Terms : Hide Images
| 5763848179 | Allegory | A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings. | 0 | |
| 5763848180 | Alliteration | Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. | 1 | |
| 5763848181 | Allusipn | A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. | 2 | |
| 5763848182 | Ambigury | A statement which can contain two or more meanings. | 3 | |
| 5763848183 | Analogue | A comparison between two similar things. In literature, a work which resembles another work either fully or in part. If a work resembles another because it is derived from the other, the original work is called the source, not an analogue of the lager work. | 4 | |
| 5763848184 | Anapest | In a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable forming the pattern for the line or perhaps the entire poem. | 5 | |
| 5763848185 | Anecdote | A very short tale told by a character in a literary work. | 6 | |
| 5763848186 | Antagonist | A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. | 7 | |
| 5763848187 | Aphorism | A brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation. Example - Benjamin Franklins Poor Richard's Almanac | 8 | |
| 5763848188 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman. | 9 | |
| 5763848189 | Asdie | A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play. | 10 | |
| 5763848190 | Assonance | The reposition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. | 11 | |
| 5763848191 | Autobiography | The story of a person's life written by himself or herself. | 12 | |
| 5763848192 | Ballad | A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. | 13 | |
| 5763848193 | Biography | The story of a person's life write me by someone other than the subject of the work. It is supposed to be rigorously factual. However, since the biographer may be biased for or against the subject of the biography, critics, and sometimes the subject of the biography himself or herself, may come forward to challenge the trustworthiness of the material. | 14 | |
| 5763848194 | Blank Verse | A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. | 15 | |
| 5763848195 | Cacaphony / Euphony | Cacaphony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the opposite, is a pleasant combination of sounds. These sound effects can be used intentionally to create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. | 16 | |
| 5763848196 | Caesura | A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count. In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by // | 17 | |
| 5763848197 | Canto | A subdivision of an epic poem. | 18 | |
| 5809317845 | Carpe Diem | A Latin phrase which means "seize (catch) the day," meaning "make the most of the day." Phrase originated as the title of the poem by the Roman Horace and caught on with Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell. | 19 | |
| 5809317846 | Catastrophe | The scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral destruction of the protagonist. Oedipus plucks his eyes out & is beggar. In Shakespearean tragedy this occurs in act 5 of each drama & always includes the death of the protagonist. | 20 | |
| 5809317847 | Character | A person, or any thing presented as a person in a literary work. Animals who figure importantly in movies of live drama are considered characters. | 21 | |
| 5809317848 | Characterization | The method of a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work: Methods may include (1) by what the character says about themselves; (2) by what others reveal about the character, and (3) by the characters own actions. | 22 | |
| 5809317849 | Classicism | A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that it doesn't dwell on the emotional impact of a work, it concerns itself with form and discipline. | 23 | |
| 5809633530 | Climax | The decisive moment in a drama, the climax is the turning point of the play to which the rising action leads. This is the crucial part of the drama, the part which determines the outcome of the conflict. | 24 | |
| 5809633531 | Comedy | A literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Modern comedies tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies simply end well. They also contain items such as misunderstandings and mistaken identity to heighten the comic effect. Comedies may contain lovers, those who interfere with lovers, and entertaining scoundrels. In modern situation comedies, characters are thrown into absurd situations and are forced to deal with those situations, all while reciting clever lines for the amusement of a live television or movie audience. | 25 | |
| 5809633532 | Conceit | A far fetched simile of metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things. | 26 | |
| 5809633533 | Conclusoom | Also called the resolution. It is the point in a drama to which the entire play has been leading. It is the logical outcome of everything that has come before it. The conclusion stems from the nature of the characters. | 27 | |
| 5809633534 | Concrete Poetry | A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. | 28 | |
| 5809633535 | Conflct | In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the play. | 29 | |
