| 5158898760 | Allegory | An extended narrative that carries a second meaning along with the surface story. The second meaning usually involves incarnations of abstract ideas. | | 0 |
| 5158898761 | Alliteration | The repetition of accented consonant sounds either at the beginning of words (or a stressed syllable within a word) that are close to each other. | | 1 |
| 5158898762 | Allusion | A reference in literature to previous literature, history, mythology, pop culture, or the Bible. | | 2 |
| 5158898763 | Ambiguity | The quality of being intentionally unclear. Makes the situation able to be interpreted in more than one way. | | 3 |
| 5158898764 | American Renaissance | The writing of the period before the Civil War, beginning with Emerson and Thoreau and the Trancendentalist movement including Whitman, Hawthorne, and Melville. These writers are essentially Romantics of a distinctively American stripe. | | 4 |
| 5158898765 | Anachronism | In a literary work, something placed in an inappropriate period in time. Often, but not always, a mistake on the part of the author. | | 5 |
| 5158898766 | Analogy | A comparison, usually extended, of two different things. | | 6 |
| 5158898767 | Anaphora | The repetition of an identical word or group of words in successive verses or clauses. | | 7 |
| 5158898768 | Anastrophe | The inversion of normal word order to achieve a particular effect, usually rhyme or meter. | | 8 |
| 5158898769 | Anecdote | A brief account of a story about an individual or incident. | | 9 |
| 5158898770 | Antagonist | A character who functions as a resisting force to the goals of the protagonist, without association of good or evil. | | 10 |
| 5158898771 | Anticlimax | A drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also, a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous. | | 11 |
| 5158898772 | Antihero | A protagonist who carries the action of the literary piece but does not embody the classic characteristics of courage, strength, and nobility. | | 12 |
| 5158898773 | Antithesis | A rhetorical figure in which sharply opposing are expressed within a balanced grammatical structure. | | 13 |
| 5158898774 | Aporia | An impasse or un-resolvable conflict between thought and language. | | 14 |
| 5158898775 | Aphorism | A short pithy statement of a truth or doctrine. | | 15 |
| 5158898776 | Aposiopesis | An abrupt breaking off in the middle of a sentence without the completion of the idea, often under the stress of emotion. | | 16 |
| 5158898777 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which a person not present or a personified abstraction is directly addressed as though present. | | 17 |
| 5158898778 | Apotheosis | Elevation of someone to the status of a god. | | 18 |
| 5158898779 | Archetype | A character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all cultures and eras because it occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore. | | 19 |
| 5158898780 | Aside | In a play, a character's short speech or remark heard by the audience but not by other characters. | | 20 |
| 5158898781 | Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds, usually close together, to achieve a particular effect or euphony. | | 21 |
| 5158898782 | Atmosphere | The emotional tone pervading a section or a whole of a literary work. | | 22 |
| 5158898783 | Attitude | The author's feelings toward the topic he or she is writing about; often used interchangeably with "tone". | | 23 |
| 5158898784 | Aubade | A poem or song announcing/ celebrating the coming of dawn. | | 24 |
| 5158898785 | Ballad | A narrative poem, usually simple and fairly short, originally designed to be sung. Historically, the ballad was part of the oral tradition and was transmitted from singer to singer by word of mouth. It is distinguished by: simple, colloquial language; a story told through dialogue and action; a theme that is often tragic; the use of a refrain. | | 25 |
| 5158898786 | Bathos | Similar to anti-climactic, a sudden descent from the exalted to the ridiculous; excessive sentimentality or pathos; authors achieve this unintentionally -- it is a derisive comment about the author's failure. | | 26 |
| 5158898787 | Beat Generation | Denotes a group of American writers (especially poets) who became prominent in the 1950's. Their convictions and attitudes were unconventional, provocative, anti-intellectual, anti-hierarchal and anti-middle class ('squares'). | | 27 |
