| Term | Definition |
|---|
| tragedy | play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end |
| tragic hero | the protagonist of a tragedy |
| dramatic foil | character who is used as a contrast to another character |
| dramatic irony | when the audience knows something important that a character in a play does not know |
| sonnet | fourteen line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes |
| shakespearean sonnet | sonnet made up of three quatrains and one couplet; the most common rhyme scheme of a this is abab cdcd efef gg |
| blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| stanza | group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit |
| poetic foot | one stressed and one or two unstressed syllable(s) |
| iambic foot | a metrical foot, or unit of measure, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (U /) |
| catastrophe | the downfall or destruction of the tragic hero |
| iambic pentameter | line of poetry that contains five iambic feet |
| monologue | a long speech given by one character to the others on the stage |
| metaphor | figure of speech that makes a comparison between to unlike things in which one things become other things without the words like, as, than, or resembles |
| oxymoron | a rhetorical figure which includes incongruous or contradictory terms. as "bright smoke" or "feather of lead" |
| personification | kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human |
| simile | figures of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles |
| aside | words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character by that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage |
| quatrain | a stanza of four lines |
| couplet | two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme |
| soliloquy | unusually long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud |
Combine with other sets
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