| Term | Definition |
|---|
| ad hominem argument | from the Latin meaning "to or against the man," this is an argument that appeals to emotion rather than reason, to feeling rather than intellect |
| allegory | story, picture, or poem that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one |
| alliteration | close repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words |
| allusion | brief reference to a familiar person/thing/incident (often Biblical, historical, mythological or literary) |
| antithesis | figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposite of, or strongly contrasted with, each other ("hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins") |
| apostrophe | directly addressing an absent or imaginary person or thing |
| assonance | repetition of vowel sounds |
| ballad | narrative poem, originally sung (ballade: a French verse form) |
| bathos | excessive pathos |
| blank verse | unrhyming verse in iambic pentameter |
| cacophony | harsh, discordant mixture of sounds |
| caesura | pause in line, dictated by rhythm ("A little learning... is a dangerous thing") |
| conceit | elaborate metaphor |
| connotation | idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal meaning |
| consonance | close repetition of identical consonant sounds around different vowels (flip-flop) or at the end (hid-bed) |
| couplet | two lines of verse, usually rhymed and of the same meter |
| denouement | events following the climax and falling action (resolution) |
| deus ex machina | "god from machine" (saves the day) |
| diction | the choice of words |
| dissonance | juxtaposition of jarring sounds |
| doggerel | rough, crudely written verse, usually comic |
| dramatic monologue | poem in the form of a speech or a narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events |
| elegy | dignified poem mourning death |
| end-stopped line | end of phrase or sentence coincides with end of line (poetry) |
| enjambment | the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line or stanza |
| epic | extended narrative poem, exalted in style and heroic in theme |
| epic (Homeric) simile | extended simile |
| epigram | short, witty statement, graceful and ingenious |
| epilogue | final section of speech or written work (peroration) |
| epiphany | "showing forth" (Greek), an insight |
| epitaph | death inscription ("On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." W.C. Fields) |
| epithet | term used to characterize a person (Jack the Ripper) |
| euphony | the quality of being pleasing to the ear through a harmonious combination of words |
| fable | narrative illustrating a moral truth |
| figurative language | makes use of figures of speech (techniques comparing dissimilar objects); specific figures of speech are listed separately |
| foot | group of syllables forming a metrical unit: iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl |
| form | fixed metrical arrangement |
| free verse | lacks regular meter and line length (relies on natural rhythm; most modern poetry) |
| gallows humor | black humor (like dead baby jokes) |
| genre | literary type or class, specific or general (carpe diem poetry, tragedy, novels, etc.) |
| haiku | Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world |
| heroic couplet | pair of rhymed iambic pentameter lines |
| hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration |
| idyll | picturesque scene or incident, especially in rustic life |
| imagery | language which evokes sensory experiences; engaging sight, smell, taste, etc. |
| in medias res | in the middle of things (Latin), thrust into the middle of a the narrative without preamble |
| inversion | reversal of the normal order of words usually for rhetorical effect ("There, but for the grade of God, go I.") |
| irony | writer expresses a meaning contradictory to the stated or ostensible one |
| juxtaposition | close placement of words, ideas, or images together for contrasting effect |
| limerick | humorous, frequently bawdy, verse of three long and two short lines rhyming aabba |
| litotes | also meiosis; understatement (in Hamlet, "a play of some interest") |
| lyric | originally (Greek) sung to lyre; lyric poetry expresses feelings of speaker in words which have musical qualities |
| metaphor | two unlike objects compared ("Life is but a walking shadow") |
| meter | pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables |
| metonymy | figure of speech, name of object substituted for another ("my light [vision] is spent") |
| metrical romance | tale in verse concerning honor and chivalry |
| mood | atmosphere of a work of art |
| motif | recurring image, character, verbal pattern, etc. |
| narrative verse | tells a story (as does anything narrative) |
| ode | lyric poem of some length, serious in subject and dignified in style |
| onomatopoeia | words whose sounds express or reinforce their meanings |
| ottava rima | eight lines, iambic pentameter |
| oxymoron | two apparently contradictory terms (cold fires; conspicuous by his absence) |
| paradox | statement or proposition that sounds or seems true but is logically unacceptable or self-contradictory |
| parallelism | use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose that correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc. |
| parody | imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect |
| pastoral | portraying or evoking country life, typically in an idealized or romanticized form |
| pathetic fallacy | human characteristics given to inanimate objects |
| pathos | quality which evokes feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, etc. |
| persona | a "mask" which the author assumes to speak to the audience (speaker) |
| personification | inanimate objects endowed with human qualities |
| Petrarchan sonnet | 14 lines divided into two parts, an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cdecde) |
| pun | play on words that are or sound the same but have different meanings |
| quatrain | stanza of four lines |
| refrain | repeated line or number of lines in a poem or song, typically at the end of each stanza or verse |
| repetition | duplication of an element of language, such as a word, phrase, clause etc. |
| rhyme | correspondence of sound between words or at the end of words |
| rhyme royal | 7-line stanza in iambic pentameter (ababbcc) |
| satire | the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity of vices |
| scansion | scanning a line of verse to determine its rhythm |
| sestina | poem following a fixed pattern with six stanzas of six lines each and a final tercet |
| Shakespearean sonnet | 14 lines, iambic pentameter (abab cdcd efef gg or abba cddc effe gg) |
| shift | change in position, direction, tendency, voice, etc. |
| simile | comparison using "like" or "as" |
| Spenserian sonnet | 14 lines, iambic pentameter, with rhyme of abab bcbc cdcd ee |
| stanza | group of lines that form a division of a poem |
| stream of consciousness | thoughts, feelings, and reactions depicted in a continuous flow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue |
| style | the qualities that make up a literary personality or way of writing |
| syllogism | a deductive, logical argument, formulated around one major premise, one minor premise, and a conclusion (e.g. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.) |
| symbol | something that stands for something else, but also exists as an entity itself (a hammer and sickle for the USSR) |
| synecdoche | part represents the whole (all hands on deck) |
| syntax | the placement of words in sentences |
| terza rima | aba bcb cdc etc. |
| tone | author's attitude toward subject (can also be toward audience or both) |
| villanelle | a French fixed form (5 tercets and a quatrain, all with two rhymes) |
Combine with other sets
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