| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | a series of similar sounds |
| allusion | a reference to another work of literature, person, or event |
| aside | in drama, lines spoken by a character in an undertone or aloud directly to the audience (assumed not to be heard by other actors) |
| blank verse | unrhymed poetry that has a regular rhythm and line length, especially iambic pentameter |
| characterization | achieved through description, thoughts, words, actions, and reactions of characters |
| conflict | opposition between or among characters or forces in a literary work that spurs or motivates the action of a plot (internal, external; person vs. person, self, nature, society) |
| connotation | the additional (sometimes figurative) meanings that a word may carry (e.g., gold may connote greed) |
| couplet | two lines of verse that form a unit alone or as part of a poem, especially two that rhyme and have the same meter |
| denotation | the exact/literal meaning of a word, as found in the dictionary |
| resolution | the final unraveling or solution of the plot |
| dialect | a regional variety of a language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation; also a form of a language spoken by members of a particular social class or profession |
| diction | the use and choice of words |
| dynamic character | one whose character changes in the course of the play or story |
| flashback | a scene or event from the past that appears in a narrative out of chronological order, to fill in information or explain something in the present |
| foreshadowing | events or information presented to prepare for later events |
| free verse | verse without a fixed metrical pattern, usually having unrhymed lines of varying length (a.k.a., vers libre) |
| imagery | description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) |
| irony | when reality is different from appearance; the implied meaning of a statement is the opposite of its literal or obvious meaning |
| situational irony | occurs when the outcome of a work is unexpected, or events turn out to be the opposite from what one had expected |
| verbal irony | occurs when what is said contradicts what is meant or thought |
| dramatic irony | occurs when another character(s) and/or the audience know more than one or more characters on stage about what is happening |
| metaphor | an imaginative comparison used to enhance the meaning of what is being compared; may be direct (X is Y) or implied ("He wanted to win her heart" comparing love to a battle) |
| meter | an arranged pattern of rhythm in a line of verse |
| narrator | tells the story in a prose piece |
| speaker | tells the story in a poetic piece |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words that by their sound suggest their meaning |
| oxymoron | a figure of speech consisting of two apparently contradictory terms |
| personification | when something nonhuman is given human characteristics (must be HUMAN, or it's a metaphor) |
| plot | the pattern of events in a play, poem, or fictional work. |
| point of view | the perspective from which the writer tells the story (1st, 2nd, 3rd person; omniscient, limited omniscient) |
| pun | a play on words involving the use of words with similar sounds but different meanings (collar, color), words with 2+ meanings (plain), or words with the same sound but different meanings (sun/son) |
| repetition | repeating a word or phrase, or rewording the same idea |
| rhyme | similar or identical sounds near each other (usually in two or more lines of poetry) |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of rhyme in a poem |
| rhythm | a mood or effect in a text created from repeated elements (could be euphonous, cacophanous, staccato, etc.) |
| setting | the time(s) and place(s) of a story |
| simile | a similarity between two objects or ideas, using like or as (and sometimes than) |
| sonnet | a short poem with fourteen lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines, divided into two, three, or four sections |
| stanza | a group of lines in a poem or song that constitute a division (in prose: paragraph) |
| static character | a character who does not change at all, or who remains almost entirely the same, throughout the course of a play or story |
| symbol | something that stands for itself at a literal level but which also suggests something (or several things) at the same time; frequently a concrete object or animal that represents a quality or abstract idea |
| theme | central idea |
| tone | the mood of a work (often several in one work) |
| dialogue | the lines spoken by the characters in a play or narrative |
| end-stopped line | when poetry contains a pause in meaning (thus in reading) at the end of a line or a couplet; often marked by punctuation but not always |
| enjambment | the continuation of meaning, without pause or break, from one line of poetry to the next |
| figurative language | writing that uses one or more figures of speech (irony, metaphor....) |
| generalization | a broad, all-encompassing statement |
| genre | type or category of literary work (e.g., poetry, essay, short story, novel, drama) |
| hyperbole | exaggeration for effect |
| motivation | the reasons, justifications, explanations for a character's actions |
| narrative | an account of an actual or fictional event |
| paradox | a phrase or statement that seems contradictory but may be true (e.g., less is more) |
| parallelism | phrases or sentences of a similar construction/meaning placed side by side, balancing each other |
| protagonist | the most important character in a play or story |
| satire | the use of ridicule, sarcasm, wit, or irony in order to expose, set right, destroy, or laugh at a vice, human folly, or social evil |
| sentiment | honest emotion |
| sentimentality | excessive or artificial emotion, emotion unjustified by events |
| structure | the arrangement of the text--paragraphs, stanzas; linear or nonlinear |
| style | the arrangement of words in a way that best expresses the author's individuality, idea, intent |
| syntax | sentence construction |
| understatement | the opposite of hyperbole |
Combine with other sets
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