| 5809633536 | Connotation and Denotation | The denotation of a word is it's dictionary definition. The connotation of a word is it's emotional content. | 30 | |
| 5809633537 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. | 31 | |
| 5809633538 | Couoket | A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. | 32 | |
| 5809633539 | Dactyl | In poetry, a metrical pattern consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. | 33 | |
| 5809633540 | Denouement | Part of a drama which follows the climax and leads to the resolution. | 34 | |
| 5809633541 | Dialogue | In drama, a conversation between characters. Stichomythia occurs when the dialogue takes the form of a verbal duel between characters. | 35 | |
| 5809633542 | Diction | An authors choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since ones choice of words can affect feelings, diction can have great impact in a literary work. The writer must then choose their words carefully. | 36 | |
| 5809633543 | Didactic Literature | Language designed explicitly to instruct | 37 | |
| 5809633544 | Dramatic Monologue | In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. | 38 | |
| 5809633545 | Elegy | A lyric poem lamenting death. | 39 | |
| 5814996213 | Epic | In literature generally, a major work dealing with an important theme. In poetry, it is a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. | 40 | |
| 5815003431 | Epigraph | A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work. | 41 | |
| 5815005512 | Epithet | In literature, a work or phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character. | 42 | |
| 5815010036 | Euphemism | A mild word or phrase which substitutes for another which would be undesirable because it is too direct, unpleasant, or offensive. | 43 | |
| 5815012048 | Exposition | In drama, the presentation of essential information regarding what has occurred prior to the beginning of the play. | 44 | |
| 5815019941 | Fable | A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. Often the characters are animals as in the fables of Aesop. | 45 | |
| 5815021508 | Falling Action | It is the series of events which take place after the climax. The falling action of a drama leads to the conclusion. | 46 | |
| 5815024998 | Farce | A type of comedy based on a humorous situation such as a bank robber who mistakenly wanders into a police station to hide. It is the situation here which provides the humor, not the cleverness of plot or lines, nor the absurdities of the character, as in situational comedy. | 47 | |
| 5815028719 | Figurative Language | In literature, a way of saying one thing and meaning something else. Provides the writer with the opportunity to write imaginatively and also tests the imagination of the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into deep, hidden meanings. | 48 | |
| 5815033047 | Figure of Speech | An example of figurative language that states something that is not literally true in order to create an effect. Similes, metaphors, personification are figures of speech which are based on comparisons. Metonymy, synecdoche, synesthesia, apostrophe, oxymoron, and hyperbole are other figures of speech. | 49 | |
| 5815037736 | Flashback | A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. | 50 | |
| 5815043252 | Foil | A character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison. | 51 | |
| 5815044946 | Foot | The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry. In scansion, a foot represents one instance of a metrical pattern and is shown either between or to the right to left of vertical lines. The meter in a poem is classified according both to its pattern and the number of feet to the line. monometer: one foot to a line dimeter: two feet to a line trimeter: three feet to a line tetra (4), penta (5) | 52 | |
| 5815055835 | Foreshadowing | In drama, a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. | 53 | |
| 5815057135 | Free Verse | Unrhymed poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. | 54 | |
| 5815061330 | Genre | A literary type or form. Drama is a genre of literature. Within drama, genre include tragedy, comedy, and other forms. | 55 | |
| 5815062773 | Haiku | A Japanese poetic form which originated in the 16th century. In its Japanese language form consists of three lines: five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line. If translated, it may not contain the same syllabication. Designed to capture a moment in time, it creates images. | 56 | |
| 5815067389 | Hyperbole | A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs. | 57 | |
| 5815068929 | Iamb | A vertical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. | 58 | |
| 5815069800 | Imagery | A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the 5 senses. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. | 59 | |
| 5815071187 | Inference | A judgement based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances. | 60 | |
