Terms : Hide Images
| 4547292007 | action | any event or series of events depicted in a literary work; an event may be verbal as well as physical, so that saying something or telling a story within the story may be an event | 0 | |
| 4547296099 | alexandrine | a line of verse in iambic hexameter, often with a caesura after the third iambic foot | 1 | |
| 4547296854 | allegory | a literary work, whether in verse or prose, in which characters, action, and even aspects of setting signify a second, correlated order of concepts, persons, and actions | 2 | |
| 4547300670 | alliteration | the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words | 3 | |
| 4547301762 | allusion | a brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing. | 4 | |
| 4547305206 | amphitheater | a theater consisting of a stage area surrounded by a semicircle of tiered seats | 5 | |
| 4547307259 | anapestic | referring to a metrical form in which each foot consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one | 6 | |
| 4547310383 | antagonist | a character or a nonhuman force that opposes or is in conflict with the protagonist | 7 | |
| 4547311223 | antihero | a protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero | 8 | |
| 4547314325 | archetype | a character, ritual, symbol, or plot pattern that recurs in the myth and literature of many cultures | 9 | |
| 4547316190 | arena stage | a stage design in which the audience is seated all the way around the acting area | 10 | |
| 4547319575 | assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings | 11 | |
| 4547321420 | aubade | a poem in which the coming of dawn is either celebrated or denounced as a nuisance | 12 | |
| 4547323405 | auditor | an imaginary listener within a literary work, as opposed to the reader or audience outside the work | 13 | |
| 4547324343 | author | the person who actually wrote the story | 14 | |
| 4547328362 | ballad | a verse narrative that is, or originally was, meant to be sung | 15 | |
| 4547329136 | ballad stanza | a common stanza form, consisting of a quatrain that alternates four-foot and three-foot lines | 16 | |
| 4547330766 | bildungsroman | a novel that depicts the intellectual, emotional, and moral development of its protagonist from childhood into adulthood | 17 | |
| 4547333701 | biography | a work of nonfiction that recounts the life of a real person | 18 | |
| 4547334319 | blank verse | the metrical verse form most like everyday human speech; unrhymed lines | 19 | |
| 4547335791 | caesura | a short pause within a line of poetry; often but not always signaled by punctuation | 20 | |
| 4547336961 | canon | thee range of works that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider "great" or "major" | 21 | |
| 4547338945 | carpe diem | literally, "seize the day" in Latin; emphasizes the brevity of life and the need to make the most of the present | 22 | |
| 4547340698 | central consciousness | a character whose inner thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are revealed by a third-person limited narrator | 23 | |
| 4547343667 | character | an imaginary person who acts, appears, or is referred to in a literary work | 24 | |
| 4547344396 | characterization | the presentation of a fictional person | 25 | |
| 4547345704 | chorus | a group of actors in a drama who comment on and describe the action | 26 | |
| 4547346757 | classical unities | the three principles of structure that require a play to have one plot that occurs in one place and within one day | 27 | |
| 4547349065 | climax | the third part of plot, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing | 28 | |
| 4547351218 | comedy | works intended primarily to entertain and amuse an audience | 29 | |
| 4547353692 | complication | an action or event that introduces a new conflict or intensifies the existing one, especially during the rising action phase of plot | 30 | |
| 4547355109 | conclusion | the fifth and last part of plot, the point at which the situation that was destabilized at the beginning becomes stable once more and the conflict is resolved | 31 | |
| 4547357793 | concrete poetry | poetry in which the words on the page are arranged to look like an object | 32 | |
| 4547358997 | conflict | a struggle between opposing forces | 33 | |
| 4547359667 | connotation | what is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means | 34 | |
| 4547360593 | convention | a standard or traditional way of presenting or expressing something | 35 | |
| 4547362265 | couplet | two consecutive lines of verse linked by rhyme and meter | 36 | |
| 4547363504 | crisis | the moment when the conflict comes to a head, often requiring the character to make a decision | 37 | |
| 4547364382 | dactylic | referring to the metrical pattern in which each foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones | 38 | |
| 4547365843 | denotation | a word's direct and literal meaning | 39 | |
| 4547366471 | dénouement | literally, "untying"; a synonym for falling action, a synonym for conclusion or resolution, the label for a phase following the conclusion in which any loose ends are tied up | 40 | |
| 4547371375 | descriptive poem/structure | a poem organized as a description of someone or something | 41 | |
| 4547372024 | deus ex machina | literally, "god out of the machine"; any improbably, unprepared for plot contrivance introduced late in a literary work to resolve the conflict | 42 | |
| 4547373818 | dialogue | words spoken by characters in a literary work | 43 | |
| 4547374259 | diction | choice of words | 44 | |
| 4547375692 | discriminated occasion | a specific, discrete moment portrayed in a fictional work | 45 | |
| 4547377656 | discursive poem/structure | a poem structured like a treatise, argument, or essay | 46 | |
| 4547378398 | drama | a genre consisting of works in which action is performed and all words are spoken before an audience by actors impersonating the characters | 47 | |
