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| 2836649822 | alliteration | the repetition of accented consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to each other, usually to create an effect, rhythm, or emphasis | 0 | |
| 2836651897 | allusion | a reference in literature or in art to previous literature, history, mythology, pop culture/current events, or the Bible | 1 | |
| 2836654460 | ambiguity | quality of being intentionally unclear. Events or situations that are ambiguous can be interpreted in more than one way. This device is especially beneficial in poetry, as it tends to grace the work with the richness and depth of multiple meanings | 2 | |
| 2836661563 | anachronism | an element in a story that is out of its time frame; sometimes used to create a humorous or jarring effect. Beware: This can also occur because of careless or poor research on the author's part | 3 | |
| 2836676604 | analogy | clarifies or explains an unfamiliar concept or object, or one that cannot be put into words, by comparing it with one which is familiar. By explaining the abstract in terms of the concrete, it may force the reader to think more critically about a concept | 4 | |
| 2836679793 | analysis | the process of examining the components of a literary work | 5 | |
| 2836685820 | anapest | the poetic foot (measure) that follows the pattern unaccented, unaccented, accented. This poet is usually trying to convey a rollicking, moving rhythm with this pattern | 6 | |
| 2836689311 | anaphora | A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences. | 7 | |
| 2836691026 | anecdote | a short and often personal story used to emphasize a point, to develop a character or a theme, or to inject humor | 8 | |
| 2836697102 | antagonist | a character who functions as a revisiting force to the goals of the protagonist. The antagonist is often a villain, but in a case where the protagonist is evil, the antagonist may be virtuous | 9 | |
| 2836702396 | antecedent | the word or phrase to which a pronoun refers | 10 | |
| 2836703416 | anticlimax | an often disappointing, sudden end to an intense situation | 11 | |
| 2836706786 | antihero | a protagonist who carries the action of the literary piece but does not embody the classic characteristics of courage, strength, and nobility | 12 | |
| 2836709175 | antithesis | a concept that is directly opposed to a previously presented idea | 13 | |
| 2836710187 | aphorism | a terse statement that expresses a general truth or moral principle; sometimes considered a folk proverb | 14 | |
| 2836713741 | apostrophe | a rhetorical (not expecting an answer) figure of direct address to a person, object, or abstract entity | 15 | |
| 2836715425 | apotheosis | elevating someone to the level of a god | 16 | |
| 2836716452 | archetype | a character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all cultures because it occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore | 17 | |
| 2836719872 | aside | a short speech or remark made by an actor to the audience rather than to the other characters, who do not hear him or her. | 18 | |
| 2836721779 | assonance | the repeated use of a vowel sound | 19 | |
| 2836723669 | attitude | the author's feelings toward the topic he or she is writing about | 20 | |
| 2836725710 | aubade | a poem or song about lovers who must leave one another in the early hours of the morning | 21 | |
| 2836727816 | ballad | a folk song or poem passed down orally that tells a story which may be derived from an actual incident or from legend or folklore. Usually composed in four-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme abcb. Ballads often contain a refrain | 22 | |
| 2836729623 | blank verse | unrhymed poetry of iambic pentameter (five feet of two syllables each- unstressed and stressed); favored technique of Shakespeare | 23 | |
| 2836742163 | cacophony | harsh, discordant sounds, unpleasant to the ear; the sound of nails scratching a blackboard. used by poets for effect | 24 | |
| 2836745754 | carpe diem | latin for "seize the day"; frequent in the 16th- and 17th- century court poetry. | 25 | |
| 2836748256 | catharsis | refers to an emotional cleansing or feeling of relief | 26 | |
| 2836750739 | chiasmus | the opposite of parallel construction; inverting the second of two phrases that would otherwise be in parallel form | 27 | |
| 2836752307 | colloquial | of or relating to slang or regional dialect, used in familiar everyday conservation. in writing, an informal style that reflects the way people spoke in a distinct time and/or place | 28 | |
| 2844675339 | comic relief | humor that provides a release of tension and breaks up a more serious episode | 29 | |
| 2844675340 | conceit | a far-fetched comparison between two seemingly unlike things; an extended metaphor that gains appeal from its unusual or extraordinary comparison | 30 | |
| 2844675341 | connotation | associations a word calls to mind. House and home have the same denotation, or dictionary meaning- a place to live. | 31 | |
| 2844676215 | consonance | same consonant sound in words with different vowel sounds | 32 | |
| 2844676216 | conventional character | a character with traits that are expected or traditional. heroes are expected to be strong, adventurous and unafraid. | 33 | |
| 2844676667 | couplet | two successive rhyming lines of the same number of syllables, with matching cadence | 34 | |
| 2844694855 | dactyl | foot of poetry with three syllables, one stressed and two short or unstressed. | 35 | |
| 2844694856 | denotation | the dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phase | 36 | |
| 2844695745 | denouement | the outcome or clarification at the end of a story or play; the winding down from climax to ending | 37 | |
| 2844705907 | deus ex machina | literally, when the gods intervene at a story's end to resolve a seemingly impossible conflict. refers to an unlikely or improbable coincidence; a cop-out ending | 38 | |
