IB English Literary Terms
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Created by:
HannahSummers on January 21, 2009
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83 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Allegory | a story or narrative, often told at some length, which has a deeper meaning below the surface |
| Alliteration | the repetition of the same consonant sound, especially at the beginning of words |
| Allusion | a reference to another event, person, place, or work of literature - usually implied rather than explicit and often provides another layer of meaning to what is being said |
| Ambiguity | use of language where the meaning is unclear or has two or more possible interpretations or meanings |
| Ambivalence | indicates more than one possible attitude is being displayed by the writer towards a character, theme, or idea, etc |
| Anachronism | something that is historically inaccurate |
| Anthropomorphism | the endowment of something that is not human with human characteristics |
| Antithesis | contrasting ideas or words that are balanced against each other |
| Apostrophe | an interruption in a poem or narrative so that the speaker or writer can address a dead or absent person or particular audience directly |
| Archaic | language that is old-fashioned - not completely obsolete but no longer in current use |
| Assonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds |
| Atmosphere | the prevailing mood created by a piece of writing |
| Ballad | a narrative poem that tells a story usually in a straightforward way. The theme is often tragic or contains a whimsical, supernatural, or fantastical element. |
| Blank verse | unrhymed poetry that adheres to a strict pattern in that each line is an iambic pentameter (a ten-syllable line with five stresses) |
| Caricature | a character described through the exaggeration of a small number of features that he or she possesses |
| Catharsis | a purging of the emotions which takes place at the end of a tragedy |
| Cliché | a phrase, idea, or image that has been used so much that it has lost much of its original meaning, impact, and freshness |
| Colloquial | ordinary, everyday speech and language |
| Comedy | originally simply a play or other work which ended happily. Now we use this term to describe something that is funny and which makes us laugh. |
| Connotation | an implication or association attached to a word or phrase |
| Consonance | the repetition of the same consonant sounds in two or more words in which the vowel sounds are different |
| Couplet | two consecutive lines of verse that rhyme |
| Dénouement | the ending of a play, novel, or drama where 'all is revealed' and the plot is unraveled |
| Diction | the choice of words that a writer makes |
| Didactic | a work that is intended to preach or teach, often containing a particular moral or political point |
| Dramatic monologue | a poem or prose piece in which a character addresses an audience |
| Elegy | a meditative poem, usually sad and reflective in nature |
| Empathy | a feeling on the part of the reader of sharing the particular experience being described by the character or writer |
| End Stopping | a verse line with a pause or a stop at the end of it |
| Epic | a long narrative poem, written in an elevated style and usually dealing with a heroic theme or story |
| Euphemism | expressing an unpleasant or unsavory idea in a less blunt and more pleasant way |
| Euphony | use of pleasant or melodious sounds |
| Fable | a short story that presents a clear moral lesson |
| Farce | a play that aims to entertain the audience through absurd and ridiculous characters and action |
| Figurative language | language that is symbolic or metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally |
| Foot | a group of syllables forming a unit of verse - the basic unit of 'meter' |
| Free verse | verse written without any fixed structure |
| Genre | a particular type of writing |
| Heptameter | a verse line containing seven feet |
| Hexameter | a verse line containing six feet |
| Hyperbole | deliberate and extravagant exaggeration |
| Iamb | the most common metrical foot in English poetry, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable |
| Imagery | the use of words to create a picture or 'image' in the mind of the reader |
| Internal rhyme | rhyming words within a line rather than at the end of lines |
| Irony | at its simplest level, it means saying one thing while meaning another |
| Lament | a poem expressing intense grief |
| Metaphor | a comparison of one thing to another in order to make description more vivid; it actually states that one thing is the other |
| Motif | a dominant theme, subject, or idea which runs through a piece of literature |
| Narrative | a piece of writing that tells a story |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of words whose sound copies the sound of the thing or process that they describe |
| Oxymoron | a figure of speech which joins together words of opposite meanings |
| Paradox | a statement that appears contradictory, but when considered more closely is seen to contain a good deal of truth |
| Parody | a work that is written in imitation of another work, very often with the intention of making fun of the original |
| Pastoral | generally, literature concerning rural life with idealizes settings and rustic characters |
| Pathos | the effect in literature which makes the reader feel sadness or pity |
| Pentameter | a line of verse containing five feet |
| Personification | the attribution of human feelings, emotions, or sensations to an inanimate object |
| Plot | the sequence of events in a poem, play, novel, or short story that make up the main story line |
| Prose | any kind of writing which is not verse - usually divided into fiction and non-fiction |
| Protagonist | the main character or speaker in a poem, monologue, play, or story |
| Pun | a play on words that have similar sounds but quite different meanings |
| Quatrain | a stanza of four lines which can have various rhyme schemes |
| Refrain | repetition throughout a poem of a phrase, line, or series of lines, as in the 'chorus' of a song |
| Rhetoric | originally, the art of speaking and writing in such a way as to persuade an audience to a particular point of view. Now this term is often used to imply grand words that have no substance to them |
| Rhyme | corresponding sounds in words, usually at the end of each line but not always |
| Rhyme scheme | the pattern of the rhymes in a poem |
| Rhythm | the 'movement' of the poem as created through the meter and the way that language is stressed within the poem |
| Satire | the highlighting or exposing of human failings or foolishness within a society through ridiculing them |
| Scansion | the analysis of metrical patterns in poetry |
| Sestet | the last six lines of a sonnet |
| Simile | a comparison of one thing to another in order to make description more vivid; uses the words 'like' or 'as' in this comparison |
| Soliloquy | a speech in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his or her thoughts and feelings aloud for the benefit of the audience, often in a revealing way |
| Sonnet | a fourteen-line poem, usually with ten syllables in each line |
| Stanza | the blocks of lines into which a poem is divided |
| Stream of Consciousness | a technique in which the writer records thoughts and emotions in a 'stream' as they come to mind, without giving order or structure |
| Structure | the way that a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together |
| Style | the individual way in which a writer has used language to express his or her ideas |
| Sub-plot | a secondary storyline in a story or play |
| Symbol | like images, these represent something else |
| Syntax | the way in which sentences are structured |
| Theme | the central idea or ideas that the writer explores through a text |
| Tone | a literary technique created through the combined effects of a number of features, such as diction, syntax, rhythm, etc |
| Sophie | a crazy awesome chica who rocks my socks! |
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