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| 4380713361 | allegory | an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story; the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, social, or satiric. | 0 | |
| 4380729909 | alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to one another | 1 | |
| 4380757974 | anachronism | an event, object, custom, person, or thing that is out of order in time; some are unintentional, such as when an actor is performing Shakespeare forgets to take off his watch; others are deliberate to achieve a humorous or satiric effect | 2 | |
| 4380779492 | analogy | a comparison of two similar but different things, usually to clarify an action or a relationship, such as comparing the work of a heart to that of a pump | 3 | |
| 4380786755 | anecdote | a short, simple narrative or a principal or a truth | 4 | |
| 4380865734 | aphorism | a short, often witty statement of a principle or a truth about life | 5 | |
| 4380872588 | apostrophe | usually in poetry (not grammar, but sometimes in prose) the device of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place, thing, or personified abstraction either to begin a poem or to make a dramatic break in thought somewhere within the poem | 6 | |
| 4380896396 | aside | a brief speech or comment that an actor makes to the audience, supposedly without being heard by the other actors on stage; often used for melodramatic or comedic effect | 7 | |
| 4380902171 | assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds between different consonants, such a in neigh/fade | 8 | |
| 4380906147 | ballad | a long narrative poem that presents a single dramatic episode which is often tragic or violent | 9 | |
| 4380914198 | blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter; a favorite form used by SHAKESPEARE | 10 | |
| 4380936122 | cacophony | harsh, awkward, or dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry and prose; the opposite of euphony | 11 | |
| 4380943310 | catharsis | the emotional release that an audience member experiences as a result of watching a tragedy | 12 | |
| 4380946747 | chorus | in Greek drama [Oedipus Rex], a group of characters who comments on the action taking place on the stage | 13 | |
| 4380958236 | colloquialism | A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing | 14 | |
| 4380958237 | conceit | an elaborate figure of speech in which two seemingly dissimilar things or situations are compared | 15 | |
| 4380961997 | consonance | the repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after different vowel sounds, as in boost/best; can also be seen within several compound words, such as fulfill and ping-pong | 16 | |
| 4380975260 | conundrum | a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun; may also be a paradox or difficult problem | 17 | |
| 4380978627 | diction | word choice; also called syntax | 18 | |
| 4380983123 | dissonance | the grating of sounds that are harsh or do not go together | 19 | |
| 4380985059 | elegy | a formal poem focusing on death and mortality, usually beginning with the recent death of a particular person | 20 | |
| 4380989747 | end rhyme | a rhyme that comes at the end of lines of poetry | 21 | |
| 4380992739 | epic | a long narrative poem about a serious or profound subject in a dignified style; usually featuring heroic characters and deeds important to legends; examples are the Odyssey and the Iliad | 22 | |
| 4381005822 | euphony | a succession of harmonious sounds used in poetry or prose; the opposite of cacophony | 23 | |
| 4381015740 | farce | a light, dramatic composition characterized by broad satirical comedy and a highly improbable plot | 24 | |
| 4381019789 | figurative language | language that contains figures of speech such as similes and metaphors in order to create associations that are imaginative rather than literal | 25 | |
| 4381030036 | figures of speech | expressions such as similes, metaphors, and personifications that make imaginative, rather than literal, comparisons or associations | 26 | |
| 4381222572 | foil | a character who, by contrast, highlights the characteristics of another character | 27 | |
| 4381228088 | folklore | traditional stories, songs, dances, and customs that are preserved among a people | 28 | |
| 4381262121 | hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads a tragic hero to disregard warnings of impending doom, eventually causing his or her downfall | 29 | |
| 4381347734 | hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration in order to create humor or emphasis | 30 | |
| 4381358131 | imagery | words or phrases that use a collection of images to appeal to one or more of the five senses in order to create a mental picture | 31 | |
| 4381361730 | internal rhyme | a rhyme occurring within a line of poetry | 32 | |
| 4381367659 | inversion | reversing the customary order of elements in a sentence, or phrase; use effectively in many cases, such as posing a question | 33 | |
| 4381379942 | irony | a situation or statement in which the actual outcome or meaning is opposite to what was expected | 34 | |
| 4381383742 | metaphor | a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to as another; for example, "my love is a fragile flower" | 35 | |
| 4381390301 | meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry; meters found in poetry include: monometer, diameter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter | 36 | |
| 4381412905 | metonymy | a figure of speech that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent something with which it is associated, such as using "the crown" to refer to a monarch | 37 | |
| 4381420735 | mood | similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work | 38 | |
| 4381424639 | narration | the telling of a story in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama; one of the four modes of discourse | 39 | |
| 4381429220 | onomatopoeia | the use of words that sound like what they mean, such as hiss and boom | 40 | |
| 4381447832 | oxymoron | figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as "wise fool" | 41 | |
| 4381450035 | parable | a short tale that teaches a moral; similar to but shorter than an allegory | 42 | |
| 4381453440 | paradox | statement that seems to contradict itself but that turns out to have a rational meaning | 43 | |
| 4381456668 | parallelism | technique of arranging words, phrases, clauses, or large structures by placing them side to side and making them similar in form | 44 | |
| 4381461943 | pastoral | a poem that idealizes rural life, or shepherds, or both; also called an idyll | 45 | |
| 4381664695 | personification | the attribution of human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object | 46 | |
| 4381680044 | Petrarchan sonnet | one of the most important types of sonnets, composed of an octave with an "abba abba" rhyme scheme, and ending in a sestet with a "cde cde" rhyme scheme; also called an Italian sonnet | 47 | |
| 4381701864 | point of view | the perspective from which a story is presented; common points of views include: first person narrator, stream of consciousness narrator, omniscient narrator, limited omniscient narrator, objective narrator | 48 | |
| 4381715597 | refrain | a line or group of lines that are periodically repeated throughout a poem | 49 | |
| 4381719656 | rhyme | a similarity of accented sounds between two words, such as sad/mad; rhymes can be masculine (the rhyme sound is the last syllable of a line) or feminine (the accented syllable is followed by an unaccented syllable) | 50 | |
| 4381736545 | sarcasm | harsh, caustic personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony | 51 | |
| 4381740743 | simile | a figure of speech that uses "like", "as", or "as if" to make a direct comparison between two essentially different objects, actions, or qualities | 52 | |
| 4381757985 | soliloquy | a speech spoken by a character alone on stage, giving the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts (think Hamlet) | 53 | |
| 4381767367 | sonnet | a fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter (think Shakespeare) | 54 | |
| 4381775131 | speaker | the voice of a poem; an author may speak as himself or herself or as a fictitious character | 55 | |
| 4381780894 | stanza | a group of lines in the formal pattern of a poem; types of stanzas that include: couplet, tercet, quantrain, cinquain, sestet, octave | 56 | |
| 4381797295 | stereotype | a character who represents a trait that is usually attributed to a particular social or racial group and lacks individuality | 57 | |
| 4381806203 | subjectivity | a personal presentation of events and characters, influenced by the author's feelings and opinions | 58 | |
| 4381811493 | symbolism | the use of symbols, or anything that is meant to be taken both literally and as representative of a higher and more complex significance | 59 | |
| 4381817698 | synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent a whole | 60 | |
| 4381825627 | theme | the central idea or "message" of a literary work | 61 | |
| 4381832389 | tone | the characteristic emotion or attitude of an author toward the characters, subject, and audience | 62 | |
| 4381838479 | tragic flaw | the one weakness that causes the downfall of the hero in a tragedy | 63 | |
| 4381843044 | voice | the way a written work conveys an author's attitude | 64 |
