a character who recounts the events of a novel or narrative |
| First Person | The grammatical category of forms that designate a narrator referring to himself or herself |
| Third Person | The grammatical category of forms that designate a person or thing other than the speaker or the one spoken to |
| Limited | When the narrator of a third person selection only has a limited understanding of the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of the person or thing being described |
| Omniscient | When the narrator of a third person selection has a full or almost full understanding of the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of the person or thing being described |
| Parable | A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson |
| Paradox | A statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning form acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory |
| Parallelism | The state of being parallel or corresponding in some way |
| Personification | The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form |
| Plot | The main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence |
| Point of View | A particular attitude or way of considering a matter |
| Pun | A joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings |
| Setting | The place and time at which a play, novel, or film is represented as happening |
| Simile | A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid |
| Speaker | A person who speaks |
| Style | A way of using language (dialogue, dialect, flashback, etc.) |
| Symbol | A thing that represents or stands for something else, esp. a material object representing something abstract |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole |
| Syntax | The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language |
| Alliteration | The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words |
| Assonance | In poetry, the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible |
| Consonance | When consonants or sounds that are not vowels are repeated. |
| Onomatopoeia | A formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named |
| Theme | The subject of a talk, piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic |
| Tone | A literary device which encompasses the attitudes towards the subject and towards the audience of a literary work |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (words are side-by-side) |
| Act | A subsection of a play. |
| Aside | A remark or passage by a character in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play |
| Climax | The most intense, exciting, or important point of something; a culmination or apex |
| Comedy | A movie, play, or broadcast program intended to make the audience laugh |
| Line | A horizontal row of written or printed words |
| Monologue | A long speech by one actor in a play or movie, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast program |
| Scene | The place where an incident in real life or fiction occurs |
| Soliloquy | An act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play |
| Tragedy | A play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character |
| Anaphora | The use of a word referring to or replacing a word used earlier in a sentence to avoid repetition |
| Ballad | A poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas |
| Blank verse | Verse without rhyme, especially that which uses iambic pentameter |
| Divisions | The distribution of something into parts |
| Quatrain | A stanza of four lines, especially one having alternate rhymes |
| Octave | A poem or stanza of eight lines |
| Sestet | The last six lines of a sonnet |
| End Stop | A pause at the end of each line |
| Enjambment | The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza |
| Free Verse | Poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter |
| Haiku | A Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world |
| Lyric Poem | A short poem that expresses personal feelings |
| Meter | The rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number and length of feet in a line |
| Rhyme | Correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry |
| Couplet | Two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit |
| Sight Rhyme | A similarity between words in spelling but not in pronunciation |
| Forced Rhyme | When part of a poem doesn't quite rhyme, but is "forced" so that it works anyways |
| Feminine Rhyme | A rhyme between stressed syllables followed by one or more unstressed syllables |
| Masculine Rhyme | A rhyme of final stressed syllables |
| Rhyme Scheme | The ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem or verse |
| Scansion | The action of scanning a line of verse to determine its rhythm |
| Verse | Writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme |
| Sonnet | A poem of fourteen lines using any of a number or formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line |
| Speaker | A person who speaks |
| Stanza | A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse |
| Tercet | A set or group of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent tercet |
| Villanelle | A nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain |
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