| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. |
| Alliteration | repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.,, |
| Allusion | brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or ficticious, or to a work of art. |
| Amplification | use of bare expressions, likely to be ignored or misunderstood by a hearer or reader because of the bluntness. Emphasis through restatement with additional details. |
| Anagram | word or phrase made by transposing the letters. |
| Analogy | comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship. The key is to ascertain the relationship between the first so you can choose the correct second pair. |
| Anaphora | deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs. |
| Anastrophe | Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words |
| Anthropomorphism | describing of gods or goddesses in human forms and possessing human characteristics such as jealousy, hatred, or love. |
| Antithesis | opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction. |
| Aphorism | brief saying embodying a moral, a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. |
| Apostrophe | is when an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed. |
| Authorial Intrusion | Discussions directed to the reader and constituting a substantial break in the narrative illusion of reality |
| Assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds |
| Bibliomancy | prediction based on a Bible verse or literary passage chosen at random |
| Cacophony | harsh, discordant sounds. |
| Caesura | natural pause or break |
| Characterization | method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others |
| Chiasmus | type of rhetoric in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first |
| Conflict | Man against man. Man against nature. Man against self. |
| Connotation | an implied meaning of a word. |
| Consonance | is the repetition of consonant sounds |
| Denotation | literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning |
| Diction | writer's choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning |
| Ekphrastic | the literary representation of visual art |
| Epilogue | a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work |
| Epithet | a descriptive word or lapidary phrase, often metaphoric, that is essentially a reduced or condensed appositive. Glorified nickname. |
| Euphony | soothing pleasant sounds |
| Flashback | action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding. |
| Foreshadowing | use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature. |
| Hyperbole | exaggeration or overstatement |
| Imagery | language that evokes one or all of the five senses |
| Internal Rhyme | rhyming within a line |
| Inversion | the changing of the usual order of words |
| Irony | an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant |
| Metaphor | comparison of two unlike things using the verb ""to be"" and not using like or as |
| Metonymy | substituting a word for another word closely associated with it |
| Motif | recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work |
| Mood | the emotional attitude the author takes towards hir subject |
| Negative Capability | John Keats, in a letter of October 27, 1818, suggested that a poet, possessing the power to eliminate his own personality, can take on the qualities of something else and write most effectively about it |
| Nemesis | (1) principle of retributive justice; good characters rewarded, bad characters punished; (2) agent or deliverer of such justice |
| Onomatopoeia | word that imitates the sound it represents |
| Oxymoron | putting two contradictory words together |
| Paradox | reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory |
| Pathetic Fallacy | attribution of human traits to nature or inanimate objects |
| Periodic Structure | sentence in which the main clause or its predicate is withheld until the end |
| Personification | giving human qualities to animals or objects |
| Plot | all the events in a story |
| Polysyndeton | repetition of connectives or conjunctions in close succession for rhetorical effect, as in the phrase here and there and everywhere |
| Portmanteau | combination of two or more words to create a new word |
| Prologue | prefatory piece of writing, usually composed to introduce a drama |
| Pun | figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious |
| Rhyme Scheme | rhymed words at the ends of lines |
| Rhythm | pattern of words that contain similar sounds |
| Satire | literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the attack |
| Setting | determining Time and Place in fiction |
| Simile | comparison of two unlike things using like or as |
| Stanza | unified group of lines in poetry |
| Stream of Consciousness | unbroken flow of thought and awareness of the waking mind |
| Symbol | using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning |
| Synecdoche | when one uses a part to represent the whole |
| Syntax | way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form phrases or clauses |
| Theme | general idea or insight about life that a writer wishes to express |
| Tone | attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective |
| Tragedy | form of drama characterized by seriousness and dignity, usually involving a conflict between a character and some higher power, such as the law, the gods, fate, or society |
| Understatement | form of irony in which something is intentionally represented as less than it is in fact |
| Verisimilitude | The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true |
| Verse | line of poetry |
| 1st Person Point of View | story is told from the point of view 'I' |
| 2nd Person Point of View | narrator speaks directly to the reader |
| 3rd Person Point of View | author omniscient when necessary but can also bring the focus tightly in on the central character |
Combine with other sets
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