Terms : Hide Images
| 6459185989 | prosody | the patterns of rhythm and sounds used in poetry; patterns of stress and intonation | 0 | |
| 6459215229 | onomatopoeia | verbal sounds that are meant to mimic things imaginatively heard in the world ex: Dickinson's repeated short "u" sound to mimic buzzing | 1 | |
| 6459230039 | euphony | the impression of sounds that are pleasing to the ear | 2 | |
| 6459230970 | cacophony | sounds that are unpleasant and grating | 3 | |
| 6459233842 | liquids | "r" and "l" sounds that roll in a flowing movement off the tongue ex: I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. | 4 | |
| 6459240908 | nasals | "m", "n", and "ng" sounds ex: The murmuring of innumerable bees. | 5 | |
| 6459246690 | fricatives | "h", "f", "c", "th", "dh" harsh, rasping sounds | 6 | |
| 6459261042 | sibilants | "s", "z", "sh", "zh" sounds | 7 | |
| 6459265919 | stops and plosives | hard "p", "h", "t", "d", "k", "g" sounds ex: "bend/Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new" | 8 | |
| 6459272181 | alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of successive words (internal) and within adjacent words (external). | 9 | |
| 6459274589 | assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in a line. Bears a more aural character than its compliment. | 10 | |
| 6459315407 | pure rhyme | heard likenesses and difference linking two or more words; exact match of vowel sounds | 11 | |
| 6459318338 | masculine rhyme | monosyllabic rhyme when rhyming sounds falls on final, unstressed syllable ex: desire/aspire | 12 | |
| 6459324852 | feminine rhyme | rhyming words with two syllables, where second syllable is unstressed ex: sleeping/peeping | 13 | |
| 6459330803 | end rhyme | rhyming at the end of a line | 14 | |
| 6459336759 | internal rhyme | rhyming words within lines and across adjacent lines ex: "Double, double toil and trouble;/ Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." | 15 | |
| 6459358357 | half, near or slant rhyme | used to express minor and dissonant tonalities | 16 | |
| 6459361445 | consonance | repetition of the initial and terminal consonants surrounding a medial vowel to create echoing effect ex: blade/blood, flash/flesh, leads/lads | 17 | |
| 6459377168 | meter | the particular kinds of rhythm found in verse i.e. iambic pentameter | 18 | |
| 6459379162 | rhyme | general pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables found in verse; describes the flow of the stresses within the dominant meter of the line | 19 | |
| 6459467845 | accentual (strong-stress) meter | characterizes Old English poetry; two stresses in first and second half of hemistich, middle of lines marked by caesural pause (||), 3/4 stresses are alliterations | 20 | |
| 6459483280 | hemistich | a half of a line of verse; characteristic of accentual meter | 21 | |
| 6459747596 | caesura | a break between words within a metrical foot; a pause near the middle of a line | 22 | |
| 6459500802 | accentual-syllabic meter | Verse whose meter is determined by the number and alternation of its stressed and unstressed syllables, organized into poetic feet. | 23 | |
| 6459509216 | poetic foot | basic unit of measurement of accentual-syllabic meter; contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable | 24 | |
| 6459518927 | iambic foot | made up of an unaccented and an accented syllable | 25 | |
| 6459532049 | scansion | a diagram interpreting the measure of poetic feet-- including the accented an unaccented syllables-- in a given line, stanza, or poem | 26 | |
| 6459626300 | iambic penamter | most typical metric line in which sonnets are generally written | 27 | |
| 6459641413 | trope | A word or expression used in a figurative sense. ex: figures of speech such as "making a killing" | 28 | |
| 6459651555 | metaphor | a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable | 29 | |
| 6459675195 | extended metaphor | The use of a metaphor throughout a long passage or poem. | 30 | |
| 6459680907 | simile | A type of figurative language that renders likenesses more explicit than metaphor through the linking terms like or as. | 31 | |
| 6459688098 | personification | Used for dramatic effect to attribute life or human aspects to what are otherwise inanimate objects, abstractions, or nonhuman creatures. | 32 | |
| 6459699428 | prosopopoeia | a rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer communicates to the audience by speaking as another person or object. ex: wisdom is personified and speaks to reader | 33 | |
| 6459703792 | apostrophe | special, performative instance of prosopopoeia which invokes personified meaning by addressing an abstract thing as present in human terms ex: Death | 34 | |
| 6459714867 | synesthesia | a blending of physical sensation where one of the perceptual senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch is described in the terms of another | 35 | |
| 6459722167 | metonymy | a word substituted for another word or thing we associate with it i.e. substitute throne for term king | 36 | |
