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| 5762070609 | Allegory | (Greek, "speaking otherwise"): writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. Acts as an extended metaphor in which persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves (literal level), but they also stand for something else (symbolic level).It usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual, literal events described in a narrative. Typically, it involves the interaction of multiple symbols, which together create a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. | 0 | |
| 5762070610 | Allusion | a brief reference to a commonly known historical or literary figure, event, object, place, or phrase. The writer assumes the reader will recognize the reference, but those that are easily recognized by readers in one era may require footnotes for readers in a later time. | 1 | |
| 5762070611 | Ambiance | loosely equivalent to atmosphere or mood; more specifically, the atmosphere or mood of a particular setting or location. | 2 | |
| 5762070612 | Ambiguity | the intentional creation of more than one meaning. In a given context, a word may convey not only a denotative meaning, but also connotative overtones. | 3 | |
| 5762070613 | Anachromism | placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. In the theater, this might happen when Shakespeare's plays are performed in Victorian, disco, or biker costumes. Another example is seeing a wristwatch on a gladiator from ancient Rome. | 4 | |
| 5762070614 | Analogy | A device explaining or describing something unfamiliar through a comparison with something more familiar. A simile is an expressed ____; a metaphor is an implied one. | 5 | |
| 5762070615 | Anecdote | a short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event. Has a single, definite point, and the setting, dialogue, and characters are usually subordinate to the point of the story. Writers may use these to clarify abstract points, to humanize individuals, or to create a memorable image in the reader's mind. | 6 | |
| 5762070616 | Archetype | A recurrent pattern in bodies of literature, such as the loss of paradise. | 7 | |
| 5762070617 | Bildungsroman | a novel in which an adolescent protagonist comes to adulthood by a process of experience and disillusionment. This character loses his or her innocence, discovers that previous preconceptions are false, or has the security of childhood torn away, but usually matures and strengthens by this process. Also called, coming-of-age story. | 8 | |
| 5762070618 | Black Vernacular | the ethnic dialect associated with Americans of African ancestry AKA "Black English." It is also known as "African American Vernacular English," and abbreviated AAVE in scholarly texts. | 9 | |
| 5762070619 | Bowdlerization | a later editor's censorship of sexuality, profanity, and political sentiment from an earlier author's text. Scholars use this term in a derogatory way to denote an inferior or incomplete text. The term comes from the name of Reverend Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) who produced The Family Shakespeare (1815-18). He removed whatever he considered "unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies." | 10 | |
| 5762070620 | Catharsis | an emotional discharge or cleansing that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, it is the ultimate end of any tragic artistic work—the audience is able to wash away emotions through the experience of the play, and their connection to the characters | 11 | |
| 5762070621 | Change of Being | a cosmological model of the universe common in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Great ____ was a fixed hierarchy with the Judeo-Christian God at the top of the chain and inanimate objects like stones and mud at the bottom. Intermediate beings and objects, such as angels, humans, animals, and plants, were arranged in descending order of intelligence, authority, and capability between the two extremes (God at the top, and mud at the bottom). It was believed to have been designed by God. | 12 | |
| 5762070622 | Round Characters | three-dimensional, fully developed characters | 13 | |
| 5762070623 | Flat Characters | having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work | 14 | |
| 5762070624 | Dynamic Characters | changing, developing characters | 15 | |
| 5762070625 | Static Characters | unchanging characters | 16 | |
| 5762070626 | Circular Structure | a type of narrative structure in which a sense of completeness or closure does not come from a "conclusion" that breaks with the earlier story. Instead, the end of a piece returns to subject matter, wording, or phrasing found at the beginning of the narrative, play, or poem. In many ways, the smaller tales within a larger frame narrative (like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God) act as part of this, breaking the reader away from the beginning narrative and then returning the reader to the larger frame-narrative. | 17 | |