| 5158898788 | Bildungsroman | A novel which is an account of the youthful development of a hero or heroine. | | 28 |
| 5158898789 | Blank Verse | Poetry of unrhymed iambic pentameter. | | 29 |
| 5158898790 | Bowdlerize | To prudishly expurgate supposedly offensive passages. | | 30 |
| 5158898791 | Bucolic | Used to describe an idealized country setting; basically a synonym for pastoral. | | 31 |
| 5158898792 | Burlesque | A work designed to ridicule attitudes, style, or subject matter by handling either an elevated subject in trivial manner or a low subject with mock dignity. The term is used for various types of satirical imitation. | | 32 |
| 5158898793 | Byronic Hero | In literature, a rebel, proudly defiant in his attitude toward conventional social codes and religious beliefs; an exile or outcast hungering for an ultimate truth to give meaning to his life. Despite past transgressions he remains a sympathetic figure. | | 33 |
| 5158898794 | Cacophony | Harsh, discordant sounds, unpleasant to the ear. | | 34 |
| 5158898795 | Cadence | The natural rise and fall of voice in reciting, reading, or speaking; flow of rhythm, inflection, or modulation in a tone. | | 35 |
| 5158898796 | Caesura | A pause separating phrases within a line of poetry. | | 36 |
| 5158898797 | Canon | A body of writings established over time as having genuine literary merit. | | 37 |
| 5158898798 | Caricature | The exaggeration of features and mannerisms for satirical effect. Deliberately distorted imitations of a person. | | 38 |
| 5158898799 | Carpe Diem | Latin phrase meaning "seize the day", the idea of which (time is short and life is fleeting) was used frequently in 16th and 17th century poetry. | | 39 |
| 5158898800 | Catastrophe | Greek for "overturning"; the tragic denouement of a play or story. | | 40 |
| 5158898801 | Catharsis | Emotional cleansing or feeling of relief felt by the audience at the conclusion of a tragedy. In a sense, the tragedy, having aroused powerful feelings in the spectator, also has a therapeutic effect. | | 41 |
| 5158898802 | Chiasmus | A literary scheme involving a specific inersion of word order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern. | | 42 |
| 5158898803 | Cliché | An expression that deviates enough from ordinary usage to call attention to itself and has been used so often that it is felt to be hackneyed or cloying. | | 43 |
| 5158898804 | Climax | The point of greatest dramatic tension or emotional intensity in a plot. In a drama, it follows the rising action and precedes the falling action. The point at which the conflict reaches the greatest height. | | 44 |
| 5158898805 | Closed Form | Type of poetry in which the structure is dictated or predetermined. | | 45 |
| 5158898806 | Coin | To invent and put into use a new word or expression. | | 46 |
| 5158898807 | Colloquial | Words, phrases, or expressions used in everyday speech and writing. | | 47 |
| 5158898808 | Comedy of Manners | Concerned with the intrigues, regularly amorous, of witty and sophisticated members of an aristocratic society. | | 48 |
| 5158898809 | Comic Relief | Humorous element inserted into a somber or tragic work especially a play, in order to relieve its tension, widen its scope, or heighten by contrast the tragic emotion. | | 49 |
| 5158898810 | Conceit | A far-fetched comparison between two seemingly unlike things; an extended metaphor that gains appeal from its unusual or extraordinary comparison. | | 50 |
| 5158898811 | Confidant | A character entrusted with the secrets and private thoughts of another character, usually the protagonist. | | 51 |
| 5158898812 | Connotation | Associations a word calls to mind. | | 52 |
| 5158898813 | Consonance | The close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after different vowels. | | 53 |
| 5158898814 | Convention | A device, principle, procedure or form which is generally accepted. | | 54 |
| 5158898815 | Couplet | Two successive rhyming lines of the same number of syllables, with matching cadence. | | 55 |
| 5158898816 | Crisis | The turning point of uncertainty and tension resulting from earlier conflict in a plot. At these moments in a story, it is unclear if the protagonist will succeed or fail in his struggle. | | 56 |