| 6459725369 | synecdoche | a type of metonymy that substitutes a part of something for the whole designated i.e. hired hands refers to workmen or head to cattle | 37 | |
| 6459735259 | setting | the physical, environmental, social, historical, and cultural contexts described in a story as the scene of its action | 38 | |
| 6459759779 | protagonist | characters who serve as he primary actors in a story and with whom readers are invited to sympathize; tells a lot about story's plot and themes | 39 | |
| 6459768015 | antagonist | character who opposes the protagonist or whose actions conflict with the protagonist's aims or desires | 40 | |
| 6459776194 | minor character | produces a sense of time, place, and atmosphere or help with development of plot details; often emphasize a main character's idiosyncrasies | 41 | |
| 6459783287 | stereotypical (stock) character | presents a familiar type | 42 | |
| 6459783288 | allegorical character | a character that stands for a concept, position, or aspect of personality | 43 | |
| 6459787199 | structural character | serves as protagonist, antagonist, or narrator | 44 | |
| 6459796207 | dynamic character | 45 | ||
| 6459796208 | flat character | an easily recognized character type in fiction who may not be fully delineated but is useful in carrying out some narrative purpose of the author. | 46 | |
| 6459801328 | round character | A character who demonstrates some complexity and who develops or changes in the course of a work | 47 | |
| 6459801329 | static character | a literary or dramatic character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not grow or develop. | 48 | |
| 6459803241 | archetype | the basic model for a a particular character in a myth | 49 | |
| 6459855864 | foil | A character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character with the objective to highlight the traits of the other character. | 50 | |
| 6459855865 | hubris | Excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy ex: hubris of man | 51 | |
| 6459857146 | climax | Moment of great emotional intensity or suspense in a plot | 52 | |
| 6459857147 | rising action | Events leading up to the climax | 53 | |
| 6459858195 | falling action | Events after the climax, leading to the resolution | 54 | |
| 6459858196 | connotation | All the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests; an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning | 55 | |
| 6459858197 | denotation | Literal meaning of a word | 56 | |
| 6459860003 | dialect | A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. | 57 | |
| 6459860004 | diction | An author's choice of words, phrases, sentence structures and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning and tone. | 58 | |
| 6459860005 | epigram | A brief witty poem or statement, often satirical. | 59 | |
| 6459860006 | inversion | A sentence in which the verb precedes the subject. | 60 | |
| 6459861226 | dramatic irony | Irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play. | 61 | |
| 6459861227 | situational irony | contrast between what a reader or character expects and what actually exists or happens | 62 | |
| 6459862796 | verbal irony | Irony in which a person says or writes one thing and means another, or uses words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning. | 63 | |
| 6459862797 | mood | Feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage | 64 | |
| 6459862798 | paradox | A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity. | 65 | |
| 6459864468 | satire | A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. | 66 | |
| 6459864469 | tone | A writer's attitude toward his or her subject matter revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization on the sentence and global levels. | 67 | |
| 6459864470 | voice | The fluency, rhythm, and liveliness in a text that make it unique to the author and gives personality. | 68 | |
| 6459866517 | anticlimax | letdown in thought or emotion; something unexciting, ordinary, or disappointing coming after something important or exciting | 69 | |
| 6459868152 | flashback | A scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence of events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time | 70 | |
| 6459868153 | narrative voice, narrator | creates sense of the scene of the story's telling; part of the story itself | 71 | |
| 6459869459 | point of view | when a third-person limited narrator narrates as if from the perspective of a single character; sense that we are seeing events as though a particular character in a story | 72 | |
| 6459869460 | first person narrator | narrator that is present in the story as a participating character | 73 | |
| 6459870770 | subjective | term to describe when a narrator's telling of events is not detached and unbiased, especially characteristic in 1st person | 74 | |
| 6459870771 | third-person omniscient | narrators who have a complete range of knowledge (important to consider why such a range of knowledge necessary) | 75 | |