| 5815074128 | Irony | Takes place in many forms. Irony of Situation: the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Dramatic Irony: the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. Verbal Irony: the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. sarcasm is an example. | 61 | |
| 5815079513 | Local Color | A detailed setting forth of the characteristics of a particular locality, enabling the reader to "see" the setting. | 62 | |
| 5815081228 | Lyric Poem | A short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle. | 63 | |
| 5815083184 | Metaphor | A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words "like" or "as." | 64 | |
| 5815085358 | Meter | A regular pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables in a line or lines of poetry. | 65 | |
| 5815103129 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a word represents something else which it suggests. Calling a herd of 50 cows a fifty head of cattle, head representing the herd. | 66 | |
| 5815105714 | Mood | The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work, partly by a description of the objects or by the style of descriptions. May contain a mood of horror, mystery, holiness, or childlike simplicity, depending on the author's treatment of the work. | 67 | |
| 5815110659 | Myth | An unverifiable story based on a religious belief. The characters of myths are gods and goddesses, or the offspring of the mating of gods or goddesses and humans. Some myths detail the creation of the earth, while others may be about love, adventure, trickery, or revenge. In all cases, gods and goddesses control events, while humans may be aided or victimized. It is said that the creation of myths were the method by which ancient, superstitious humans attempted to account for natural or historical phenomena. | 68 | |
| 5815118070 | Narrative Poem | A poem which tells a story. Usually a long poem, sometimes even book length, the narrative may take the form of a plotless dialogue. In other instances, the narrative may consist of a series of incidents. | 69 | |
| 5815122921 | Novel | A fictional prose work of substantial length. It narrates the actions of characters who are entirely the invention of the author and who are placed in an imaginary setting. | 70 | |
| 5815125948 | Ode | A poem in praise of something divine or expressing some noble idea. | 71 | |
| 5815127187 | Onomatopoeia | A literary device wherein the sound of a word echoes the sound it represents. | 72 | |
| 5815130858 | Oxymoron | A combination of contradictory terms. | 73 | |
| 5815131400 | Parable | A brief story, told or written in order to teach a moral lesson. | 74 | |
| 5815138083 | Paradox | A situation or a statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 75 | |
| 5815139456 | Parallel Structure | A repetition of sentences using the same structure. | 76 | |
| 5815141043 | Parody | A literary work that imitates the style of another literary work. Can simply be amusing or it can be mocking in tone, such as a poem which exaggerates the use of alliteration in order to show the ridiculous effect of overuse of alliteration. | 77 | |
| 5815144325 | Pastoral | A literary work that has to do with shepherds and rustic settings. | 78 | |
| 5815145521 | Pathetic Fallacy | A fallacy of reason in suggesting that nonhuman phenomena act form human feelings, as suggested by the word pathetic from the Greek pathos; a literary device wherein something nonhuman found in nature performs as though from human feeling or motivation. | 79 | |
| 5815149528 | Personification | A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human characteristics. | 80 | |
| 5815151746 | Plot | The structure of story. The sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. 5 act play includes rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Protagonist opposed by antagonists, creating conflict. May include subplot which is a mirror image of the main plot. | 81 | |
| 5815154888 | Point of View | A piece of literature contains a speaker who is speaking either in the first person, telling things from his or her own perspective, or in the third person, telling things from the perspective of an onlooker. If speaker knows everything including actions, motives, and thoughts of all characters, it is omniscient. Speaker is unable to know what is in any characters mind but his or her own, called limited omniscience. | 82 | |
| 5815160415 | Protagonist | The hero or central character of a literary work. In accomplishing his or her objective, the protagonists is hindered by some opposing force either human, animal, or natural. | 83 | |
| 5815162845 | Pun | A play on words wherein a word issued to convey two meanings at the same time. | 84 | |
| 5815164284 | Quatrain | A four line stanza which may be rhymed or unrhymed. A heroic quatrain is a four line stanza rhymed abab. | 85 | |
| 5815166451 | Resolution | The part of a story or drama which occurs after the climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of affairs the ways things are going to be form then on. | 86 | |