| 2844705908 | diction | the deliberate choice of a style of language for a desired effect or tone. words chosen to achieve a particular effect that is formal, informal, or colloquial. | 39 | |
| 2844729180 | didactic | author's primary purpose is to instruct, teach or moralize | 40 | |
| 2844729181 | distortion | an exaggeration or stretching of the truth to achieve a desired effect | 41 | |
| 2844729182 | enjambment | the running over of a sentence from one verse or stanza into the next without stopping at the end of the first | 42 | |
| 2844729197 | epigram | a short, clever poem with a witty turn of thought | 43 | |
| 2844729847 | epigraph | a brief quotation found at the beginning of a literary work, reflective of theme | 44 | |
| 2844730759 | epiphany | a sudden flash of insight. Eureka! A startling discovery and/or appearance; a dramatic realization | 45 | |
| 2844740865 | epistolary novel | a novel in letter form written by one or more of the characters. The novelist can use this technique to present varying first-person points of view and does not need a narrator | 46 | |
| 2844740866 | essay | a short composition on a single topic expressing the view or interpretation of the writer on that topic. | 47 | |
| 2844740867 | euphemism | substitution of an inoffensive word or phrase for another that would be harsh, offensive, or embarrassing. Makes something sound better than it is but is usually more wordy than the original | 48 | |
| 2844741486 | euphony | the quality of a pleasant or harmonious sound of a word or group of words as an intended effect. often achieved through long vowels and some consonants, such as "sh" | 49 | |
| 2844741487 | farce | a kind of comedy that depends on exaggerated or improbable situations, physical disasters, and sexual innuendo to amuse the audience. Many situation comedies on television today are examples | 50 | |
| 2844741488 | figurative language | unlike literal expression, it uses figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, metonymy, personification, and hyperbole. Figurative language appeals to one's senses. | 51 | |
| 2844741489 | first person | a character in the story tells the story, using the pronoun I. This is a limited point of view since the narrator can relate only events that he or she sees or is told about. | 52 | |
| 2844802645 | flashback | interruption of a narrative by the introduction of an earlier event or by an image of a past experience | 53 | |
| 2844802646 | flat character | a simple, one-dimensional character who remains the same, and about whom little or nothing is revealed throughout the course of the work. May serve as symbols of types of people, similar to stereotypical characters | 54 | |
| 2844802647 | foil | a character whose contrasting personal characteristics draw attention to, enhance, or contrast with those of the main character. A character who, by displacing opposite traits, emphasizes certain aspects of another character | 55 | |
| 2844804086 | foreshadowing | hints at what is to come. it is sometimes noticeable only in hindsight, but usually it is obvious enough to set the reader wondering | 56 | |
| 2844804569 | free verse | poetry that does not have regular rhythm or rhyme | 57 | |
| 2844804570 | genre | the category into which a piece of writing can be classified- poetry, prose, drama. each has its own conventions and standards | 58 | |
| 2844806216 | heroic couplet | in poetry, a rhymed couplet written in iambic pentameter (five feet, each with one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) | 59 | |
| 2844806217 | hubris | insolence, arrogance, or pride. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist's _ is usually the tragic flaw that leads to his or her downfall. | 60 | |
| 2844806218 | hyperbole | an extreme exaggeration for literary effect that is not meant to be interpreted literally | 61 | |
| 2844807293 | iambic pentameter | a five-foot line made up of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable. It is the most common metric foot in English-language poetry | 62 | |
| 2844807294 | imagery | anything that affects or appeals to the reader's senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell. | 63 | |
| 2844808100 | in medias res | in literature, a work that begins in the middle of the story | 64 | |
| 2848895914 | interior monologue | a literary technique used in poetry and prose that reveals a character's unspoken thoughts and feelings. may be presented directly by the character, or through a marrator | 65 | |
| 2848895915 | internal rhyme | a rhyme that is within the line, rather than at the end. the rhyming may also be within two lines, but again, each rhyming word will be within its line, rather than at the beginning or end | 66 | |
| 2848895916 | inversion | a switch in the normal word order, often used for emphasis or for rhyming scheme | 67 | |
| 2848898748 | Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet | fourteen-line poem divided into two parts: the first is eight lines (abbaabba) and the second is six (cdcdcd or cdecde) | 68 | |
| 2848898749 | litotes | affirmation of an idea by using a negative understatement. the opposite of hyperbole | 69 | |
| 2848900657 | lyric poem | a fairly short, emotionally expressive poem that expresses the feelings and observations of a single speaker | 70 | |
| 2848901623 | metamorphosis | a radical change in a character, either physical or emotional | 71 | |
| 2848901624 | metaphor | a figure of speech which compares two dissimilar things, asserting that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another. | 72 | |
| 2848902968 | meter | the rhythmical pattern of a poem. just as all words are pronounced with accented (or stressed) syllables and unaccented (or unstressed) syllables, lines of poetry are assigned similar rhythms. | 73 | |
