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| 7316148077 | Allegory | A prose or poetic narrative in which characters, behaviors, and even the setting demonstrates multiple levels of meaning and significance. Often allegory is a universal symbol or personified abstraction such as Death portrayed as a black-cloaked "grim-reaper" with a scythe and ab hourglass. | 0 | |
| 7316177262 | Alliteration | The sequential repetition of a similar initial sound, usually applied to consonants, usually heard in closely proximate stressed syllables. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers." | 1 | |
| 7316201828 | Allusion | A reference to a literary or historical event, person, or place. | 2 | |
| 7316220056 | Anapestic | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed. "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house/ Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse." | 3 | |
| 7316235480 | Anaphora | The regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses. The...../The..../The... | 4 | |
| 7316245636 | Anecdote | A brief story or tale told by a character in a piece of literature. | 5 | |
| 7316254125 | Antagonist | Any force that is in opposition to the main character, or protagonist. | 6 | |
| 7316276788 | Antithesis | The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas. | 7 | |
| 7316287711 | Apostrophe | An address of invocation to something that is inanimate-such as an angry lover who might scream at the ocean in his or her despair. | 8 | |
| 7316752704 | Archetype | Recurrent designs, patterns of action, character types, themes, or images which are identifiable in a wide range of literature. | 9 | |
| 7316768239 | Assonance | A repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually those found in stressed syllables of close proximity. | 10 | |
| 7316789095 | Asyndeton | A style in which conjunctions are omitted, usually producing a fast-paced, more rapid prose. | 11 | |
| 7316804902 | Attitude | The sense expressed by the tone of voice and/or the mood of a piece of writing; the feelings the author holds towards his subject, the people in his narrative, the events, the setting, or even the theme. | 12 | |
| 7316822009 | Ballad | A narrative poem that is, or originally was meant to be sung. Repetition and refrain (recurring phrase or phrases) characterize the ballad. | 13 | |
| 7316828820 | Ballad stanza | A common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain (a stanza of four lines) that alternate four-beat and three-beat lines. | 14 | |
| 7316854214 | Blank verse | The verse form that most resembles common speech, blank verse consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. | 15 | |
| 7316868032 | Caesura | A pause in a line of verse, indicated by natural speech patterns rather than due to specific metrical patterns. | 16 | |
| 7316877694 | Caricature | A depiction in which a character's characteristics or features are so deliberately exaggerated as to render them absurd. Political cartoons use visual caricature. | 17 | |
| 7316889936 | Chiasmus | A figure of speech by which the order of the terns in the first of the two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. "Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes a sin's a pleasure." | 18 | |
| 7316909630 | Colloquial | Ordinary language, the vernacular. For example, depending where you live in the United States, a large sandwich may be a hero, a sub, or a hoagie. | 19 | |
| 7316923122 | Conceit | A comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within a piece of literature, in particular an extended metaphor within a poem. Conceits might be the idea of tracing a love affair as a flower growing, budding, coming to fruition and dying. | 20 | |
| 7316943528 | Connotation | What is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes, often referred to as the implied meaning of a word. | 21 | |
| 7316956020 | Consonance | The repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels, such as "pitter-patter, pish-posh, clinging-clanging." | 22 | |
| 7316967771 | Couplet | Two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that together present a single idea or connection. | 23 | |
| 7316977072 | Dactylic | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of two stressed syllables followed by one unstressed syllable. | 24 | |
| 7316984728 | Denotation | A direct and specific meaning, often referred to as the dictionary meaning of a word. | 25 | |
| 7316990240 | Dialect | The language and speech idiosyncrasies of a specific area, region, or group of people. | 26 | |
| 7316997779 | Diction | The specific word choice an author uses to persuade or convey tone, purpose, or effect. | 27 | |
| 7317005903 | Dramatic monologue | A monologue set in a specific situation and spoken to an imaginary audience. Another term is soliloquy. | 28 | |
| 7317011685 | Elegy | A poetic lament upon death of a particular person, usually ending in consolation. | 29 | |
| 7317017856 | Enjambment | The continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next. | 30 | |
| 7317028628 | Epic | A poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, often concerned with the founding of a nation or developing of a culture; it uses elevated language and grand, high style. | 31 | |
| 7317043538 | Exposition | That part of the structure that sets the scene, introduces and identifies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play. | 32 | |
| 7317057979 | Extended metaphor | A detailed and complex metaphor that extends over a long section of a work, also known as a conceit. | 33 | |
| 7317064241 | Fable | A legend or short moral story often using animals as characters. | 34 | |