| 5762070627 | Cliche | an expression that is used so often that it loses its freshness and clarity | 18 | |
| 5762070628 | Colloquialism | a word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing | 19 | |
| 5762070629 | Dues Ex Machina | (translated: "god out of the machine") a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object. For example, in Jane Eyre when Jane suddenly inherits a great sum of money from an uncle she never met, right when the money is most needed. | 20 | |
| 5762070630 | Didactic Literature | writing that is "preachy" or seeks to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson. | 21 | |
| 5762070631 | Dialect | Speech within the same language with marked social or regional differences | 22 | |
| 5762070632 | Dialogue | the lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters. | 23 | |
| 5762070633 | Diction | an author's choice of words in a sentence or passage | 24 | |
| 5762070634 | Denotation | the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with this | 25 | |
| 5762070635 | Connotation | the "feeling" a word brings about; the emotions, values, or images associated with a word. | 26 | |
| 5762070636 | Abstract Language | refers to things that are intangible (cannot be perceived or felt through the five senses, but are "understood" by the mind). Ex: God, education, vice, transportation, poetry, war, and love | 27 | |
| 5762070637 | Concrete Language | identifies things perceived through the five senses (touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste). Ex: soft, stench, red, loud, and bitter | 28 | |
| 5762070638 | Aside | Used in drama (plays), it is a few lines spoken by one character to the audience. During one of these, the other actors on stage pretend their characters cannot hear the speaker's words. It can be contrasted with a soliloquy, when only one actor is present on stage, and is usually indicated by stage directions | 29 | |
| 5762070639 | Foil | Used in drama (plays), a character that serves to highlight or emphasize opposing traits, usually by contrasting with a major character. Examples include: Kate/Bianca in Taming of the Shrew, Sister Aloysius/Sister James in Doubt, and even Sydney Carton/Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities | 30 | |
| 5762070640 | Monologue | a character speaking aloud, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage | 31 | |
| 5762070641 | Soliloquy | a monologue spoken by an actor on stage, usually at a point in the play when the actor believes himself to be alone. It usually reveals a character's innermost thoughts, feelings, state of mind, or motives and intentions; many times, the speech provides necessary information to the audience. Unlike the aside, this is not usually indicated by specific stage directions. | 32 | |
| 5762070642 | Epigram | A memorable saying, which is usually both witty and poignant. Often used for satire, and Oscar Wilde is considered a master at the form. Wilde wrote, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple" and "I can resist anything but temptation." | 33 | |
| 5762070643 | Epiphany | A realization by a fictional character about the essential nature or being of an event; a sudden perception and intuitive flash of recognition. James Joyce first used the term, and it applies to the ending of his short story, "Araby." | 34 | |
| 5762070644 | Euphemism | A term that replaces a more direct statement to avoid giving offense (e.g., "passed away" rather than "died"). Often the result of excessive modesty, but may also be interpreted as ironic. | 35 | |
| 5762070645 | Existentialism | a 20th century philosophy arguing that ethical human beings are cursed with absolute free will in a purposeless universe. Believe that individuals must create their own meaning in life, instead of relying on religious, political, and social conventions. If the universe is essentially meaningless, and human existence does not matter in the long run, then the only thing that can ensure morality is humanity itself, and neglecting to do this is neglecting our human duty to ourselves and to each other. Cormac McCarthy's The Road deals with many of these questions as the Man and Boy navigate their environment after an apocalyptic event. | 36 | |
| 5762070646 | Foreshadowing | Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing an event or outcome that will occur later in a narrative | 37 | |
| 5762070647 | Flashback | Material presented that occurred prior to the opening scene or chapter. It may take the form of the interior recollection of characters, narration by characters, or dream sequences | 38 | |
| 5762070648 | Frame Narrative | a framework for another story or stories (like a bookend that "frames" the story's beginning and its ending). Usually explains or sets up the inside story; often the narrative returns to the frame situation to provide closure at the end. Examples include: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (the letters of Captain Robert Walton introduce and end the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster). | 39 | |
