| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds. |
| Persona | The narrator in a non first-person novel. |
| Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. |
| Plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow. |
| Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. |
| Omniscient (POV) | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. |
| Limited Omniscient | A Third person narrator who generally reports only what one character sees, and who only reports the thoughts of that one privileged character. |
| Objective (POV) | A thrid person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera. Does not know what the character is thinking unless the character speaks it. |
| First person | A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view. |
| Stream of Consciousness | Author places the reader inside the main character's head and makes the reader privy to all of the character's thoughts as they scroll through her consciousness. |
| Prelude | An introductory poem to a longer work of verse |
| Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play |
| Pun | The usually humorous use of a word 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. |
| Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead. |
| Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. |
| Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. |
| Satire | literature that ridicules; Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common. |
| Soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage, meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts. |
| Stanza | A group of lines roughly analogous in function; it is to verse as a paragraph is to prose. |
| Stock characters | Standard or cliched character types. |
| Subjunctive Mood | A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation. |
| Suggest | To imply, infer, indicate. |
| Summary | A simple retelling of what you've just read. |
| Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. |
| Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. |
| synecdoche | a form of metonymy that refers to a part of the object that is being replaced (eg: all hands on deck) |
Combine with other sets
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