| 7317073157 | Falling action | The part of the plot structure in which the complications of the rising action are untangles. | 35 | |
| 7317077878 | Farce | A play or scene in a play or book that is characterized by the broad humor, wild antics, and often slapstick and physical humor. | 36 | |
| 7317088852 | Foreshadowing | To hint at or present an indication of the future beforehand. | 37 | |
| 7317095333 | Formal diction | Language that is lofty, dignified, and impersonal. Such diction is often used in narrative epic poetry. | 38 | |
| 7317101999 | Flashback | Retrospection, where an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronology of the narrative. | 39 | |
| 7317117915 | Free verse | Poetry tat is characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and nonrhyming lines, | 40 | |
| 7317128132 | Genre | A type or class of literature such as an epic or narrative or poetry or belles letters. | 41 | |
| 7317136582 | Hyperbole | Overstatement characterized by exaggerated language. | 42 | |
| 7317143256 | Iambic | A metrical foot in poetry that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. | 43 | |
| 7317151304 | Imagery | Broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Basically, imagery involves any or all of the five senses. | 44 | |
| 7317169941 | Informal diction | Language that is not as lofty or impersonal as a formal diction; similar to everyday speech. | 45 | |
| 7317182760 | In medias res | "in the midst of things"; refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in past details by exposition or flashback. | 46 | |
| 7317195141 | Irony | A situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant. Irony is often humorous, and sometimes sarcastic when it uses words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean. | 47 | |
| 7317212728 | Jargon | Specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group. | 48 | |
| 7317222074 | Juxtaposition | The location of one thing as being adjacent or juxtaposed with another. This placing of two items side by side creates a certain effect, reveals an attitude, or accomplishments some purpose of the writer. | 49 | |
| 7317236698 | Limited point of view | A perspective confined to a single character, whether a first person or third person; the reader cannot know for sure what is going on in the minds of other characters. | 50 | |
| 7317247919 | Litote | A figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement. | 51 | |
| 7317260063 | Loose sentence | A sentence grammatically complete, and usually stating its main idea, before the end. "The child ran as if being chased by demons." | 52 | |
| 7317270582 | Lyric | Originally designated poems meant to be sung accompaniment of a lyre; now any short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation. | 53 | |
| 7317280954 | Message | A misleading term for theme; the central idea or statement of a story, or area of inquiry or explanation; misleading because it suggests a simple, packaged statement that pre-exists and for the simple communication of which the story is written. | 54 | |
| 7317310417 | Metaphor | One thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them. | 55 | |
| 7317321775 | Meter | The more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. | 56 | |
| 7317329958 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something. | 57 | |
| 7317402168 | Mood | A feeling or ambiance resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and point of view. This effect is fabricated through descriptions of feelings or objects that establish a sense of fear, patriotism, sanctity, hope, etc. | 58 | |
| 7317419900 | Motif | A recurring device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event. | 59 | |
| 7317440722 | Narrative structure | A textual organization based on the sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework. | 60 | |
| 7317452708 | Narrator | The "character" who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona. | 61 | |
| 7317456735 | Occasional poem | A poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private. | 62 | |
| 7317463753 | Ode | A lyrical poem that is somewhat serious in a subject and treatment, is elevated in style, and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure, which is often patterned in sets of three. | 63 | |
| 7317473777 | Omniscient point of view | Also called unlimited focus: a perspective that can be seen from one character's view, then another's, then another's or can be moved in or out of the mind of any character at any time.The reader has access to the perceptions and thoughts of all the characters in the story. | 64 | |
| 7317487751 | Onomatopoeia | A word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes; "buzz" is a good example. | 65 | |
| 7317495575 | Overstatement | Exaggerated language; also called hyperbole. | 66 | |
| 7317498607 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements, sometimes resulting in humorous image or statement; "jumbo shrimp." | 67 | |
| 7317506474 | Parable | A short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy. | 68 | |
| 7317511734 | Paradox | A statement that seems contradictory but may be true. "Fight for peace." | 69 | |
| 7317518552 | Parallel structure | The use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts. | 70 | |
| 7317522233 | Parody | A work that imitates another work for comedic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original. | 71 | |
| 7317528628 | Pastoral | A work (also called an ecologue, a bucolic or an idyll) that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless (and sheepless) life in a world full of beauty, music, and love. | 72 | |
