Terms : Hide Images
| 5865031379 | Caesura | A break or pause within a line of poetry indicated by punctuation and used to emphasize meaning. | 0 | |
| 5865033810 | Allusion | A brief reference to a person, place, event, or work which the author assumes the reader will recognize. | 1 | |
| 5865036711 | Epigram | A brief witty poem. Pope often utilizes this form for satiric commentary. | 2 | |
| 5865039098 | Flashback | A device that enables a writer to refer to past thoughts, events, and/or episodes. | 3 | |
| 5865041875 | Epic | A lengthy, elevated poem that celebrates the exploits of a hero. Beowulf is a prime example. | 4 | |
| 5865044900 | Elegy | A poem that laments the dead or a loss. | 5 | |
| 5865048860 | Idyll | A type of lyric poem which extols the virtues of an ideal place or time. | 6 | |
| 5865052136 | Dramatic Monologue | A type of poem that presents a conversation between a speaker and an implied listener. | 7 | |
| 5865054227 | Allegory | A work that functions on a symbolic level. | 8 | |
| 5865058299 | Catharsis | According to Aristotle, the release of emotion that the audience of a tragedy experiences. | 9 | |
| 5865062534 | Irony | An unexpected twist or contrast between what happens and what was intended or expected to happen. | 10 | |
| 5865065383 | Apostrophe | Direct address in poetry. Yeats' line "Be with me Beauty, for the fire is dying" is a good example. | 11 | |
| 5865067394 | Hyperbole | Extreme exaggeration. In "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose," Burns speaks of loving "until all the seas run dry." | 12 | |
| 5865079582 | Foreshadowing | Hints of future events in a literary work. | 13 | |
| 5865082280 | Free Verse | Poetry without a defined form, meter, or rhyme scheme. | 14 | |
| 5865084860 | Diction | The author's choice of words. | 15 | |
| 5865087693 | Kenning | The first figure of speech; it employs the use of compound words to suggest a quality or characteristic. There are many examples of these in Beowulf. | 16 | |
| 5865092563 | Comic Relief | The inclusion of a humorous character or scene to contrast with the tragic elements of a work, thereby intensifying the next tragic event. | 17 | |
| 5865095495 | Connotation | The interpretive level of a word based on its associated images rather than its literal meaning. | 18 | |
| 5865097689 | Denotation | The literal or dictionary meaning of a word. | 19 | |
| 5865111346 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 20 | |
| 5865113055 | Imagery | The total effect of related sensory images in a work of literature. | 21 | |
| 5865114731 | Couplet | Two lines of rhyming poetry | 22 | |
| 5865116562 | Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Most of Shakespeare's plays are in this form. | 23 | |
| 5865118427 | Aside | Words spoken by an actor intended to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on stage. | 24 | |
| 5865122720 | Sonnet | A 14-line poem with a prescribed rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter. | 25 | |
| 5865125144 | Parody | A comic imitation of a work that ridicules the original. | 26 | |
| 5865127862 | Metaphor | A direct comparison between dissimilar things. "Your eyes are stars" is an example. | 27 | |
| 5865131339 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a representative term is used for a larger idea. ("The pen is mightier than the sword.") | 28 | |
| 5865133300 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech that utilizes a part as a representative of a whole. ("All hands on deck" is an example.) | 29 | |
| 5865137582 | Ode | A formal, lengthy poem that celebrates a particular subject. | 30 | |
| 5865140798 | Satire | A mode of writing based on ridicule, which criticizes the foibles and follies of society without necessarily offering a solution. | 31 | |
| 5865142491 | Pun | A play on words. | 32 | |
| 5865145335 | Narrative | A poem that tells a story. | 33 | |
| 5865147238 | Rhetorical | A question that does not expect an explicit answer. | 34 | |
| 5865149103 | Soliloquy | A speech in a play which is used to reveal the character's inner thoughts to the audience. During this speech, the character is alone on stage. | 35 | |
| 5865151220 | Lyric | A type of poetry characterized by emotion, personal feelings, and brevity. | 36 | |
| 5865168944 | Tragic Hero | According to Aristotle, a basically good person of noble birth or exalted position who has a fatal flaw or commits an error in judgment which leads to his downfall. | 37 | |
| 5865171267 | Oxymoron | An image of contradictory terms (bittersweet, pretty ugly, giant economy size). | 38 | |
| 5865174469 | Simile | An indirect comparison that uses the words "like" or "as" to link the differing items in the comparison. | 39 | |
| 5865245090 | Prose | Every day, ordinary language. | 40 | |
| 5865248029 | Symbol | Something in a literary work that stands for something else. | 41 | |
| 5865250591 | Pathos | The aspects of a literary work that elicit pity from the audience. | 42 | |
| 5865252253 | Personification | The assigning of human qualities to inanimate objects or concepts. | 43 | |
| 5865256572 | Tone | The author's attitude toward his subject. | 44 | |
| 5865259445 | Understatement | The opposite of exaggeration. It is a technique for developing irony and/or humor where one writes or says less than intended. | 45 | |
| 5865261895 | Theme | The underlying ideas that the author illustrates through characterization, motifs, language, plots, etc. | 46 | |
| 5865264187 | Style | The unique way an author presents his ideas. | 47 | |
| 5865266100 | Naturalistic | Type of writing which stresses the fatalistic aspects of life. Beowulf is a good example. | 48 | |
| 5865268240 | Onomatopoeia | Words that imitate a sound (hiss, gurgle, bang). | 49 |
