Romeo and Juliet Literary Terms
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36 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Drama | story that is written to be acted for an audience |
| Tragedy | play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unahppy end. |
| Tragic Hero | the protagonist of a tragedy |
| Catastrophe | the downfall or destruction of the tragic hero |
| tragic flaw | the character trait which brings about the downfall of the tragic hero. |
| dramatic foil | character who is used as a contrast to another character |
| dramatic irony | when the audience knows something important that character in a play does not know |
| Sonnet | 14 line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and has one of several rhyme schemes. |
| Shakespearean sonnet | sonnet made up of three quatrains and one couplet. rhyme scheme- abab cdcd efef gg |
| meter | generally, regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllable in poetry |
| blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| stanza | group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit |
| iambic foot | a metrical foot, or unit of measure, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable |
| poetic foot | one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables |
| pentameter | a poetic line made up of five poetic feet |
| Iambic pentameter | line of poetry that contains 5 iambic feet |
| quatrain | a stanza of four lines |
| couplet | two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme |
| Monologue | a long speech given by one charachter to the others on the stage |
| soliloquy | unusually long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts alout |
| aside | words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character but that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage. |
| Metaphor | figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, in which one things becomes another thing without the use of the word like, as, than , or responsible |
| extended metaphor | a metaphor that is extended or developed over several lines of writing or even throughout an entire poem |
| simile | figures of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a words such as like, as, resembles, or than. |
| oxymoron | a rhetorical figure which includes incongruous of contradictory terms as "bright smoke" or "feather of lead" |
| personification | kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human |
| poetry | type of rhythmic compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the reader's emotions and imagination. |
| Pun | play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings |
| Rhyme | repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them, in words that are close together in a poem. |
| rhythm | musical quality in language produced by repetition. |
| epithet | adjective or descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place, or thing |
| "In Medea Res" | a play begins "in the middle of things;" important evens have already happened which impact all the events to come |
| meter | produces the most obvious kinds of rhythm |
| End rhymes- | occur at the end of lines |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of rhymes in a poem |
| Italian sonnet or Petrarchan sonnet | oldest kind of sonnet, made up of an octet (8 line stanza) (abba abba cde cde) |
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