| 7317548342 | Periodic sentence | A sentence which is not grammatically complete until the end. "The child, who looked as if she were being chased by demons, ran." | 73 | |
| 7317554964 | Persona | The voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values or the actual author. | 74 | |
| 7317561594 | Personification | Treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities. | 75 | |
| 7317569870 | Petrarchan sonnet | Also called Italian sonnet; a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section into six lines (sestet), usually following the abba abba cde cde rhyme scheme though the sestet's rhyme varies. | 76 | |
| 7317584208 | Plot | The arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events. | 77 | |
| 7317592767 | Protagonist | The main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic. | 78 | |
| 7317596546 | Quatrain | A poetic stanza of four lines. | 79 | |
| 7317600463 | Realism | The practice in the literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealization and with attention to detail. | 80 | |
| 7317605686 | Refrain | A repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song. | 81 | |
| 7317609557 | Rising action | The development of action in a work, usually at the beginning. First part of the plot. | 82 | |
| 7317615224 | Rhetorical question | A question that is asked simply for stylistic effect and is not expected to be answered. | 83 | |
| 7317630190 | Rhyme | The repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines. | 84 | |
| 7317635456 | Rhythm | The modulation of weak and strong (stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech. | 85 | |
| 7317642614 | Sarcasm | A form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical. | 86 | |
| 7317649535 | Satire | A literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure. | 87 | |
| 7317656346 | Scansion | The analysis of verse to show it meter. | 88 | |
| 7317662306 | Setting | The time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play. | 89 | |
| 7317669539 | Shakespearean sonnet | Also called an English sonnet: a sonnet that divides the poem into three units of four lines and each a final unit of two lines, usually abab cdcd efef gg. | 90 | |
| 7317677082 | Shaped verse | Another name for concrete poetry: poetry that is shaped to look like an object. | 91 | |
| 7317681811 | Simile | A direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw a connection. | 92 | |
| 7317687075 | Soliloquy | A monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself. | 93 | |
| 7317692996 | Speaker | The person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem. | 94 | |
| 7317697455 | Stanza | A section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing. Some distinguish a stanza, a division marked by a single pattern or meter or rhyme, from a verse paragraph, a division marked by thought rather than patter, not unlike a paragraph in prose writing. | 95 | |
| 7317712647 | Stanza lines | Couplet: two lines, Tercet: three lines, Quatrain: four lines, Cinquain: five lines, Sestet: six lines, Heptatich: seven lines, Octave: eight lines. | 96 | |
| 7317725156 | Stereotype | A characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions that some one aspect, such as gender, age, ethnic, or nationality, religion, occupation, relationship status etc. are predictably accompanied by certain character traits, actions, even values. | 97 | |
| 7317749935 | Stock character | One who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother. | 98 | |
| 7317757384 | Structure | The organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work. | 99 | |
| 7317761337 | Style | A distinctive manner of expression; each author's style is expressed through his or her diction, rhythm, imagery, and so on. It's a writer's typical way or writing. | 100 | |
| 7317816991 | Symbolism | A person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents something else. | 101 | |
| 7317824643 | Synecdoche | When part is used to signify a whole, "all hands on deck!" 'Hands' stand for the whole of the sailors. | 102 | |
| 7317896261 | Syntax | The way words are put together to form phrases, clauses and sentences. Syntax is sentence structure and how influences the way the reader receives a particular piece of writing. | 103 | |
| 7317904944 | Terza rima | A verse form consisting of three-stanzas in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next. | 104 | |
| 7317911964 | Theme | A generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; the statement a poem makes about its subject. | 105 | |
| 7317919132 | Tone | The attitude a literary work takes toward its subject and theme; the tenor of a piece of writing based on the particular stylistic devices employed by the writer. The tone reflects the narrator's attitude. | 106 | |
| 7317931216 | Tragedy | A drama in which a character (usually good and noble and of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with the superior force. | 107 | |
| 7317941867 | Trochaic | A metrical foot in poetry that is the opposite of iambic. The first syllable is stressed, the second is not. | 108 | |
| 7317947265 | Turning point | The third part of plot structure, the point at which the action stops rising the begins falling or reversing. Sometimes referred to as the climax of the story. | 109 | |
| 7317956538 | Villanelle | A verse form consisting of nineteen line divided into six stanzas - five tercets and one quatrain. The first and third line of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. | 110 | |
| 7317971635 | Voice | The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of the words of the story; the speaker; the "person" telling the story or poem. | 111 |