| 5158898817 | Deconstructionism | As a contemporary literary theory, it asserts that, rather than the traditional view that a text has only one fixed and stable meaning, any text carries a plurality of meaning. As such, whatever meaning that exists does not exist in the closed book, but only occurs when a reader begins to read. | | 57 |
| 5158898818 | Denotation | The dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phrase. | | 58 |
| 5158898819 | Denouement | The tying up of loose ends after the climax in a story, novel, or play. | | 59 |
| 5158898820 | Deus ex machina | Literally 'god out of the machine'; at a story's end, any unanticipated intervention that resolves a seemingly impossible plot problem. | | 60 |
| 5158898821 | Diction | A writer's choice of language to achieve a desired tone or effect, be it formal, informal, colloquial, elevated etc. | | 61 |
| 5158898822 | Didactic | Story, speech essay, or play in which the author's primary purpose is to instruct, teach, or moralize. | | 62 |
| 5158898823 | Direct Characterization | Telling the attributes and qualities of a character. | | 63 |
| 5158898824 | Distortion | Variation from expected or typical proportion or arrangement. | | 64 |
| 5158898825 | Doggerel | Rough, crudely written verse. | | 65 |
| 5158898826 | Doppelganger | A device by which a character is self-duplicated; the "divided self" or ghostly double. | | 66 |
| 5158898827 | Dramatic Irony | A form of irony that depends more on the structure of a play than the words; where the audience knows something vital that the character does not know. | | 67 |
| 5158898828 | Dramatic Monologue | A poem consisting of the words of a single character who reveals in his speech his own nature; discloses the psychology of the speaker at a particular moment. | | 68 |
| 5158898829 | Dramatis Personae | The characters in a play, usually listed on a page prior to the opening lines. | | 69 |
| 5158898830 | Dynamic Character | A character that changes during the course of the work. | | 70 |
| 5158898831 | Dystopia | Work in which a society in an attempt to perfect itself, instead goes terribly wrong; usually characterized by extreme mechanization and authoritatianism. | | 71 |
| 5158898832 | Edwardian Period | Pertaining to King Edward VII's reign (1901-1910) -- a period of considerable change and reaction against Victorianism as well as growing apprehension about technology and industrialization. | | 72 |
| 5158898833 | Elegy | A poem mourning the death of an individual or of all men. | | 73 |
| 5158898834 | Elision | Slurring or omission of an unstressed syllable to make a line of poetry conform to a metrical pattern. | | 74 |
| 5158898835 | Elizabethan Era | Named for England's Queen Elizabeth the First, a somewhat vague classification applied to the second half of the 16th century and early part of the 17th, remarkable for its creative activity and output in English literature, especially drama. | | 75 |
| 5158898836 | Emblem | A symbolic picture accompanied by a motto and occasionally by exposition. | | 76 |
| 5158898837 | End rhyme | Rhyme which comes at the end of a line of verse. | | 77 |
| 5158898838 | End-stopped | When the sense and meter coincide at the end of the line. | | 78 |
| 5158898839 | English Sonnet | Traditionally, a fourteen-line love poem in iambic pentameter, but in contemporary poetry, themes and forms vary. Rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The final couplet sums up or resolves the situation described in the previous lines. Also known as the Shakespearean sonnet. | | 79 |
| 5158898840 | Enjambment | In poetry, the running over of a sentence from one verse or stanza to the next without stopping at the end of the first. | | 80 |
| 5158898841 | Enlightenment | An intellectual movement in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries uniting the concepts of God, nature, reason, and man in the belief that "right reason" could achieve for man a perfect society by freeing him from the oppresive restraints of unexamined authority, superstition, and prejudice. Also known as the Age of Reason. | | 81 |
| 5158898842 | Epic | An extended narrative poem, exalted in style and heroic theme. | | 82 |
| 5158898843 | Epigram | A short, usually witty statement, graceful in style and ingenious in thought. | | 83 |
| 5158898844 | Epigraph | A brief quotation at the beginning of a work (usually on the title page) that reflects the theme of the work. | | 84 |
