Terms : Hide Images
| 20699564 | adage | wise saying; proverb; saying | |
| 20699565 | allegory | literary work in which characters, events, objects, and ideas have a secondary or symbolic meaning | |
| 20699566 | alliteration | repetition of consonant sounds | |
| 20699567 | allusion | reference to a historical event, mythology, or literature | |
| 20699568 | anadiplosis | figure of speech in which a word or phrase at the end of a sentence, clause, or line of verse is repeated at or near the beginning of the next sentence, clause, or line of verse | |
| 20699569 | anagnorisis | a moment of epiphany, time of revelation when a character discovers his true identity | |
| 20699570 | anaphora | repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of a word groups occurring one after the other | |
| 20699571 | anecdote | a little story, often amusing, inserted in an essay or a speech to help reinforce the thesis | |
| 20699572 | antagonist | character in a story or poem who opposes the main character (protagonist) | |
| 20699573 | antithesis | placement of contrasting or opposing words, phrases, clauses, or sentences side by side | |
| 20699574 | assonance | repetition of vowel sounds preceded and followed by different consonant sounds | |
| 20699575 | ballad | poem that tells a story about people of a particular region and culture; usually meant to be sung | |
| 20699576 | caesura | a pause in a line of verse shown in scansion by two vertical lines or large spaces | |
| 20699577 | catharsis | a purification of emotions; used by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, to describe the effect on the audience of a tragedy acted out on stage | |
| 20699578 | classicism | a tradition espousing the ideals of ancient Greece and Rome; where the writer restrains his emotions and his ego while writing in clear, dignified language with carefully structured plots | |
| 20699579 | cliche | an overused expression | |
| 20699580 | diction | word choice; the quality of the sound of a speaker or singer | |
| 20699581 | enjambment | carrying the sense of one line of verse over to the next line without a pause | |
| 20699582 | epic | long poem in a lofty style about the exploits of heroic figures | |
| 20699583 | epigraph | quotation inserted at the beginning of a poem, a novel, or any literary work; a dedication of a literary work; words inscribed or painted on a monument, building, trophy, tombstone | |
| 20699584 | epilogue | a short address spoken by an actor at the end of a play that comments on the meaning of the events in the play or looks ahead to expected events; an afterword in any literary work | |
| 20699585 | expressionism | a writing approach, process, or technique in which a writer depicts a character's feelings about a subject (or the writer's own feelings about it) rather than the objective surface reality of the subject | |
| 20699586 | flashback | device in which a writer describes significant events of an earlier time or actually returns the plot to an earlier time | |
| 20699587 | foil | a secondary or minor character in a literary work who contrasts or clashes with the main character; a secondary or minor charaacter with personal qualities that are the opposite or different from another character; the antagonist in a play or another literary work | |
| 20699588 | genre | type or kind, as applied to literature and film | |
| 20699589 | hyperbole | exaggeration; overstatement | |
| 20699590 | inversion | arrangement of sentence parts out of their normal order to achieve a lyrical effect, as in poetry or verse | |
| 20699591 | jargon | vocabulary understood by members of a profession or trade but usually not by other members of the general public | |
| 20699592 | kenning | compound expression, often hyphenated, representing a single noun (whale-road=sea, ocean) | |
| 20699593 | machine | armlike device in an ancient Greek theater that could lower a "god" onto the stage from the heavens; deus ex machina; a contrived event | |
| 20699594 | malapropism | unintentional use of an inappropriate word similar in sound to the appropriate word, often with humorous effect | |
| 20699595 | metonymy | substitution of one word or phrase to stand for a word or phrase similar in meaning (White House=government; President) | |
| 20699596 | motif | recurring theme in a literary work | |
| 20699597 | mock-epic | work that parodies the serious, elevated style of the classical epic poem to poke fun at human follies; a type of satire; treats petty humans or insignificant occurrences as if they were extraordinary or heroic | |
| 20699598 | naturalism | an extreme form of realism that developed in France in the 19th Century; applies the principles of scientific and economic determinism to literature to depict a detailed picture of everyday life | |
| 20699599 | ode | in ancient Greece, a long poem on a serious subject that develops its theme with dignified language intended to be sung | |
| 20699600 | Old English Versification | unrhyming verse, without stanzas, with a caesura in the middle of each line, representing everyday speech; each line is divided into two parts (hemistich--half a line) and (stich--complete line) with two stressed syllables and a varying number of unstressed syllables | |
| 20699601 | paradox | contradictory statement that may actually be true; similar to an oxymoron, but does not place opposing words side by side | |
| 20699602 | philippic | speech that bitterly denounces, blames, accuses, or insults a person; speech that viciously attacks a person or his ideas | |
| 20699603 | quatrain | a four-lined stanza; usually with a rhyme scheme of abab, abba, or abcb | |
| 20699604 | realism | a movement in literature that stressed the presentation of life as it is, without embellishment or idealization | |
| 20699605 | rhetoric | art of effectively using words in speech and writing; the study of language and its rules | |
| 20699606 | satire | literary work that attacks or pokes fun at vices and imperfections; political cartoon that does the same | |
| 20699607 | style | the way an author writes a literary work through diction, phrases, the structure of sentences, length of paragraphs, tone of the work, etc. | |
| 20699608 | syncope | omitting letters or sounds within a word | |
| 20699609 | synecdoche | substitution of a part to stand for the whole, or the whole to stand for a part (wheels=car) | |
| 20699610 | thespian | an actor or actress | |
| 20699611 | Transcendentalism | the belief that every human being has inborn knowledge that enables him to recognize and understand moral truth without benefit of knowledge obtained through the physical senses; with this inborn knowledge, an individual can make a moral decision without relying on information gained through everyday living, education, and experimentation | |
| 20699612 | verse | a collection of lines that follow a regular, rhythmic pattern | |
| 20699613 | figispicity | being so specific that even Fig is impressed |
