| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Abstract | An abstract style (in writing) is typically complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, and seldom uses examples to support its points. |
| Academic | As an adjective describing style, this word means dry and theoretical writing. When a piece of writing seems to be sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis, the writing is academic. |
| Accent | In poetry, accent refers to the stressed portion of a word. |
| Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure |
| Anachronism | "misplaced in time"; If the actor playing Brutus in a production of Julius Caesar forgets to take off his wrist-watch, the effect will be anachronistic. |
| Analogy | A comparison; * |
| Anecdote | A short narrative |
| Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics |
| Anticlimax | When an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. Anticlimax is frequently comic. |
| Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. |
| Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying, such as: "A classic? That's a book that people praise and don't read." |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. |
| Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. |
| Aside | A speech (usually just a short side comment) made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action onstage. |
| Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds, as in, "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." |
| Atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene. |
| Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in very regular meter and rhyme. A ballad typically has a naive folksy quality, a characteristic that distinguishes it from epic poetry.lad typically has a naive folksy quality, a characteristic that distinguishes it from epic poetry. |
| Bathos | When the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy |
| Pathos | When writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries to jerk tears from every little hiccup |
| Black Humor | This is the use of disturbing themes in comedy. |
| Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language; When one tries to be eloquent by using the largest, most uncomon words |
| Burlesque | Broad parody, ** |
| Cacophony | In poetry, cacophony is using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. |
| Cadence | The beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense |
| Canto | The name for a section or division in a long work of poetry. |
| Caricature | A portrait that exxagerates a facet of personality |
| Catharsis | "cleansing of emotions" teh audience experiences, having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage |
| Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. |
| Classic | Typical; accepted masterpiece |
| Coinage | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. technical term: neologism |
| Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. |
| Conceit | Startling or unusual metaphor or a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines |
| Connotation | everything except the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies |
| Denotation | literal meaning |
| Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme |
| Decorum | A character's speech styled according to her social station |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words |
| Diction | Author's choice of words |
| Syntax | Ordering and structuring of words |
| Dirge | A song for the dead |
| Dissonance | Grating of incompatible sounds |
| Doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme. Limericks are a kind of doggerel. |
| Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. |
| Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious thoughtful manner. Elegies often use the recent death of a noted person or loved one as a starting point. They also memorialize specific dead people. |
| Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. An epitaph is usually a line or handful of lines, often serious or religious, but sometimes witty and even irreverent. |
| Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. |
| Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously, the result is euphony. |
| Farce | Today, broad humor; Earlier times, funny play or comedy (as opposed to comedy which did not imply humor) |
| Feminine rhyme | Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Ex: running and gunning |
| First person narrator | * |
| Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character usually by contrast. |
| Foot | The basic rhytmic unit of a line of poetry. |
| Foreshadowing | An event or statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later. |
| Free verse | Poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. |
| Genre | A sub-category of literature |
| Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement |
| In medias res | "in the midst of things"; one of the conventions of epic poetry; for example, the Trojan war had already been going on for seven years |
| Interior Monologue | A term for novels and poetry, not dramatic literature. It refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head. Coherent |
| Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements ina sentence or phrase |
| Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some intense loss. |
| Lampoon | A satire |
| Loose sentence | A sentence that is complete before it ends. Ex: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh, her complaining, and her terrible taste in shoes. |
| Periodic sentence | A sentence that is not gramatically complete until it has reached its final phrase. Ex: Despite Barbara's irritation at Jack's peculiar habit of picking between his toes while watching MTV and his terrible haircut, she loved him. |
| Lyric | A type of poetry that exlplores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world |
| Masculine Rhyme | A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable |
| Melodrama | A form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very, good, the villian mean and rotten, and the heroinw oh-so-pure. |
| Metaphor | comparison or analogy that states one this is another |
| Simile | comparison, using "like" or "as" |
| Metonym | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. |
| Nemesis | The protagonist's arch enemy of supreme and persistent difficulty |
| Onomatopoeia | Word that sounds like what it means |
| Oxymoron | A contradiction |
| Parable | like a fable, a story that instructs |
| Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. |
| Parallelism | Repeated Syntactical similarities used for effect. |
| Parenthetical Phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. |
| Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exxagerated to ridiculousness |
| Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds |
| Persona | * |
| Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. |
| Plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow |
| Prelude | An introductory poem to a longer work of verse |
| Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play |
| Pun | The usually humorous use of a work in such a way to suggest two or more meanings |
| Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem |
| Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead |
| Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. |
| Rhetorical Question | A question that suggests an answer |
| Sature | Exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor; attemots to improve things by pointing out mistakes |
| Soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage; audience is listening to character's thoughts |
| Stanza | A group of lines in verse, similar to a paragraph in prose |
| Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. |
| symbolism | a device in literature where an object represents an idea |
| thesis | main point of an argument |
| tragic flaw | weakness of character in an otherwise good individual that ultimately leads to his demise |
| travesty | A grotesque parody |
| truism | A way-too obvious truth |
| utopia | An idealized place |
| zeugma | The use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings. (He closed the door and his heart on his lost love.) |
| Omniscent narrator | 3rd person, who sees into each character's mind and understands what is going on |
| Limited omniscent narrator | 3rd person, generally reports only what one character sees and thinks |
| Objective, or camera eye narrator | 3rd person who only reports what would be visible to a camera, doesn't know what the character is thinking |
| First Person Narrator | Character in the story and tells it from their point of view |
| Stream of Consciousness Technique | The reader is placed inside the character's head and makes the reader privy to all of the characte's thoughts as they scroll through her consciousness |
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