| 5815170648 | Rhyme | In poetry, a pattern of repeated sounds. In end rhyme, the rhyme is at the end of the line. Internal rhyme is when one of the rhyming words occurs in a place in the line other than at the end. Eye rhyme is where the look rather than the sound is important (looks like it rhymes). Half rhyme is when the final consonants rhyme, but the vowel sounds don't. | 87 | |
| 5815175815 | Rhyme Scheme | The pattern of rhymed words in a stanza or generalized throughout a poem, expressed in alphabetic terms. | 88 | |
| 5815178920 | Rhythm | Recurrences of stressed and unstressed syllables at equal intervals, similar to meter. However, though two lines may be of the same meter, the rhythms of the lines may be different. | 89 | |
| 5815181585 | Rising Action | The part of a drama which begins with the exposition and sends the stage for the climax. | 90 | |
| 5815183219 | Romance | In the Middle Ages, tales of exciting adventures written in vernacular (French) instead of Latin. The medieval romances were tales of chivalry or amorous adventure occurring in King Arthur's court. | 91 | |
| 5815185748 | Saga | A story of the exploits of hero, or the story of a family told through several generations. | 92 | |
| 5815186750 | Satire | A piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work. While satire can be funny, its aim is not amuse, but to arouse contempt. | 93 | |
| 5815187718 | Scansion | A close, critical reading of a poem, examining the work for meter. | 94 | |
| 5815188209 | Setting | The time and place in which a story unfolds. A drama may contain a single setting, or the setting may change from scene to scene. | 95 | |
| 5815189016 | Short Story | A shore fictional narrative. It is difficult to set forth the point at which a short story becomes a short novel (novelette), or the page number at which a novelette become a novel. | 96 | |
| 5815190572 | Simile | A figure of speech which takes the form of a comparison between two unlike quanitites for which a basis for comparison can be found, and which uses the words like or as in the comparison. | 97 | |
| 5815191954 | Soliloquy | In drama, a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. | 98 | |
| 5815192493 | Sonnet | A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose rhyme scheme is fixed. In the Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. It has two divisions: the first is of eight lines (octave) and the second of six lines (sestet). English sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. Change in rhyme is coincidental with change in theme in poem. | 99 | |
| 5815200617 | Spondee | A metrical pattern characterized by two or more successively placed accented syllables. | 100 | |
| 5815216053 | Stanza | A major subdivision in a poem. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet, three lines is tercet, four lines is quatrain. | 101 | |
| 5815217792 | Stereotype | An author's method of treating a character so that the character is immediately identified with a group. A character may be associated with a group through accent, food choices, style of dress, or any readily identifiable group characteristic. | 102 | |
| 5815221370 | Style | Includes authors use of figurative language, diction, sound effects, and other literary devices. | 103 | |
| 5815223037 | Suspense | Suspense in fiction results primarily from two factors: the reader's identification with and concern for the welfare of a convincing and sympathetic character, and an anticipation of violence. | 104 | |
| 5815224498 | Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 105 | |
| 5815227105 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech wherein a part of something represent the whole thing. | 106 | |
| 5815229171 | Synesthesia | One sensory experience described in terms of another sensory experience. | 107 | |
| 5815230170 | Theatre of the Absurd | A drama based on an absurd situation. | 108 | |
| 5815231100 | Theme | An ingredient of a literary work which gives the work unity. The theme provides an answer to the question what is work about? Unlike plot which deals with the action of a work, theme concerns itself with a work's message or contains the general idea of a work. | 109 | |
| 5815234033 | Tone | Tone expresses the author's attitude toward his or her subject. Since there are as many tones in literature as there are tones of voice in real relationships, the tone of a literary work may be one of anger or approval, etc. | 110 | |
| 5815237713 | Tragedy | A type of drama which is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero. The story depicts the trouble part of the hero's life in which a total reversal of fortune comes upon a person who formerly stood in high degree, apparently secure, sometimes even happy. The suffering and calamity in a tragedy are exceptional, since they befall a conspicuous person. It spreads far and wide until the whole scene becomes a scene a scene of woe. Leads up to & includes death (shakespearean) or moral destruction (sophoclean) of protagonist. | 111 | |
| 5815245887 | Trochee | A metrical pattern in a line of poetry characterized by one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. | 112 | |
| 5815246701 | Understatment | A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant. The opposite of hyperbole. | 113 |