| 2848902969 | metonymy | a figure of speech that replaces the name of something with a word or phrase closely associated with it | 74 | |
| 2848925657 | myth | a story, usually with supernatural significance, that explains the origins of gods, heroes, or natural phenomena. although they are fictional stories, they contain deeper truths, particularly about the nature of humankind | 75 | |
| 2848927182 | narrative poem | a poem that tells a story | 76 | |
| 2848927262 | near, off, or slant rhyme | a rhyme based on an imperfect or incomplete correspondence of end syllable sounds | 77 | |
| 2848928611 | onomatopoeia | words that imitate sounds | 78 | |
| 2848928612 | oxymoron | a figure of speech that combines two contradictory words, placed side by side: bitter sweet, wise fool, living death | 79 | |
| 2848928613 | parable | a short story illustrating a moral or religious lesson | 80 | |
| 2848928614 | paradox | a statement or situation that at first seems impossible or oxymoronic, but which solves itself and reveals meaning | 81 | |
| 2848929671 | parallelism | the repeated use of the same grammatical structure in a sentence or a series of sentences. this device tends to emphasize what is said and thus underscores the meaning. can also refer to two or more stories within a literary work that are told simultaneously and that reinforce one another | 82 | |
| 2848929672 | parody | a comical imitation of a serious piece with the intent of ridiculing the author or his work | 83 | |
| 2848929673 | pastoral | a poem, play, or story that celebrates and idealizes the simple life of shepherds or shepherdesses. this highly conventional form was popular until the late 18th century. this term has also come to refer to an artistic work that portrays rural life in an idyllic or idealistic way | 84 | |
| 2848929674 | pathos | the quality of a literary work or passage which appeals to the reader's or viewer's emotions- especially pity, compassion, and sympathy. Is different from the pity one feels for a tragic hero in that the pathetic figure seems to suffer through no fault of his or her own | 85 | |
| 2848929715 | periodic sentence | a sentence that delivers its point at the end; usually constructed as a subordinate clause followed by a main cause | 86 | |
| 2848931064 | personification | the attribution of a human characteristics to an animal or to an inanimate object | 87 | |
| 2848966252 | point of view | perspective of the speaker or narrator in a literary work | 88 | |
| 2848966253 | protagonist | the main or principal character in a work; often considered the hero or heroine | 89 | |
| 2848967124 | pun | humorous play on words that have several meanings or words that sound the same but have different meanings | 90 | |
| 2848967125 | quatrain | four-line stanza | 91 | |
| 2848967126 | refrain | repetition of a line, stanza, or phrase | 92 | |
| 2848967141 | repetition | a word or phrase used more than once to emphasize an idea | 93 | |
| 2848968499 | rhetorical question | a question with an obvious answer, so no response is expected; used for emphasis or to make a point | 94 | |
| 2848968500 | satire | the use of humor to ridicule and expose the shortcomings and failings of society, individuals, and institutions, often in the hope that change and reform are possible | 95 | |
| 2848968501 | sestet | a six-line stanza of poetry; also, the last six lines of a sonnet | 96 | |
| 2848969788 | shift | in writing, a movement from one thought or idea to another; a change | 97 | |
| 2848969789 | simile | a comparison of unlike things using the word like, as, or so | 98 | |
| 2848969790 | soliloquy | a character's speech to the audience, in which emotions and ideas are revealed. a monologue is one only if the character is alone on the stage | 99 | |
| 2848971362 | sonnet, English or Shakespearean | traditionally, a fourteen-line love poem in iambic pentameter, but in contemporary poetry, themes and form vary. | 100 | |
| 2849036853 | stanza | a grouping of poetic lines; a deliberate arrangement of lines of poetry | 101 | |
| 2849036854 | stock character | a stereotypical character; a type. the audience expects the character to have certain characteristics. similar to conventional character and flat character | 102 | |
| 2849036855 | steam of consciousness | a form of writing which replicates the way the human mind works. ideas are presented in random order; thoughts are often unfinished | 103 | |
| 2849037806 | structure | the particular way in which parts of a written work are combined | 104 | |
| 2849037807 | style | the way a writer uses language. takes into account word choice, diction, figures of speech, and so on. the writer's "voice" | 105 | |
| 2849037808 | symbol | a concrete object, scene, or action which has deeper significance because it is associated with something else, often an important idea or theme in the work | 106 | |
| 2849037809 | synechdoche | a figure of speech where one part represents the entire object, or vice versa | 107 | |
| 2849039543 | syntax | the way in which words, phrases, and sentences are ordered and connected | 108 | |
| 2849039544 | theme | the central idea of a literary work | 109 | |
| 2849039545 | tone | refers to the author's attitude toward the subject, and often sets the mood of the piece | 110 | |
| 2849039546 | tongue in cheek | expressing a thought in a way that appears to be sincere, but is actually joking | 111 | |
| 2849170950 | tragic flaw | traditionally, a defect in a hero or heroine that leads to his or her downfall | 112 | |
| 2849172017 | transition/segue | the means to get from one portion of a poem or story to another; for instance, to another setting, to another character's viewpoint, to a later or earlier time period. it is a way of smoothly connecting different parts of a work. | 113 |