| 5762070649 | Implied Audience | the "you" a writer or poet refers to or implies when creating a dramatic monologue. This might be the reader, or the vague outline of a character that is not detailed in the text. The reader gradually learns who the speaker addresses by taking clues from the speaker. | 40 | |
| 5762070650 | Interior Monologue | A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order the thoughts occur in the character's head. The author does not help to untangle the thoughts or make them logical to the reader. This form of stream of consciousness is illogical, moving by association; it is as if the reader "overhears" the thoughts of the character. | 41 | |
| 5762070651 | In Media Res | (Latin, "in the middle of things"): Classical tradition of opening an epic at the midpoint of a story (instead of at the beginning). Usually, it's is used in a mystery to enhance suspense. | 42 | |
| 5762070652 | Irony | a literary device that presents a conflict between appearance and reality. May be intentional or unintentional on the part of a character, but is always intentional when used by the author. | 43 | |
| 5762070653 | Verbal Irony | when a speaker makes a statement in which the actual meaning is different (the opposite of) the meaning that the words express. This type is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not recognize the speaker's tone. | 44 | |
| 5762070654 | Dramatic Irony | involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something that the character does not know about present or future circumstances. The character may act in a way that is inappropriate to the actual circumstance, expect the opposite of what fate intends, or anticipate an outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way (example: Oedipus Rex). | 45 | |
| 5762070655 | Situational Irony | when accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. Both the victim and the audience are aware of the ironic situation. | 46 | |
| 5762070656 | Cosmic Irony | the idea that fate, destiny, or a god controls and toys with human hopes and expectations. It suggests that the vast universe is indifferent to the plight of man (example: Oedipus' fate at the hands of the Oracle at Delphi, or Macbeth's fate as determined by the witches). | 47 | |
| 5762070657 | Juxtaposition | Placing side by side, usually to achieve a particular effect. If two incongruous words are placed together, the effect may be irony. Ex: Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness" | 48 | |
| 5762070658 | Magical Realism | These postmodern writers mingle real events with fantasies, or experiment with shifts in time and setting. The mixture creates some dreamlike and bizarre effects in their work. In the 1940s and 1950s, the term applied to the prose fiction of writers like Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia), and Alejo Carpentier (Cuba). | 49 | |
| 5762070659 | Motif | a recurring object, concept, symbol, or structure in a work of literature. May also consist of two contrasting elements in a work, such as good and evil. An example of this can be seen in the biblical ____ of water. | 50 | |
| 5762070660 | Narrator | The "voice" that speaks or tells a story. Some stories are written in a first-person point of view while others are told in third-person. | 51 | |
| 5762070661 | Unreliable Narrator | reveals an interpretation of events that is different from the author's interpretation of those events. Often, the ____'s perception of plot, characters, and setting becomes the subject of the story ("Bartleby, the Scrivener). May be like this because of a lack of self-knowledge, inexperience, or insanity. | 52 | |
| 5762070662 | Naive Narrator | usually characterized by youthful innocence | 53 | |
| 5762070663 | Omniscient Narrator | all-knowing perspective who is not a character in the story and can move from place to place and back and forth through time; they can slip into and out of characters in a way that no human being could. Can report the thoughts and feelings of characters, as well as their words and actions. | 54 | |
| 5762070664 | Editorial Omniscience | refers to an intrusion by the narrator in order to evaluate a character for the reader | 55 | |
| 5762070665 | Neutral Omniscience | more common, allowing the character's thoughts and feelings to speak for themselves. | 56 | |
| 5762070666 | Limited Omniscient Narrator | restricted to the single perspective of a major or minor character. Sometimes,they can see into more than one character, particularly in a work that focuses on characters alternately from one chapter to the next | 57 | |
| 5762070667 | Oxymoron | A Greek word meaning dull/sharp, this rhetorical device is a self-contradictory combination of words. Examples: open secret, jumbo shrimp, tragic comedy, awfully pretty, calmly rushing, foolish wisdom, and original copy. | 58 | |