| 5158898845 | Epiphany | A sudden flash of insight; a startling discovery; a dramatic realization. | | 85 |
| 5158898846 | Epistolary Novel | Novel written in the form of letters. | | 86 |
| 5158898847 | Epithalamion | A song or poem sung outside the bridal chamber on the wedding night. | | 87 |
| 5158898848 | Epithet | An adjective or other term used to characterize a person or thing. | | 88 |
| 5158898849 | Ethos | Appeal to ethics. | | 89 |
| 5158898850 | Euphemism | A word or phrase which substitutes for another which would likely be undesirable because it may be too direct, unpleasant, or offensive. | | 90 |
| 5158898851 | Euphony | Denotes pleasing, mellifluous sounds, usually produced by long vowels rather than consonants. | | 91 |
| 5158898852 | Eye Rhyme | Rhyme which depends on spelling rather than pronunciation; rhyme that is seen, not heard. | | 92 |
| 5158898853 | Farce | Any play which evokes laughter by such devices of low comedy such as physical buffoonery, rough wit or ridiculous situations; unconcerned with subtlety/ plausibility. | | 93 |
| 5158898854 | Feminine Rhyme | Terminal rhyme that extends over two or more syllables. | | 94 |
| 5158898855 | Figurative Language | Unlike literal expression, uses of figures of speech (metaphor, simile, metonymy, personification, and hyperbole) in order to appeal to one's senses. Commonly used in poetry. | | 95 |
| 5158898856 | First Person Narrator | A character in the story who tells the story, using the pronoun "I". Limited perspective of the narration and therefore unreliable. | | 96 |
| 5158898857 | Flashback | A scene inserted into a novel, play, or story showing events which happened at an earlier time. | | 97 |
| 5158898858 | Flat Character | A simple, one-dimensional character, about whom little is revealed throughout the course of the work. | | 98 |
| 5158898859 | Foil | A character whose contrasting personal characteristics draw attention to, enhance, or contrast with those of the main character. A character who, by displaying opposite traits, emphasizes certain aspects of another character. | | 99 |
| 5158898860 | Foot | A group of syllables forming a metrical unit. | | 100 |
| 5158898861 | Foreshadowing | Hints at what is to come. It is sometimes noticeable only in hindsight, but usually is obvious enough to set the reader wondering. | | 101 |
| 5158898862 | Frame story | A narrative enclosed within another upon which equal or primary interest is centered. | | 102 |
| 5158898863 | Free verse | Poetry without regular rhyme or meter. | | 103 |
| 5158898864 | Genre | The category (each with its own conventions) in which a piece of writing can be classified -- poetry, prose, drama, science fiction, utopian etc. | | 104 |
| 5158898865 | Gothic | A type of romance popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, set in medieval castles, replete with secret passageways, mysterious dungeons, peripatetic ghosts, and much gloom and supernatural paraphernalia. | | 105 |
| 5158898866 | Grotesque | Commonly employed to denote aberrations from the norm of harmony, balance, and proportion. Characterized by distortion, exaggeration, or striking incongruities. | | 106 |
| 5158898867 | Harlem Renaissance | African-American artistic movement that emerged and flourished in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. | | 107 |
| 5158898868 | Hero | A character who has such admirable traits as courage, idealism, and fortitude. | | 108 |
| 5158898869 | Heroic Couplet | A pair of rhymed, iambic pentameter lines. | | 109 |
| 5158898870 | Hubris | Greek: "insolence," "pride." The emotion in the tragic hero which leads him to ignore warnings from the gods or to transgress against their moral codes; by extention, in dramas, any wanton insolence on the part of the hero which leads to his downfall. | | 110 |
| 5158898871 | Hyperbole | Extreme exaggeration used to create a comic effect, strong emotion or irony; not meant to be taken literally. | | 111 |
| 5158898872 | Hypocorism | The use of a diminutive or "pet" name. | | 112 |
| 5158898873 | Iambic Pentameter | A five-foot line made up of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable. Most common metric foot in English poetry. | | 113 |
