| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | close repetition of sounds |
| allusion | brief reference to familiar person/thing/incident |
| apostrophe | an address to a person not present (to god) |
| assonance | repetition of vowel sounds |
| ballad | narrative poem |
| bathos | excessive pathos |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| caesura | pause in line |
| connotative meaning | emotional baggage of a word |
| consonance | close repetition of consonant sounds |
| couplet | two lines of verse |
| denouement | epilogue after time gap |
| deus ex machina | god from machine |
| diction | choice of words |
| dissonance | juxtaposition of jarring sounds |
| doggerel | rough, crudely written, comic |
| elegy | dignified poem mouring death |
| end-stopped line | end of phrase or sentenence |
| enjambment | line runs onto next line w/o pause |
| epic | extended narrative poem |
| epic simile | extended simile |
| epigram | short witty statement |
| epilogue | final section of speech |
| epiphany | showing forth |
| epitaph | death inscription |
| epithet | term used to characterize a person |
| fable | narrative illustrating a moral truth |
| figurative language | makes use of figure of speech |
| foot | group of syllables forming one metrical unit |
| form | fixed metrical arrangement |
| free verse | lacks regular meter and line length |
| gallows humor | black humor (dead baby jokes) |
| genre | literaly type or class |
| diem poetry | tragedy; novels |
| heroic couplet | pair of rhymed iambic pentameter |
| hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration |
| imagery | launguage which evokes sensory experience or things |
| irony | writer expresses a meaning contradictory to stated |
| verbal | attitude opposite to what is litteraly stated |
| dramatic | sistuation understood in double sense |
| situation | circumstances turn out to be reverse of those aniticipated |
| litotes | meiosis; understatement |
| lyric | sung to lyre; lyric poetry |
| metaphor | 2 unlike objects compared |
| metonymy | figure of speech |
| meter | pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables |
| motif | recurring person, character, thing |
| narrative verse | tells a story |
| ode | lyric poem of some length |
| onomatopoeia | words whose sounds express or reinforce their meanings |
| ottava rima | eight lines, iambic pentameter |
| oxymoron | two apparently contradicotry terms |
| pathetic fallacy | human sympathies given to personfied objects |
| pathos | quality which evokes feelings of pity |
| persona | a mask which author assumes to speak to audience |
| petrarchan sonnet | 14 lines divided into 2 parts |
| repetition | do not overlook this as fundamental devices of any art |
| rhyme royal | 7 line stanza in iambic pentameter |
| shakesperean sonnet | 14 lines of iambic pentameter |
| simile | comparision using like or as |
| spenserian stanza | also iambic pentameter with rhyme |
| stanza | groub of lines which form divison of a poem |
| style | qualities which made up a literary personality |
| symbol | something that stands for something else |
| synecdoche | part represents the whole |
| syntax | word placement in sentences |
| terza rima | aba bcb cdc |
| tone | author's demeanor toward subject |
| villanelle | a french fixed form |
Combine with other sets
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