Terms : Hide Images
| 6692599768 | allegory | an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, & settings represent abstract qualities & 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 | |
| 6692611337 | alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to one another; for example, "beautiful blossoms blooming between the bushes" | 1 | |
| 6692621081 | allusion | a reference to another work or famous figure assumed to be well known enough to be recognized by the reader | 2 | |
| 6692624864 | 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 a pump | 3 | |
| 6692631758 | apostrophe | 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 though somewhere within the poem | 4 | |
| 6692640864 | ballad | a long narrative poem that presents a single dramatic episode, which is often tragic or violent | 5 | |
| 6692645054 | blank verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, a favorite form used by Shakespeare | 6 | |
| 6692649797 | catharsis | the emotional release that an audience member experiences as a result of watching a tragedy | 7 | |
| 6692654774 | elegy | a form poem focusing on death or morality, usually beginning with the recent death of a particular person | 8 | |
| 6692658628 | figurative language | language that contains figures of speech such as similes & metaphors in order to create associations that are imaginative rather than literal | 9 | |
| 6692668628 | foil | a character who, by contrast, highlights the characteristics of another character | 10 | |
| 6692675167 | foreshadowing | the use of a hint or clue to suggest a larger event that occurs later in the work | 11 | |
| 6692677750 | hubris | the excessive pride of ambition that leads a tragic hero to disregard warnings of impending doom, eventually causing his or her downfall | 12 | |
| 6692682594 | 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 | 13 | |
| 6692687475 | irony | a situation or statement in which the actual outcome or meaning is opposite to what was exceeded | 14 | |
| 6692693055 | lyric | a type of melodious, imaginative, & subjective poetry that is usually short & personal, expressing the thoughts & feelings of a single speaker rather than telling a story | 15 | |
| 6692699855 | metaphor | a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to as another, for example, "my love is a fragile flower" | 16 | |
| 6692705370 | 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 | 17 | |
| 6692714105 | mood | similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work | 18 | |
| 6692718872 | ode | a long lyric poem, usually serious, & elevated in tone; often written to praise someone or something | 19 | |
| 6692723114 | oxymoron | a figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as "wise fool" | 20 | |
| 6692728939 | paradox | a statement that seems to contradict itself but that turns out to have a rational meaning, as in Thoreau's: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." | 21 | |
| 6692739126 | personification | the attribution of human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object | 22 | |
| 6692742547 | point of view | the perspective from which a story is presented | 23 | |
| 6692745779 | refrain | a line or group of lines that are periodically repeated throughout a poem | 24 | |
| 6692750053 | regionalism | an element in literature that conveys a realistic portrayal of a specific geographical locale, using the locale & its influences as a major part of the plot | 25 | |
| 6692759772 | sarcasm | harsh, caustic personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony | 26 | |
| 6692762968 | simile | uses like, as, or as if to make a direct comparison | 27 | |
| 6692766423 | soliloquy | speech spoken by a character alone on stage, giving the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts | 28 | |
| 6692773576 | stereotype | a character who represents a trait that is usually attributed to a particular social or racial group & lacks individuality | 29 | |
| 6692887862 | symbol/symbolism | generally, anything that represents or stands for something else | 30 | |
| 6692890005 | synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent a whole, such as using "boards" to mean "a stage" | 31 | |
| 6692900939 | theme | the central idea or message of a literary work | 32 | |
| 6692913488 | tragic flaw | the one weakness that causes the downfall of the hero in a tragedy | 33 | |
| 6692917065 | voice | the way a written work conveys an author's attitude | 34 | |
| 6692920552 | villanelle | a closed form poem of nineteen lines, composed of five tercets & a concluding quatrain | 35 | |
| 6692933066 | sestina | a poem with six stanzas of six lines & a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern | 36 | |
| 6692941116 | enjambment | carrying the poetic line to another line before completing the thought | 37 | |
| 6692943065 | synesthesia | using words that relate to one of the five senses to describe a situation from another of the five senses | 38 | |
| 6692948121 | octave | the first eight lines of an Italian sonnet, unified by topic, rhythm, & rhyme | 39 | |
| 6692951986 | sestet | the last six lines of an Italian sonnet | 40 |
