| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds; the repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words |
| allusion | a reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea more easily understood |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds in poetry |
| blank verse | loosely, any unrhymed poetry, but more generally, unrhymed iambic pentameter verse (composed of lines of five two syllable feet with the first syllable accented, the second unaccented) |
| caesura | a pause in a line of poetry, usually occurring near the middle; it typically corresponds to a break in the natural rhythm or sense of the line but is sometimes shifted to create special meanings or rhythmic effects |
| consonance | (also know as half rhyme or slant rhyme) occurs in poetry when words appearing at then ends of two or more verses have similar final consonant sounds but have final vowel sounds that differ, as with "stuff and "off" |
| couplet | a style of poetry defined as a complete thought written in two lines with rhyming ends; most popular -- heroic -- consists of two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter usually having a pause in the middle of each line |
| figurative language | a type of language that varies from the norms of literal language, in which words mean exactly what they say |
| haiku | the shortest form of Japanese poetry, constructed in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively |
| hyperbole | an extravagant exaggeration |
| imagery | language in literature that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching |
| lyric | a song-like poem written mainly to express the feelings of emotions or though from a particular person, thus separating it from narrative poems; generally short, averaging roughly twelve to thirty lines, and rarely go beyond sixty lines |
| metaphor | a type of figurative language in which a statement is made that says that one thing is something else but, literally, it is not; in connecting one object, event, or place, to another, a metaphor can uncover new and intriguing qualities of the original thing that we may not normally notice or even consider important |
| motif | a recurring object, concept, or structure in a work of literature; may also be two contrasting elements in a work, such as good and evil |
| narrative poem | a poem that tells a story; can come in many forms and styles, both complex and simple, short or long as long as it tells at story; ex: epics, ballads, and metrical romances |
| prose poem | ordinary speech or writing, without metrical structure |
| personification | a figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given human characteristics |
| rhyme | repetition of an identical or similarly accented sound or sounds in a work |
| simile | a type of figurative language that makes a comparison between two otherwise unalike objects or ideas by connecting them with the words "like" or "as" |
| symbol | a word or object that stands for another word or object; the word or object can be seen with the eye or not visible; ex: a dove stands for peace - the dove can be seen and peace cannot |
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