| 5762070668 | Paradox | This rhetorical device is a seemingly contradictory or absurd statement that is actually well-founded, often with unexpected meaning, and always pointing to a truth. Epigrams are based on paradoxes. Ex from Hamlet: "I must be cruel to be kind." The statement seems like a contradiction, but Hamlet intends to kill Claudius (his mother's new husband) in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet does not want his mother to be married to his father's murderer any longer, and so he thinks (paradoxically!) that the murder will be good for his mother. | 59 | |
| 5762070669 | Persona | Literally, a mask. The "second self" created by the author through whom the story is told; the implied author. Like a "character" that doesn't match the assumed philosophy or point of view of the author/poet. | 60 | |
| 5762070670 | Exposition | the beginning of a story in which the main characters, conflicts, and setting are introduced. | 61 | |
| 5762070671 | Rhetorical Devices | figures of speech that are not the figurative language of metaphor. These include anaphora, antithesis, apostrophe, parallelism, balance, pun, and the rhetorical question. | 62 | |
| 5762070672 | Sarcasm | The caustic or bitter expression of strong disapproval. Personal, jeering, intended to hurt. It is not to be confused with verbal irony. | 63 | |
| 5762070673 | Satire | A mode of writing that blends a critical attitude with witty word play and humor, and appeals to the intellect rather than emotions. It depends largely on irony, and uses distortion, hyperbole, and understatement, as well as caricature to make its subject ridiculous. | 64 | |
| 5762070674 | Horatian Satire | tolerant, amused, and witty. It gently ridicules human absurdities and follies. | 65 | |
| 5762070675 | Juvenalian Satire | attacks vice and error with contempt and indignation. It is realistic and harsh in tone. | 66 | |
| 5762070676 | Parody | The imitation of a serious piece of literature meant to ridicule the work, its style, or its author. Related to the caricature or cartoon in the visual arts. | 67 | |
| 5762070677 | Schemes | Figures of speech that deal with word order, syntax, letters, and sounds, rather than the meaning of words | 68 | |
| 5762070678 | Parallelism | when the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. Ex: "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable." Use of adjectives demonstrates this term in the previous sentence. | 69 | |
| 5762070679 | Antithesis | contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites: "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Or it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind." | 70 | |
| 5762070680 | Antimetabole | repetition in reverse order: "One should eat to live, not live to eat." Or, "You like it; it likes you." The witches in that Scottish play chant, "Fair is foul and foul is fair." Often overlaps with chiasmus. | 71 | |
| 5762070681 | Chiasmus | (from Greek, "cross" or "x"): A literary scheme involving a specific inversion of word order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern. Ex: "By day the frolic, and the dance by night." If we draw the words as a chart, the words form an "x." | 72 | |
| 5762070682 | Hyperbaton | a generic term for changing the normal or expected order of words. "One ad does not a survey make." The term comes from the Greek for "overstepping" because one or more words "overstep" their normal position and appear elsewhere. | 73 | |
| 5762070683 | Ellipsis | omitting a word implied by the previous clause: "The European soldiers killed six of the remaining villagers, the American soldiers, eight." | 74 | |
| 5762070684 | Asyndeton | using no conjunctions to create an effect of speed or simplicity. Ex: Veni. Vidi. Vici. "I came. I saw. I conquered." (As opposed to "I came, and then I saw, and then I conquered.") Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt. | 75 | |
| 5762070685 | Polysyndeton | using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect: "This term, I am taking biology and English and history and math and music and physics and sociology." All those ands make the student sound like she is completely overwhelmed. | 76 | |
| 5762070686 | Bathos | usually used humorously. Here, the least important item appears anticlimactically in a place where the reader expects something grand or dramatic. Ex: "I am making a stand in this workplace for human decency, professional integrity, and free doughnuts at lunch-break." (the opposite of auxesis; not to be confused with pathos) | 77 | |
| 5762070687 | Epistrophe | repetition of a concluding word or endings: "He's learning fast; are you earning fast?" When the ____ focuses on sounds rather than entire words, we normally call it rhyme. | 78 | |
| 5762070688 | Epanalepsis | repeating a word from the beginning of a clause at the end of the clause: "Year chases year." Or "Man's inhumanity to man." As Voltaire reminds us, "Common sense is not so common." As Shakespeare chillingly phrases it, "Blood will have blood." | 79 | |