| 4547380957 | dramatic monologue | a type of poetry in which a speaker addresses a silent auditor in a specific situation and setting that is revealed entirely through the speaker's words | 48 | |
| 4547382775 | dramatic poem/structure | a poem structured so as to present a scene or series of scenes, as in a work of drama | 49 | |
| 4547385502 | dramatis personae | literally, "persons of the drama"; the list of characters that appears either in a play's program or at the top of the first page of the written play | 50 | |
| 4547387824 | elegy | usually a formal lament on the death of a particular person, but focusing mainly on the speaker's efforts to come to terms with their grief; any lyric in sorrowful mood that takes death as its primary subject | 51 | |
| 4547390848 | end-stopped line | a line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause and usually ends with a punctuation mark | 52 | |
| 4547401180 | enjambment | in poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop | 53 | |
| 4547402944 | epic | a long poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines | 54 | |
| 4547405596 | epigram | a very short, usually witty verse with a quick turn at the end | 55 | |
| 4547406289 | epigraph | a quotation appearing at the beginning of a literary work or of one section of such a work | 56 | |
| 4547407536 | epilogue | in fiction, a short section or chapter that comes after the conclusion; in drama, a short speech, often addressed directly to the audience, at the end of a play | 57 | |
| 4547409226 | epiphany | a sudden revelation of truth | 58 | |
| 4547409246 | episode | a distinct action or series of actions with a plot | 59 | |
| 4547409941 | epithet | a characterizing word or phrase that precedes, follows, or substitutes for the name of a person or thing | 60 | |
| 4547411506 | epitaph | an inscription on a tombstone or grave marker | 61 | |
| 4547806256 | eponymous | having a name used in the title of a literary work | 62 | |
| 4547806713 | exposition | the first phase or part of plot | 63 | |
| 4547807166 | fable | an ancient type of short fiction illustrating a moral or satirizing human beings | 64 | |
| 4547809121 | falling action | the fourth of the five parts of plot, in which the conflict or conflicts move toward resolution | 65 | |
| 4547810337 | fantasy | a genre of literary work featuring strange settings and characters and often involving magic or the supernatural | 66 | |
| 4547812273 | farce | a literary work characterized by broad humor, wild antics, and often physical humor | 67 | |
| 4547813516 | fiction | any narrative about invented or imagined characters and action | 68 | |
| 4547814434 | figurative language | language that uses figures of speech | 69 | |
| 4547814435 | figure of speech | any word or phrase that creates a "figure" in the mind of the reader | 70 | |
| 4547816832 | flashback | a plot device whereby a scene from the past is inserted into the present | 71 | |
| 4547818402 | flashforward | a plot device whereby a scene from the future is inserted into the present | 72 | |
| 4547819840 | focus | the visual component of point of view | 73 | |
| 4547820435 | foil | a character that serves as a contrast to another | 74 | |
| 4547820436 | foot | the basic unit of poetic meter, consisting of any of various fixed patterns of one to three stressed and unstressed syllables | 75 | |
| 4547822169 | foreshadowing | a hint or clue about what will happen at a later moment | 76 | |
| 4547822945 | free verse | poetry characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines | 77 | |
| 4547824669 | Freytag's pyramid | a diagram of plot structure | 78 | |
| 4547825328 | genre | a category of works sharing particular formal or textual features | 79 | |
| 4547827236 | gothic fiction | a subgenre of fiction conventionally featuring plots that involve secrets, mystery, and the supernatural | 80 | |
| 4547830485 | haiku | a poetic form that consists of seventeen syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables | 81 | |
| 4547831818 | hero/heroine | a character who is especially virtuous usually larger than life | 82 | |
| 4547833053 | hexameter | a line of poetry with six feet | 83 | |
| 4547834648 | historical fiction | a subgenre of fiction in which the time is significantly earlier than the time in which the work was written | 84 | |
| 4547836390 | iambic | referring to a metrical form in which each foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one | 85 | |
| 4547837630 | image/imagery | any sensory detail or evocation in a work | 86 | |
| 4547838621 | imitative poem/structure | a poem structured so as to mirror as exactly as possible the structure of something that already exists and can be seen | 87 | |
| 4547840326 | inciting incident | an action that sets a plot in motion by creating conflict | 88 | |
| 4547840934 | initiation story | a kind of short story in which a character, often a child, first learns a significant truth about the universe | 89 | |
| 4547842996 | in medias res | "in the midst of things"; refers to opening a plot in the middle of the action | 90 | |
| 4547844294 | irony | a situation characterized by a significant difference between what is expected and what actually happens | 91 | |
| 4547845195 | legend | a type of tale conventionally set in the real world based on historical events, and offering an exaggerated version of the truth about the events | 92 | |
| 4547847375 | limerick | a light or humorous verse form consisting of mainly anapestic lines of which the first, second, and fifth are of three feet; the third and fourth lines are of two feet; and the rhyme scheme is AABBA | 93 | |
| 4547850885 | literary criticism | the interpretive work written by readers of literary texts | 94 | |
| 4547852929 | litotes | a form of understatement in which one negates the contrary of what one means | 95 | |
| 4547854416 | lyric | a poem meant to be sung; any short poem in which the speaker expresses their thoughts and feelings in first person | 96 |
