Terms : Hide Images
| 6680089271 | hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect | 0 | |
| 6680091642 | iambic pentameter | the most common metrical pattern in English poetry; made up of a line of 5 stressed/unstressed syllables; also called blank verse | 1 | |
| 6680100567 | imagery | a description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds; a sensory impression | 2 | |
| 6680106588 | in media res | "in the middle of things"; a technique in which a narrative begins in the middle of the action | 3 | |
| 6680108592 | inversion | the alteration of the standard English word order of subject verb; used for emphasis or to slow the pace | 4 | |
| 6680114633 | juxtaposition | placing two things side by side for the sake of comparison or contrast; sometimes used to create irony | 5 | |
| 6680122866 | lyric | a short poem expressing the personal feelings of a first-person speaker | 6 | |
| 6680125364 | metaphor | a comparison that does not use like or as; "For this, for everything, we are out of tune." -Wordsworth | 7 | |
| 6680141803 | conceit | a literary device that sets up a striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison, often drawing comparisons between the physical and spiritual | 8 | |
| 6680146661 | meter | the formal, regular organization of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet | 9 | |
| 6680149816 | metonymy | a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is related to it: "England hath need of thee: she is a fen/Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen" (Wordsworth) Altar=religion, sword=military; pen=the arts | 10 | |
| 6680170934 | synecdoche | a figure of speech in which part of something is used to represent the whole: "They were called legs or grunts" (Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried). | 11 | |
| 6680183941 | motif | a recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme in a work of literature | 12 | |
| 6680188978 | narrative frame/frame story | a plot device in which the author places the main narrative of his/her work within another narrative (think Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) | 13 | |
| 6680274527 | unreliable narrator | a narrator who is biased and doesn't give a full or accurate picture of events, possibly due to youth, inexperience, madness, intentional or unintentional bias, or even a lack of morals (think "My Last Duchess" and "The Cask of Amontillado") | 14 | |
| 6680295285 | ode | a form of poetry used to mediate on or address a single object or condition; usually followed strict rules of form and meter | 15 | |
| 6680300064 | onomatopoeia | use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds | 16 | |
| 6680302805 | oxymoron | a paradox created of two seemingly contradictory words placed side by side: "Out of the murderous innocence of the sea." Yeats | 17 | |
| 6680310112 | parable | a tale told explicitly to illustrate a moral lesson | 18 | |
| 6680312359 | paradox | a statement that seems contradictory but actually is not: "For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such/As what he loves may never like to much." Ben Jonson, "On My First Son" | 19 | |
| 6680320362 | parallel structure | the repeated use of similar grammatical structures for the purpose of emphasis | 20 | |
| 6680324451 | parody | a comic imitation of a particular literary work or style | 21 | |
| 6680327079 | passive voice | a sentence employs the passive voice when the subject doesn't act but is acted on: "Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane..." | 22 | |
| 6680332591 | pastoral | literature that employs a romanticized description of leisurely farm or rural life | 23 | |
| 6680336017 | persona | a voice and viewpoint that an author adopts in order to deliver a story or poem | 24 | |
| 6680339220 | personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities | 25 | |
| 6680343790 | plot | the sequence of events of a literary work | 26 | |
| 6680345726 | rhetorical question | intended to emphasize a point/make an assertion rather than actually solicit an answer: Do you want to graduate, or not? | 27 | |
| 6680348927 | satire | a literary work that critiques society or an individual | 28 | |
| 6680358460 | setting | when, where, in what social context, a story occurs | 29 | |
| 6680362029 | simile | a comparison between two unlike things using "like," "as," "resembles," "as though": "the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March"- Tim O'Brien | 30 | |
| 6680371785 | Petrarchan sonnet | also called the Italian sonnet, a poetic form composed of 14 lines of iambic pentameter composed of an octave and a sestet | 31 | |
| 6680379624 | Shakespearean sonnet | also called the English sonnet, 14 lines of iambic pentameter comprised of 3 quatrains and a couplet | 32 | |
| 6680387854 | stanza | a group of lines in a poem | 33 | |
| 6680390198 | stream of consciousness | a technique in which prose follows the logic and flow of a character's though processes- associations, tangents, seemingly strange transitions- rather than a more ordered narrative | 34 | |
| 6680402639 | style | the way a literary work is written; produced by an author's choices in diction, syntax, imagery, figurative language, and other literary elements | 35 | |
| 6680406509 | suspense | a literary device that uses tension to make the plot more exciting | 36 | |
| 6680409817 | symbol | a setting, object, or event in a story that carries more than literal meaning and represents something significant to understanding the MOWW | 37 | |
| 6680413574 | syntax | the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences in a prose passage; includes word order (subject-verb-complement OR inverted structure), the length and type of sentences (simple, compound, complex, compound complex), the chronology of passages, connectors, etc. | 38 | |
| 6680440222 | theme | the MOWW- the central message about life conveyed by a literary work | 39 | |
| 6680444392 | tone | the speaker's attitude toward his/her subject | 40 | |
| 6680447417 | tragedy | a serious dramatic work in which the protagonist experiences a series of unfortunate reversals due to a character trait (tragic flaw) | 41 | |
| 6680452624 | tragic hero | a character who possesses a flaw or commits an error in judgment that leads to his own downfall or reversal of fortune | 42 | |
| 6680475002 | understatement | the presentation or framing of something as less important, urgent, awful, good, powerful, etc than it actually is, often for satiric or comical effect, but also for emphasis in general | 43 | |
| 6680485862 | verse | writing that is metered and rhythmic- poetry | 44 | |
| 6680487981 | vignette | a short narrative scene or description, often one in a series | 45 | |
| 6680490937 | villanelle | a form of poetry in which 5 tercets (aba) are followed by a quatrain (abaa) and at the end of the tercets two and four, the first line of tercet one is repeated- refrain- see Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle..." | 46 | |
| 6680502984 | wordplay | techniques by which writers manipulate language for effect; puns; see The Importance of Being Ernest | 47 |