| 5762070689 | Anadiplosis | repeating the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next clause. Ex: "Talent is an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment." Extended ___ is called Gradatio. Ex: "Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not allowed." Gradatio creates a rhythmical pattern to carry the reader along the text, and establishes a connection between words. | 80 | |
| 5762070690 | Stream of Consciousness | a technique that presents the continuous flow of images, ideas, thoughts, and feelings of a character as they run through his or her mind. It is presented like the "overhearing" of one's thoughts, and can sometimes feel disjointed for readers. Associated with the Modernist genre, at the turn of the twentieth century, before the start of World War I. Virginia Woolf, a well-known practitioner of the style, remarked that "on or about December 1910, human character changed." Modernism continued into the 1960s. | 81 | |
| 5762070691 | Symbol | an object that has significance outside of itself; a tangible item that "stands for" a more abstract idea. | 82 | |
| 5762070692 | Syntax | the "orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas." The standard word order and sentence structure of a language (as opposed to diction, the choice of words, or content, the meaning of the words). Standard English prefers a subject-verb-object pattern. | 83 | |
| 5762070693 | Tropes | figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of words (as opposed to schemes which deal with word patterns). | 84 | |
| 5762070694 | Apostrophe | addressing someone or some abstraction that is not physically present: "Oh, Death, be not proud" (John Donne) | 85 | |
| 5762070695 | Puns | somehow twists the meaning of words. Some depend on homophones (Hamlet's "I am too much i' the sun" uses the word sun, but suggests Hamlet's status as a son, of his dead father and, by extension, to his Uncle Claudius). Also deal with sound similarities -- "Casting perils before swains" (instead of "pearls before swine"). At the end of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack plays with the word earnest and the name Ernest, saying, "On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest." | 86 | |
| 5762070696 | Understatement | opposite of exaggeration. Ex: "I was somewhat worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw" (I was terrified!). Litotes (especially popular in Old English) is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in the negative to create the effect: "You know, Einstein is not a bad mathematician" (Einstein is a good mathematician). | 87 | |
| 5762070697 | Verisimilitude | the sense that what one reads is "real" (or at least realistic and believable). The reader possesses a sense of this when a character cuts his finger in a story and it bleeds. If the finger produced sparks of fire, the story would not possess this term. Fantasy and science fiction can have this quality if the reader can suspend disbelief while reading. | 88 | |
| 5762070698 | Voice (Active and Passive) | In the active, the subject of the sentence acts upon something or someone. In the passive, the subject is acted upon. Ex: The crew paved the entire stretch of highway (active). The entire stretch of highway was paved by the crew (passive). Mom read the novel in one day (active). The novel was read by Mom in one day (passive). The critic wrote a scathing review (active). A scathing review was written by the critic (passive). | 89 | |
| 5762070699 | Alliteration | repetition of a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound. Ex: "buckets of big blueberries," "apt alliteration's artful aid" | 90 | |
| 5762070700 | Anaphora | repetition of the same word or words at the start of two or more lines of poetry | 91 | |
| 5762070701 | Assonance | repetition of vowel sounds. When it occurs at the end of lines, assonance does not have the same consonant sounds, so it is not full rhyme | 92 | |
| 5762070702 | Aubade | a genre of poetry in which the poem's subject is about the dawn or the coming of the dawn, or it is a piece of music meant to be sung or played outdoors at dawn. Also called a dawn song | 93 | |
| 5762070703 | Beat | a heavy stress or accent in a line of poetry. The number of beats or stresses in a line usually determines the meter of the line. | 94 | |
| 5762070704 | Caesura | a pause in a line of poetry created not by the meter, but by the natural speaking rhythm, sometimes coinciding with punctuation | 95 | |
| 5762070705 | Concrete Poetry | poetry that draws much of its power from the way the text appears situated on the page. The actual shape of the lines of text may create a swan's neck, an altar, a geometric pattern, or a set of wings, which connects to the meaning of the words in a direct way. | 96 | |
| 5762070706 | Consonance | a type of alliteration in which the repeated pattern of consonants is marked by changes in intervening vowels. At the end of a line of poetry, consonance is not full rhyme. Ex: "linger, longer, languor" or "rider, reader, raider, ruder" | 97 | |
