| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Lyric | expresses a speaker's personal thoughts and feelings |
| Sonnet | 14 line lyric poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line) |
| Ode | a lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure |
| Blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Free verse | no fixed meter or rhyme |
| Epic | a long narrative poem celebrating the adventures and acheivements of a hero |
| Dramatic monologue | character "speaks" through the poem; a character study |
| Elegy | poem which expresses sorow over a death of someone for whom the poet cared, or on another solemn theme |
| Ballad | a form of verse, often a narrative story and set to music |
| Villanelle | consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes |
| Meter | regularized rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables; accents occur at approx. equal intervals of time |
| Cacophony | harsh, non-melodic, unpleasant sounding arrangement of words |
| Conceit | an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor |
| Assonance | repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds |
| Irony | incongruity or discrepancy between the implied and expected; verbal, dramatic, situational |
| Paradox | statement or situation containing seemingly contradictory elements |
| Repetition | the simple repetition of a word, within a sentence or a poetical line |
| Iambic pentameter | 70% of verse is written this way; ten syllables per line, following an order of unaccented-accented syllables |
| Scansion | analysis of a poem's meter: the dividing of verse (lines of poetry) into feet by indicating accents and counting syllables to determine the meter of a poem |
| Foot | two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem |
| Stanza | a group of lines forming a unit in a poem |
| Caesura | a natural pause in the middle of a line, sometimes coinciding with punctuation |
| Enjambment | describes a line of poetry in which the sense and grammatical construction continues on to the next line |
| Rhyme/rime | repetition of end sounds |
| End rhyme | occurs at the end of lines |
| Internal rhyme | repetition of sounds within a line (but not at the end of the line) |
| Couplet | two successive lines which rhyme, usually at the end of a work |
| Tercet | three-line stanza |
| Metaphor | implied or direct comparison |
| Rhyme scheme | a pattern of rhymes formed by the end rhyme(aa,bb,cc) |
| Consonance | repetition at close intervals of final consonant sounds |
| Symbolism | when a concrete object or image represents an abstract idea |
| Oxymoron | compact paradoxl two successive words contradict each other |
| Iamb | a metrical foot of two syllables, one short(unstressed) and one long(stressed) |
| Quatrain | four-line stanza |
| Cinquain | five-line stanza |
| Sestet | six-line stanza |
| Personification | giving a non-human the characteristics of a human |
| Apostrophe | someone absent, dead, or imagianary, or an abstraction, is being addressed as if it could reply |
| Metonymy | symbolism; one thing is used as a substitute for another with which it is closely identified (the White House) |
| Synecdoche | symbolism; the part signifies the whole, or the whole the part (all hands on board) |
| Hyperbole | exaggeration, overstatement |
| Litotes | understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite |
| onomatopoeia | use of words which mimic their meaning in sound |
| Euphony | pleasant, easy to articulate words |
| Simile | comparison using 'like' or 'as' |
| Slant rhyme/half rhyme | words with similar but not identical sounds |
| Alliteration | repetition at close intervals of initial consonant words |
| Imagery | representation through language of a sensory experience |
| Allusion | makes reference to another piece of literature, a person, or event in history, sports, television, etc. |
| Tone | writer's attitude toward the audience or subject, implied or related directly |
| Point of View | perspective from which a story is told |
| Setting | the time and place of the action of the work |
| Figurative Language | Language enriched by word meanings and figures of speech (i.e., similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole) |
| Jargon | terminology that relates to a specific activity, profession or group |
| Motif | detail within the story that repeats itself throughout the work |
| Sestina | consists of six 6-line stanzas, concluding with a 3-line "envoi" which incorporates all the line-ending words;rather than simply rhyming, the actual line-ending words are repeated in successive stanzas in a designated rotating order |
| Style | the elements that make a writer unique; i.e. vocabulary, diction, syntax, etc |
| Interior monologue | thinking in words, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or stream of consciousness |
| Antagonist | someone who offers opposition |
| Maxim | A succinct formulation of a fundamental principle; saying |
| Rhetoric | the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language. |
| Rhetorical mode | patterns of organization aimed at achieving a particular effect in the reader; Narration and Description, Process, Cause/Effect, Comparison/Contrast, Illustration, Argumentative and Persuasive, Definition, and Classification/Division |
| Pathos | a style that has the power to evoke feelings |
| Romanticism | a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect |
| Gothic Novel | genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance |
| Limerick | a humorous verse form of 5 anapestic lines with a rhyme scheme aabba |
| Theme | the main idea or message found in the work |
| Syntax | sentence structure |
| Grotesque | a character or location that is irregular, extravagant or fantastic in form |
| Connotation | what a word suggests beyond its surface definition |
| Euphemism | a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept |
| Allegory | characters are symbols, has a moral |
| Foil | a character that contrasts with another character, usually the protagonist, and so highlights various facets of the main character's personality |
| Parable | a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson |
| Protagonist | main character |
| Homily | an inspirational saying or platitude, usually refers to religious readings |
| Prose | written or spoken language that does not use any particular rhythm |
| Atmosphere | The mood the reader gets from the setting, the characterization and the tone of the narrator. |
| Pastoral | rural subjects |
| Versimilitude | realistic writing |
| Extended metaphor | uses an entire poem to develop a single metaphor |
| Heroic couplet | traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; lines of iambic pentameter that rhyme in pairs (aa, bb, cc) |
| Parallelism | presents coordinating ideas in a coordinating manner |
| Satire | literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack |
| Ambiguity | unclear meaning |
| Diction | word choice |
| Parody | (lampoon) a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject |
| Denotation | basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word |
| Inversion/anastrophe | Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words, for example: To market went she |
| Rhyme royal | seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc |
| Novella | fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel |
| Renaissance | ideals of kingship |
| Colloqialism | an expression not used in formal speech, or writing: y'all, gonna |
| Mood | the atmosphere suggested by the structure and style of the poem |
| Syllogism | EX: All girls play soccer. I am a girl. Therefore, I play soccer. |
| Local color | fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features including characters, dialects, customs and topography - of a particular region |
| Stream of conciousness | the thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur |
| Foreshadowing | hinting at things to come |
Combine with other sets
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