| 6459874376 | third-person limited | unlimited knowledge limited to a few characters' subjective experiences | 76 | |
| 6459878667 | stream-of-consciousness | a literary style in which a character's thoughts, feelings, and reactions are depicted in a continuous flow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue | 77 | |
| 6459878668 | subplot | a minor plot that relates in some way to the main story | 78 | |
| 6459878669 | theme | the central message of a literary work. It is expressed as a sentence or general statement about life or human nature. A literary work can have more than one theme, and most themes are not directly stated but are implied: e.g., pride often precedes a fall. | 79 | |
| 6459878684 | allusion | A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art. | 80 | |
| 6459880654 | euphemism | An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant | 81 | |
| 6459880655 | hyperbole | A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement, often producing irony. | 82 | |
| 6459882179 | litotes | ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary ex: you won't be sorry | 83 | |
| 6459882180 | symbol | A thing that represents or stands for something else (larger than itself), especially a material object representing something abstract. Often a thematic device. | 84 | |
| 6459884468 | allegory | A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. | 85 | |
| 6459884469 | prose | written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure (anything that is not poetry). | 86 | |
| 6459886138 | verse | A single line of poetry | 87 | |
| 6459886139 | blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter | 88 | |
| 6459886140 | cadence | rhythm; the rise and fall of sounds | 89 | |
| 6459889189 | enjambment | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 90 | |
| 6459889190 | imagery | Descriptive or figurative language in a literary work; the use of language to create sensory impressions. | 91 | |
| 6459890867 | in media res | A piece of writing that begins in the middle of the action | 92 | |
| 6459890868 | lyric (poetry) | A short poem in which a single speaker expresses personal thoughts and feelings. | 93 | |
| 6459892609 | measure | meter (the unit of measure where the beats on the lines of the staff are divided up into two, three, four beats to a measure.) | 94 | |
| 6459895046 | couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. | 95 | |
| 6459898572 | English (Shakespearean) sonnet | condenses the 14 lines in one stanza of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG | 96 | |
| 6459898573 | Italian sonnet | A sonnet (14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter) that divides into an octave (8) and sestet (6) with a rhyme of ABBA ABBA CDCDCD. There is a "volta," or "turning" of the subject matter between | 97 | |
| 6459898574 | stanza | A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem | 98 | |
| 6459901093 | trochee | /u (opposite of iamb) | 99 | |
| 6459901094 | antithesis | A rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect. | 100 | |
| 6459902856 | complex sentence | A sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. The human brain never stops working until you stand up to speak in public. | 101 | |
| 6459902857 | ellipsis | the omission of a word or phrase, replaced by three periods, which is grammatically necessary but can be deduced from the context. | 102 | |
| 6459904810 | balanced sentence | a sentence in which words, phrases, or clauses are set off against each other to emphasize a contrast ex: George Orwell: "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." | 103 | |
| 6459907077 | inverted sentence | A sentence in which the subject follows the verb | 104 | |
| 6460118569 | frame narration | story begins with one narrator who describes another narrator telling the story | 105 | |
| 6460184304 | digesis | Narrator is explicitly present in a story | 106 | |
| 6460662970 | idiom | an accepted phrase or expression having a meaning different from the literal e.g., to drive someone up the wall. | 107 | |
| 6460669386 | oxymoron | a form of paradox that combines a pair of opposite terms into a single unusual expression: e.g., "sweet sorrow" or "cold fire." | 108 | |
| 6460671234 | foreshadowing | the use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest future action | 109 | |
| 6460674628 | rhetoric | the art of using words to persuade in writing or speaking | 110 | |
| 6460676907 | suspense | a quality that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. | 111 | |
| 6460986722 | simple sentence | sentence that has just one independent clause ex: Curiosity killed the cat. | 112 | |
| 6460990695 | compound-complex sentence | sentence that has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. ex: I stopped believing in Santa Claus when he asked for my autograph in a department store, but I still want to believe in him. | 113 | |
| 6460999389 | compound sentence | sentence that has at least two dependent clauses ex: I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific. | 114 |