| 5762070707 | End Rhyme | rhyme in which the last word at the end of each verse is the word that rhymes. | 98 | |
| 5762070708 | Internal Rhyme | rhyme in which a word in the middle of each line of verse rhymes | 99 | |
| 5762070709 | End Stopped Line | a poetic line that has a pause at the end. End-stopped lines reflect normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation. Ex: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" | 100 | |
| 5762070710 | Enjambment/Run-On Line | From the French meaning "a stride over," a line without pause or end punctuation, having uninterrupted grammatical meaning continuing into the next line. Ex: "My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky" | 101 | |
| 5762070711 | Euphony | Euphonious sounds are pleasant. Unlike the cacophonous, such sounds are easy to articulate. Though sound cannot be separated from meaning, in general, voiced consonants (b, d, g, v, z) are softer than the abrupt sounds of the unvoiced (p, t, k, f, s) | 102 | |
| 5762070712 | Exact/Full/Perfect/True Rhyme | two words in which both the consonant sounds and vowel sounds match to create a rhyme. The term "exact" is sometimes used more specifically to refer to two homophones that are spelled differently but pronounced identically at the end of lines. Ex: pain/pane, time/thyme, rain/reign, bough/bow. However, it is equally common to use the term exact rhyme in reference to any close rhyme such as line/mine, dig/pig etc. | 103 | |
| 5762070713 | Figurative Language | changes the literal meaning of a word or phrase in order to: 1) make a meaning fresh or clear, (2) express complexity, (3) capture a physical or sensory effect, or (4) extend meaning. It is displayed in figures of speech. | 104 | |
| 5762070714 | Foot | Metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. | 105 | |
| 5762070715 | Form | The organization or pattern of the "parts" of a work of literature, in relation to the total effect. Verse form refers to rhythmic units; stanza form refers to groups of lines; open form refers to free-verse poems that do not follow a conventional pattern, but have an organic form | 106 | |
| 5762070716 | Ballad | a narrative poem that often uses common meter and can include a refrain | 107 | |
| 5762070717 | Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is marked by freedom from rhyme, a shifting caesura and frequent enjambment, producing verse paragraphs more often than stanzas | 108 | |
| 5762070718 | Continuous Form | poetry not divided into stanzas | 109 | |
| 5762070719 | Elegy | A formal poem meditating on death or another solemn theme, often a lamentation for a particular person | 110 | |
| 5762070720 | Free Verse | Poetry without a regular pattern of meter and rhyme | 111 | |
| 5762070721 | Lyric Verse | A short poem expressing an emotional state or a process of though. It is often melodic and euphonious, and creates a single, unified impression. Sonnets, odes and elegies are lyrics; it is the most frequently used poetic expression | 112 | |
| 5762070722 | Ode | Exalted lyric verse that is elaborate, solemn and stately. Having formal divisions in classical poetry, modern odes tend to have no set form. The ode often uses apostrophe and is typically a public poem with a lofty subject | 113 | |
| 5762070723 | Sestina | A fixed poetic form of six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It is unrhymed, but has a fixed pattern of end words in a different sequence each stanza. The envoy uses three of the words at the ends of its three lines, and the other three somewhere within the lines | 114 | |
| 5762070724 | Elizabethan or Shakespearean Sonnet | A fourteen line poem, broken into an octave and a sestet, divided into three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. | 115 | |
| 5762070725 | Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet | A fourteen line poem, broken into an octave and a sestet, with no more than five lines abbaabba cdecde. A variation with four rhymes is abbaacca cdcdcd. he lines fall into groups that are not rhyme groups, thus avoiding couplets (ab-ba, ac-ca). The is a marked turn at the end of the octave from the question to answer, narrative to comment, or proposition to application. | 116 | |
| 5762070726 | Villanelle | A fixed form borrowed from early French poetry with nineteen lines (five stanzas of 3 lines, a last stanza of 4 lines) of any length or meter and two rhymes only (aba) employed in a set pattern. Line 1 is repeated as lines 6, 12 and 18. Line 3 is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19. | 117 | |
| 5762070727 | Iamb | a unit or foot of poetry that consists of a ligtly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed syllable. Ex: behold, restore, amuse, arise, awake, return, support, depict, destroy, inject, inscribe, insist, inspire, unwashed | 118 | |
