Terms : Hide Images
| 120658495 | symbol | a specific word, idea, or object that may stand for ideas, values, persons, or ways of life | |
| 120658496 | situational irony | what we expect to happen and what happens are not the same | |
| 120658497 | repetition | use of key words, phrases, or ideas more than once, in close proximity | |
| 120658499 | dramatic irony | the reader or audience knows more than the characters | |
| 120658500 | conceit | an extended metaphor | |
| 120658503 | verbal irony | saying one thing but really meaning another | |
| 120658504 | simile | an explicit comparison between two unlike things signaled by the use of "as," "like," or "than" | |
| 120658505 | personification | attributing human qualities to an inanimate object | |
| 120658506 | paradox | a statement that appears to be contradictory but, in fact, has some truth | |
| 120658507 | parallelism | expresses similar or related ideas in similar grammatical structures | |
| 120658508 | antithesis | the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas | |
| 120658509 | irony | when the writer takes on another voice or role that states the opposite of what is expressed | |
| 120658510 | hyperbole | exaggeration; deliberate exaggeration for emphasis | |
| 120658511 | litotes | understatement, esp. that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in "not bad at all." | |
| 120658512 | allusion | a reference to something literary, mythological, or historical that the author assumes the reader will recognize | |
| 120658513 | motif | recurring ideas, images, and actions that tend to unify a work | |
| 120658514 | stanza | a group of verse lines of the same structure and rhythm and rhyme scheme | |
| 120658515 | alliteration | repetition of initial consonant sounds | |
| 120658516 | assonance | repetition of the same vowel sounds in close proximity | |
| 120658517 | conceit | an extended metaphor | |
| 120658518 | consonance | repeated consonant sounds; not at the beginning of words | |
| 120658519 | couplet | two lines, in successive order, that have end rhyme | |
| 120658520 | heroic couplet | couplet that rhymes and is written in iambic pentameter | |
| 120658521 | quatrain | a verse stanza of four lines | |
| 120658522 | onomatopoeia | words that sound like they are spelled and create aural imagery like fizz and whirr | |
| 120658523 | meter | the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables | |
| 120658524 | end rhyme | words that rhyme at the ends of lines of poetry | |
| 120658525 | narrative | a poem or other work of literature that tells a story | |
| 120658526 | epic | a long narrative poem that spans a long time period, uses grand language, involves the fate of an entire people, and has a hero of super human characteristics, among other things | |
| 120658527 | octave | verse stanza of eight lines | |
| 120658528 | sestet | verse stanza of six lines | |
| 120658529 | caesura | a pause or break within a line of poetry | |
| 120658530 | iambic pentameter | a line of poetry that contains five iambs (units which consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in the word, arise) Shakespeare wrote his plays in this meter. | |
| 120658531 | synesthesia | describing one kind of sensation in terms of another ("a loud color" or "a sweet sound") | |
| 120658532 | sonnet | fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter; Petrarchan (Italian) consists of an octave and a sestet; Shakespearean (English) consists of three quatrains and a couplet | |
| 120658533 | pastoral | a literary work idealizing the rural life (especially the life of shepherds) | |
| 120658534 | setting | time, place, atmosphere, and social context in which a story takes place | |
| 120658535 | theme | main idea of a work of literature | |
| 120658536 | antagonist | character or force in opposition to the protagonist | |
| 120658537 | point of view | the vantage from which a story is told: first person or third person--omniscient or limited | |
| 120658538 | protagonist | the main character in a story | |
| 120658539 | characterization | how a character acts and talks, what other characters say about him, and how others react to him | |
| 120658540 | plot | sequence of events in a story | |
| 120658541 | character | those who carry out the action of the plot in literature. Major/minor, static/dynamic, and round/flat are some types | |
| 120658542 | foil | a character, usually minor, designed to highlight qualities of a major character | |
| 120658543 | third person omniscient point of view | the narrator is not a character in the story and is "all knowing" able to reveal the thoughts and feelings of any character and to describe events from the viewpoint of any character | |
| 120658544 | third person limited point of view | narrator outside the story sees the world through one character's eyes and reveals only that character's thoughts | |
| 120658545 | first person point of view | a character in the story actually telling the story himself/herself | |
| 120658546 | syntax | the way words and phrases are connected to form sentences | |
| 120658547 | structure | the organized, planned framework of a piece of literature | |
| 120658548 | denotation | dictionary definition of a word | |
| 120658549 | diction | style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words | |
| 120658550 | imagery | language that appeals to the five senses; creating pictures with words | |
| 120658551 | tone | the quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author | |
| 120658552 | mood | the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage | |
| 120658553 | en medias res | roughly translated as "in the middle of things," it describes a narrative or anecdote that ignores exposition and begins in the middle of an action | |
| 120658554 | frame story | a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story | |
| 120658555 | connotation | all the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests | |
| 120658556 | exemplum | a story which teaches a moral lesson |
