| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Pun | A play in two words with the same or similar sounds but different meanings. |
| Protagonist | The central character in a narrative; The character whose progressor experiances form the primary interest of the story. |
| Pastoral | Traditionally, the term refers to a mode or genre of poetry portraying shepherds and rural life in an idealized manner. The most famous being monologues. |
| Parallelism | The arrangement of a sentence or group of sentences so that corresponding elements of equal importance are expressed in a balanced and similar fashion. |
| Refrain | A word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated periodically throughout the poem, often at regular intervals and sometimes at the end of each stanza. |
| Recognition | A scene or moment in a narrative when the protagonist (or sometimes another character) gains some knowlege that causes a reversal in the plot. |
| Plot | The events of a story as they are selected, organized and presented in a narrative. |
| Pyrrhic | A metrical foot consisting of two syllables, niether of which is accented. |
| Rhyme | Usually, the repetition of vowel and end consonant sounds (along with the variation of initial consonant sounds) in the final accented syllables of two words or lines of verse. |
| Persona | Literally, a "mask"; the identity (in the form of a voice) taken on by an author in writing a work of literature. |
| Parable | A brief tale illustrating a moral lesson. A type of fable told in a specific (often spiritual) situation. Most famous are those in the Bible. |
| Pentameter | Describes a line of metrical verse consisting of five feet. |
| Saga | A medieval genre of narrative, similar to a folk epic but in prose; generally focuses on heroes defending their ruling families. |
| Polysemy | The ability of a sign or symbol (most often a word) to have more than one meaning. ex: right means to turn right and you are correct) |
| Prosody | The techniques, structures, and defining rules of poetic form; also, the study of those techniques, structures, rules and forms. |
| Romance | A fictional story not bound by the restrictions of realism; one in which fantastic or idealized characters experiance strange or marvelous events in an antiquated or faraway setting. |
| Spondee | A metrical foot consisting of two accented syllables. |
| Paradox | A statement or idea that at first seems self-contradictory or nonsensical, but nonetheless reveals itself to be true. |
| Parody | A work written in conscious imitation of another work. The work being imitated is generally a more serious one. Used to satire or ridicule an author, style, or subject of the original work. |
| Peripeteia | In a narrative, a protagonist's sudden and significant chane of fortune or circumstances; also called the reversal. |
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