| 5762070728 | Meter | The repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. | 119 | |
| 5762070729 | Common/Hym/Ballad Meter | alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, in four-line stanzas typically rhyming abab or cdcd | 120 | |
| 5762070730 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which an associated word, rather than the literal word, is used; as using a part to stand for the whole | 121 | |
| 5762070731 | Onomatopoeia | the sound of the word suggests its meaning (buzz, splat); the pattern of sound echoes the denotation of the word | 122 | |
| 5762070732 | Pentameter | when poetry consists of five feet in each line. Each foot has a set number of syllables. Iambs, spondees and trochees are feet consisting of two syllables. Thus, iambic pentameter, spondaic pentameter and trochaic pentameter line would have a total of ten syllables. Anapests and dactyls are feet cosisting of three syllables. Thus anapestic pentameter and dactylic pentameter line would have a toal of fifteen syllables | 123 | |
| 5762070733 | Prosody | (1) the mechanics of verse poetry-- its sounds, rhythms, scansion and meter, stanzaic form, alliteration, assonance euphony, onomatopoeia and rhyme (2) The study or analysis of the previously listed material, aka versification | 124 | |
| 5762070734 | Refrain | One or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza | 125 | |
| 5762070735 | Repetition | A rhetorical device built into a rhyme, meter and stanza form, also occurring in verbal and grammatical parallelisms and anaphora | 126 | |
| 5762070736 | Rhyme | Sound correspondence often found at the ends of lines of poetry (end rhyme) or within the line (internal rhyme). Rhyme unifies a stanza and separates it from the next one, or if enjambment is used, it creates a sense of forward movement. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming sounds, indicated by a letter of the alphabet for each similar sound. | 127 | |
| 5762070737 | Scansion | The system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into syllables and determining the essential pattern of accented and unaccented syllables | 128 | |
| 5762070738 | Sibilance | Hissing sounds represented by s, z and sh | 129 | |
| 5762070739 | Slant/Half Rhyme | created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical or vice versa. Ex: "Heart-smitten with emotion I sink down/My heart recovering with covered eyes;/Wherever I had looked I had looked upon/My permanent or impermanent images. | 130 | |
| 5762070740 | Stanza Forms | groups of lines with breaks in between, named for their number of lines: couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4), cinquain (5), sestet (6), septet (7), octave/ottava rima (8), Spenserian (9). | 131 | |
| 5762070741 | Nonce Form | This is a poem in which the poet invented a stanza for one poem only | 132 | |
| 5762070742 | Couplet | a unit of two consecutive lines of verse with the same rhyme. In an open couplet, the second line depends on the first for completion, and the rhyme is subtle. A closed couplet is grammatically complete, closed box often characterized by the symmetry created by a caesura, parallelism and antithesis. A closed couplet neatly ends an Elizabethan sonnet. | 133 | |
| 5762070743 | Heroic Couplets | Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs. Used in 17th century poetic drama and later by Pope and Dryden, the form is marked by the use of caesura, symmetry and balance and antithesis; it is often epigrammatic | 134 | |
| 5762070744 | Octave | Any eight-line stanza; most frequently applied to the first 8 line of an Italian sonnet, typically rhyming in abbaabba and ending with a full stop. | 135 | |
| 5762070745 | Quatrain | Aka "stave," a quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an abab pattern. Three quatrains form the main body of a Shakespearean sonnet along with a final couplet | 136 | |
| 5762070746 | Envoy (aka envoi) | A conventionalized stanza at the close of a poem, which is addressed to a prince or patron, usually having four lines rhyming abab, and sometimes repeating the refrain line of the poem. The envoy may provide a summary or simply serve to dispatch the poem. | 137 | |
| 5762070747 | Synecdoche | the figurative use of a narrower term for a wider one, or vice versa; the part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part | 138 | |
| 5762070748 | Synesthesia | describing one kind of sensation in terms of another. Ex: sound as color, color as sound, sound as taste, color as temperature. | 139 | |
| 5762070749 | Turn/Volta | a rhetorical figure that provides a change in thought signaled by words like but, however and yet. In the Italian sonnet, a turn begins the sestet (line 9); in the Elizabethan sonnet, it may come after the quatrains, as the couplet begins in line 13. | 140 | |
| 5762070750 | Versification | this term includes all the elements of poetic composition, including accent, rhythm, meter, rhyme, verse form, stanza form, assonance, onomatopoeia and alliteration. | 141 |
