| Anaphora | repetition of a word for emphasis |
| Apostraphe | speaking to a person not present, and inanimate object, something personified |
| Allegory | sybolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning often generlized and moral |
| Aliteration | repetition of a constant souns especially at the beginning of words |
| Allusion | A reference to a person, event, or literary work outside the poem |
| Assonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry as in "i rOse and tOld him my wOe" |
| Ballad | a narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style |
| Blank verse | a line of poetry or prose in unrymed iambic pentameter |
| Connotation | the personal and emotional assiciations called up by a word |
| Couplet | a pair of unrymed lines that may or may not constitute a seperate stanza in a poem |
| Denotation | the dictionary meaning of a word |
| Diction | the selection of words in a literary work |
| Dramatic monologue | a type of poem in which a speaker adresses a silent listener |
| Enjambment | a run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next |
| Figurative language | a form of language use in which writers and speakers intend something other than the literal meaning of their words |
| Foot | a metrical unit composed of stressed and unsressed syllables, a group of syllables |
| Free verse | poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme |
| Hyperbole | a figureof speech involving exaggeration |
| Iamb | an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in today |
| Irony | a constrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen: verbal, irony of circumstance, dramatic |
| Metaphor | a comparison between essentially unlike things without a words such as like or as |
| Meter | the measured pattern or rhythmic accents in poems |
| Metonymy | a figure of speeech in which a closelt related term is substituted for an object or idea: "nice ride, good hops, loyal to crown" |
| Octave | an eight line unit, which may constitute a stanza or a section of a poem as in the octave of a sonnet |
| Ode | a long stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. usually a serious poem on an exalted subject |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of awods to imitate the sounds they describe. buzz, crack |
| Oxymoron | a fugure of speech consisting of two words that seem to contradict each other. joyous pain |
| Paradox | a situation or phrase that appears contradictory but which contains a truth worth considering |
| Parody | a humorous mocking imitation of a literary work |
| Personification | the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities |
| Quatrain | a four line stanza in a poem |
| Rhyme | the matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. masculine:end with stressed syllable. feminine:unstressed. approx.-slant/near rhymes. internal-:within line. end:end of line. Perfect:same # of syllables and stresses while same vowel/ consanent counds |
| Rhythm | the recurrence of accent or stress in liknes of verse |
| Satire | a literary form that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vice, stupidity, and folly |
| Sestet | a six line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem, the last 6 lines of an italian sonnet |
| Simile | a figure of speech involving a comparison between inllike things using like or as |
| Sonnet | a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter. Shakespearean/english-3 quatrains and a couplet, italian/petrarchan- 8 line octave, 6 line sestet |
| Stanza | a division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form- with similar or identical patterns of rhyme and meter |
| Style | diction + syntax |
| Symbol | an object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, stands for something beyond itself |
| Synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole, or whole for the part: lend me a hand, give me a kleenox, heed of cattle |
| Synesthesia | an attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of the other |
| Syntax | the grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue |
| Tercet | three line stanza |
| Theme | idea of a literal work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and expressed in the form of a generalization |
| Tone | the implied attitude of a poet toward the subject and materials of a poem |
| Troche | a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable as in story |
| Understatement | a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means, the converse of exaggeration or hyperbole |
| Image | a concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling or idea, imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work |
| tri, tetra, panta,-meter | 3,4,5 metric feet in a line |