| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | story which has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; i.e. fables |
| alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| allusion | reference to another work or famous figure |
| anachronism | derived from Greek meaning "misplaced in time"; e.g. actor w/a Rolex playing Caesar |
| anthropomorphism | inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena have human characteristics, behavior, or motivation |
| anticlimax | occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect |
| antihero | protagonist who is markedly unheroic |
| aphorism | short and usually witty saying; e.g. "Classic? A book which people praise and don't read." --Mark Twain |
| Apostrophe | figure of speech where the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman |
| archaism | use of deliberately old-fashioned language |
| aside | a speech made by an actor to the audience as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage |
| assonance | repeated use of vowel sounds; e.g. Old king Cole was a merry old soul. |
| Atmosphere | the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scence |
| Bathos, Pathos | when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity & sympathy, pathos is at work;when writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to elicit tears from every little hiccup=bathos |
| black humor | the use of disturbing themes in comedy |
| bombast | this is pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language |
| burlesque | a borad parody, one that takes a style or a form, and exaggerates it into ridiculousness |
| cacophony | in poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds |
| cadence | beat or rhythm of poetry |
| canto | name for a section division in a long poetry work |
| catharsis | cleansing of emotion an audience experiences, having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage |
| neologism/coinage | new work, invented on the spot |
| colloquialism | word or phrase used in everyday conversational English |
| conceit, controlling image | refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed & expanded upon over several lines; when the image dominates & shapes the entire work, it's called a controlling image |
| denotation | literal meaning of a word; e.g. dark forest = little light |
| connotation | implications of a word; e.g. dark forest = danger |
| consonance | repetition of consonant sounds within words |
| couplet | pair of lines that end in rhyme |
| diction | author's choice of words; wept vs. cried for example |
| syntax | refers to the structuring of words; greedily i devoured the cheese pizza vs. the pizza was cheese; I devoured it greedily. |
| dirge | song for the dead |
| dissonance | grating of incompatible sounds |
| dramatic irony | when the audience know something that the characters in the drama do not. |
| dramatic monologue | when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience |
| elegy | poem meditating on death or mortality seriously |
| enjambment | continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause |
| euphemism | word or phrase tha takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant reality; ex. "passed away"=died |
| euphony | sounds blend harmoniously |
| feminine rhyme | lines rhymed by their final two syllables; running and gunning |
| foil | secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character usually by contrast |
| foreshadowing | event or statement in a narrative that suggests a larger event that comes later |
| hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement |
| interior monologue | recording the mental talking inside a character's head; novels and poetry |
| inversion | switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase |
| irony | statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean |
| masculine rhyme | rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable; regular old rhyme |
| metaphor | comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another |
| simile | comparison or analogy using LIKE or AS |
| nemesis | protagonist's archenemy |
| onomatopoeia | words that sound like what they mean |
| opposition | a pair of elements that contrast sharply |
| oxymoron | phrase composed of opposites |
| paradox | situation or statement that seems to contradict itself but does not |
| parallelism | repeated syntactical similarities used for effect |
| parenthetical phrase | phrase set off by commas that adds commentary or detail |
| personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities or form |
| limited omniscient narrator | narrator reports only what one chara. sees and thinks |
| omniscient narrator | narrator who sees into each chara's mind and understands all |
| objective/camera-eye narrator | narrator only reports on surface events; no insight to thoughts |
| first person narrator | narrator is a chara and tells his/her point of view |
| satire | attempts to improve things by pointing out mistakes |
| soliloquy | speech spoken by a character alone on stage; character's thoughts; unlike an aside, does not imply the actor acknowledges the audience |
| stanza | group of lines in a verse |
| symbolism | literary device where an object represents an idea |
| technique | the methods, the tools of the author |
| theme | main idea of the work |
| travesty | grotesque parody |
Combine with other sets
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