- Allegory: characters, events, settings that represent abstract qualities or ideas
- Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds in a series of words
- Allusion: an indirect reference to a famous literary work or event
- Antagonist: a character or force in conflict with the main character
- Aphorism: a general truth or observation about life
- Aside: a speech delivered to the audience so that others supposedly don't hear
- Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words
- Ballad: songlike poem that tells a story
- Blank verse: unrhymed, iambic pentameter – 5 meters. Every line is 10 beats
- Caesura: a pause or break in the middle of a line of poetry
- Climax: high point of interest or action in a literary work
- Conceit: an ingenious or complex metaphor
- Consonance: repetition of consonant sounds at the ends or words in a series
- Elegy: a sad or mournful poem
- Exposition: writing or speech that explains, informs, or presents information
- Figurative language: writing or speech not meant to be taken literally
- Foreshadowing: use of clues that suggests events that have yet to occur
- Free verse: poetry that lacks a regular rhythmical pattern or meter (no rhyme scheme)
- Genre: a division or type of literature (3: poetry, prose, genre)
- Hyperbole: a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
- Irony: a contrast between what is stated and what is meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens
- Lyric poetry: poetry that expresses authors feelings
- Metaphor: figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else
- Meter: its rhythmical pattern. # of stresses, or beats, in a line
- Narration: writing that tells a story
- Onomatopoeia: use of words that imitate sounds (buzz)
- Oxymoron: a figure of speech that combines 2 opposing or contradictory ideas
- Paradox: a statement that seems to be contradictory but that actually presents a truth
- Symbolism: a person, place, or thing that has meaning in itself and also represents something larger than itself