Terms : Hide Images
| 4381758791 | Allegory | Symbolic narrative in which surface details imply secondary meaning. Often takes form of story in which characters represent moral qualities. | 0 | |
| 4381779092 | Alliteration | Repetition of consonant sounds (especially at the beginning of words) | 1 | |
| 4381784128 | Anapest | Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one (ex. "com-pre-HEND" or "in-ter-VENE") | 2 | |
| 4381802747 | Assonance | Repetition of similar vowel sounds (ex. "I rose and told him of my woe") | 3 | |
| 4381828262 | Ballad | Narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. Stories of hardship, love, tragedy, etc are common. | 4 | |
| 4381855375 | Blank Verse | Line of poetry or prose in UNRHYMED iambic pentameter | 5 | |
| 4381875125 | Caesura | Strong pause within a line of verse (ex. "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, / Off-hand-like --just as I-- / Was out of work-had sold his traps -- / No other reason why") | 6 | |
| 4381892516 | Climax | Turning point of action in a plot of play or story. Point of greatest tension in a work. | 7 | |
| 4381898100 | Closed Form | Type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in elements such as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. | 8 | |
| 4381908837 | Connotation | Associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning | 9 | |
| 4381915595 | Convention | Customary feature of a literary work. Defining features of particular literary genres (ex. chorus in Greek tragedies, explicit moral in fables, certain rhyme scheme in villanelles, etc) | 10 | |
| 4381931981 | Couplet | Pair of rhymed lines (usually at end of Shakespeare's sonnets) | 11 | |
| 4381938206 | Dactyl | Stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones (ex. "FLUT-ter-ring" or "BLUE-ber-ry") | 12 | |
| 4381945915 | Denotation | Dictionary meaning | 13 | |
| 4381952197 | Diction | Author's choice of words | 14 | |
| 4381954878 | Elegy | Lyric poem that laments the dead | 15 | |
| 4381956922 | Elision | Omission of unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry | 16 | |
| 4381964687 | Enjambment | Run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next (ex. "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she were alive. I call / That piece a wonder, now...") | 17 | |
| 4381980328 | Epic | Long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero (ex. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) | 18 | |
| 4381994110 | Epigram | Brief witty poem, often satirical | 19 | |
| 4382002622 | Flashback | Interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame | 20 | |
| 4382019446 | Foot | Metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables | 21 | |
| 4382029198 | Foreshadowing | Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or story | 22 | |
| 4382031610 | Free verse | Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. Not bound by early poetic conventions (common with modern and contemporary poets of 20th/21st century) | 23 | |
| 4382045049 | Hyperbole | Exaggeration | 24 | |
| 4382047711 | Iamb | An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (ex. "to-DAY") | 25 | |
| 4382052563 | Irony | Contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen | 26 | |
| 4382060692 | Lyric Poem | Type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and expression of feeling | 27 | |
| 4382064603 | Metaphor | Comparison between essentially unlike things WITHOUT comparative word such as "like" or "as" | 28 | |
| 4382071943 | Meter | Measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poetry | 29 | |
| 4382074749 | Metonymy | Figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea (ex. "We have always remained loyal to the crown" ...crown = king) | 30 | |
| 4388661809 | Narrative Poem | Poem that tells a story | 31 | |
| 4388663279 | Octave | Eight-lined unit, which may constitute a stanza | 32 | |
| 4388710151 | Ode | Long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject. | 33 | |
| 4388713404 | Onomatopoeia | Use of words to imitate sounds they describe | 34 | |
| 4388722836 | Open Form | Type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. | 35 | |
| 4388731087 | Parody | Humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation | 36 | |
| 4388735633 | Personification | Endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities | 37 | |
| 4388744221 | Pyrrhic | Metrical foot with two unstressed syllables | 38 | |
| 4388751206 | Quatrain | Four-line stanza in a poem | 39 | |
| 4388754769 | Recognition | Point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is | 40 | |
| 4388765529 | Reversal | Point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist | 41 | |
| 4388776666 | Rising Meter | Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to stressed syllable | 42 | |
| 4388816613 | Satire | Literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies | 43 | |
| 4388819372 | Sestet | Six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem. Last six-lines of an Italian sonnet. | 44 | |
| 4388825351 | Sestina | Poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line. | 45 | |
| 4388834233 | Simile | Figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using "like", "as", or "as though" | 46 | |
| 4388844496 | Sonnet | Fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. Shakespearean or English is arranged as three quatrains and a couplet (rhyme: abab). Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: eight line octave and six-line sestet (rhyme: abba) | 47 | |
| 4388860472 | Spondee | Metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables | 48 | |
| 4388863615 | Synecdoche | Figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole | 49 | |
| 4388867107 | Tercet | Three-line stanza | 50 | |
| 4388875693 | Trochee | Accented syllable followed by an unaccented one | 51 | |
| 4388882257 | Understatement | Writer or speaker says less than what he or she means | 52 | |
| 4388883836 | Villanelle | Nineteen line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition | 53 |
