Quizlet Literary Terms: Tier 1

Print Options

This box will be automatically hidden when printing. ← Back to Set Page


  1. alliteration: a series of similar sounds
  2. allusion: a reference to another work of literature, person, or event
  3. 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)
  4. blank verse: unrhymed poetry that has a regular rhythm and line length, especially iambic pentameter
  5. characterization: achieved through description, thoughts, words, actions, and reactions of characters
  6. 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)
  7. connotation: the additional (sometimes figurative) meanings that a word may carry (e.g., gold may connote greed)
  8. 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
  9. denotation: the exact/literal meaning of a word, as found in the dictionary
  10. 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
  11. diction: the use and choice of words
  12. dramatic irony: occurs when another character(s) and/or the audience know more than one or more characters on stage about what is happening
  13. dynamic character: one whose character changes in the course of the play or story
  14. 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
  15. foil: a character, object, or scene that sets off another by contrast (e.g., Ned Flanders for Homer Simpson)
  16. foreshadowing: events or information presented to prepare for later events
  17. free verse: verse without a fixed metrical pattern, usually having unrhymed lines of varying length (a.k.a., vers libre)
  18. iambic pentameter: the most common rhythm in English poetry, consisting of five iambs in each line (iamb=unit of one short/unstressed syllable followed by one long/stressed syllable)
  19. imagery: description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)
  20. inversion: an alteration of the normal order of words or phrases in a grammatical construction, usually for rhetorical effect
  21. irony: when reality is different from appearance; the implied meaning of a statement is the opposite of its literal or obvious meaning
  22. 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)
  23. meter: an arranged pattern of rhythm in a line of verse
  24. narrator: tells the story in a prose piece
  25. onomatopoeia: the use of words that by their sound suggest their meaning
  26. oxymoron: a figure of speech consisting of two apparently contradictory terms
  27. personification: when something nonhuman is given human characteristics (must be HUMAN, or it's a metaphor)
  28. plot: the pattern of events in a play, poem, or fictional work.
  29. point of view: the perspective from which the writer tells the story (1st, 2nd, 3rd person; omniscient, limited omniscient)
  30. 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)
  31. repetition: repeating a word or phrase, or rewording the same idea
  32. resolution: the final unraveling or solution of the plot
  33. rhyme: similar or identical sounds near each other (usually in two or more lines of poetry)
  34. rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme in a poem
  35. rhythm: a mood or effect in a text created from repeated elements (could be euphonous, cacophanous, staccato, etc.)
  36. setting: the time(s) and place(s) of a story
  37. simile: a similarity between two objects or ideas, using like or as (and sometimes than)
  38. situational irony: occurs when the outcome of a work is unexpected, or events turn out to be the opposite from what one had expected
  39. soliloquy: in drama, a character speaks alone on stage to allow his/her thoughts and ideas to be conveyed to the audience
  40. sonnet: a short poem with fourteen lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines, divided into two, three, or four sections
  41. speaker: tells the story in a poetic piece
  42. stanza: a group of lines in a poem or song that constitute a division (in prose: paragraph)
  43. 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
  44. 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
  45. theme: central idea
  46. tone: the mood of a work (often several in one work)
  47. verbal irony: occurs when what is said contradicts what is meant or thought