| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Accent | In poetry, the stressed portion of a word. |
| Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. |
| Allusion | a reference to another work of literature, person, or event |
| Analogy | a comparison |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. |
| Aside | a line spoken by an actor to the audience but not intended for others on the stage |
| Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds |
| Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in very regular meter and rhyme. Usually has a naive folksy quality that distinguishes it from epic poetry |
| Blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds |
| Cadence | The beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense. |
| Canto | The name for a section division in a long work of poetry. Divides a long poem into parts the way chapters divide a novel. |
| Chorus | In Greek drama, this is the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. |
| Colloquial language | This is a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school book" English. |
| Connotation | What a word suggests beyond its basic definition; a word's overtones of meaning. |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings). |
| Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme |
| Denotation | The basic definition or dictionary meaning of the word. |
| Diction | The author's choice of words |
| Dirge | This is a song for the dead. It's typically slow, heavy, and melancholy. |
| Dissonance | This refers to the grating of incompatible sounds |
| Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. |
| Elegy | A type of poem taht meditates on death or morality in a serious, thoughtful manner. |
| Elements | The basic techniques of each genre of literature |
| End Rhyme | Rhymes that occur at the end of lines |
| Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style. Typically deal with a glorious or profound subject matter. |
| Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously |
| Figurative language | Language employing figures of speech; language that cannot be taken literally or only literally |
| Foot | The basic unit used in the scansion or measurement of verse. Contains one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables |
| Free Verse | Poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement |
| Imagery | The representation through language of sense experience |
| Implicit | To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly. You have to "read between the lines." |
| Internal Rhyme | A rhyme in which one or both of the rhyme words occur within the line |
| Irony | A statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean |
| Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss |
| Lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world |
| Metaphor | A comparison, or analogy that states one thing is another |
| Meter | Regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience |
| Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean |
| Opposition (Juxtaposition) | an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast. |
| Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction |
| Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. |
| Parallel stucture | Repeated syntactical structure |
| Paraphrase | To restate phrases and sentences in your own words, to re-phrase. Not analysis or interpretation, just comprehension. |
| Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness |
| Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepards |
| Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. |
| Plaint | A poem or speeching expressing sorrow |
| Prelude | An introductory poem to a longer work of verse |
| Pun | The usually humorous use of a work in such a way to suggest two or more meanings |
| Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem |
| Repetition | the repeated use of the same word or word pattern as a rhetorical device |
| Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead |
| Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise |
| Rhythm | Any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound |
| Sarcasm | Bitter or cutting speech; speech intended by its speaker to give pain to the person addressed |
| Satire | A kind of literature that ridicules human folly or vice with the purpose of bringing about reform or of keeping others from fallings into similar folly or vice |
| Scansion | The process of measuring verse; to scan any measure of verse |
| Simile | A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike; usually uses words such as like, as, than, similar to, seems, or resembles |
| Soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage; gives the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thought |
| Sonnet | A fixed form of fourteen lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme that is usually two main types---the Italian or English |
| Stanza | A group of lines whose pattern is repeated throughout a poem; functions like a paragraph functions in prose |
| synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole |
| structure/form | the internal and external organization of a poem |
| symbol | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. |
| Syntax | the ordering and structuring of words |
| theme | the main idea of the overall work; the central idea. It is the topic of discourse or discussion |
| Tone | The writer's or speaker's attitude toward his subject, his audience, or himself; the emotional coloring, or emotional meaning of a work |
| Understatement | A figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants |
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