| 5158898874 | Idiomatic Expression | Refers to a construction or expression in one language that cannot be matched or directly translated word-for-word in another language. | | 114 |
| 5158898875 | Imagism | The theory and practice of a group of early 20th century poets in England and the U.S. who maintained that the precise image was central in verse. | | 115 |
| 5158898876 | Indeterminacy | Elements in a literary work which depend for their effect or result on a reader's interpretation, and which may be interpreted in a number of different (and, likely, mutually conflicting) ways are said to be 'indeterminate'. | | 116 |
| 5158898877 | in medias res | In literature, a work that begins in the middle of a story. | | 117 |
| 5158898878 | Indirect characterization | Shows rather than tells the attributes of a character through his or her apperance, actions, thoughts and speech as well as the observations and reactions of others. | | 118 |
| 5158898879 | Interior monologue | In literature, used to describe all means/methods of self-revelation. | | 119 |
| 5158898880 | Internal rhyme | A rhyme that is within the line, rather than at the end. | | 120 |
| 5158898881 | Inversion | Synonym for anastrophe. | | 121 |
| 5158898882 | Invocation | An appeal, usually directed to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, in which the poet asks for divine assistance at the beginning of an epic or other long work. | | 122 |
| 5158898883 | Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet | Fourteen line poem divided into two parts: the first is eight lines (abbaabba) and the second is six (cdcdcd or cdecde). | | 123 |
| 5158898884 | Jacobean Age | The reign of King James I; rich in literary activity. | | 124 |
| 5158898885 | Juxtaposition | The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in a similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. | | 125 |
| 5158898886 | Kenning | Used particularly in Anglo-Saxon verse, this is the means of expressing or describing one thing in terms of another. | | 126 |
| 5158898887 | Lampoon | Suggests excess, coarseness and rough crudity -- a virulent or scurrilous form of satire. | | 127 |
| 5158898888 | Litotes | A form of "meiosis" in which an idea is expressed by the denial of its opposite; understatement for emphasis. | | 128 |
| 5158898889 | Local color | American literary movement of the mid-19th century which used detail peculiar to a particular region and environment to add interest and authenticity to their narratives. | | 129 |
| 5158898890 | Logos | Appeal to logic. | | 130 |
| 5158898891 | Lost Generation | The host of young men who were killed in the First World War and also the young men who survived and who thereafter were adrift morally and spiritually. | | 131 |
| 5158898892 | Lyric poem | A fairly short, emotionally expressive poem that expresses the feelings and observations of a single speaker. | | 132 |
| 5158898893 | Magic Realism | Fiction containing characteristic features such as mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or bizarre, skilful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots, miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the element of surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the in explicable. | | 133 |
| 5158898894 | Malapropism | A blunder in speech caused by the substitution of a word for another that is similar in sound but different in meaning. | | 134 |
| 5158898895 | Masculine Rhyme | Rhyme of a terminal, single syllable. | | 135 |
| 5158898896 | Meiosis | A form of understatement that presents something as less significant than it really is. | | 136 |
| 5158898897 | Melodrama | Traditionally, the depiction of the conflict between despicable evil and extraordinary good; also used broadly to describe elements of a literary work that are "over the top." | | 137 |
| 5158898898 | Metaphor | A figure of speech which compares two dissimilar things, asserting that one thing is not just "like" another, but that one thing "is" another. | | 138 |
| 5158898899 | Metaphysical Conceit | A type of simile which establishes a striking parallel between startlingly dissimilar things. | | 139 |
| 5158898900 | Metaphysical Poets | Applied to a group of 17th century poets; chiefly Donne, Carew, George Herbert, Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Marvell, Cleveland and Cowley who employed arresting and original images and conceits, wit, ingenuity, dexterous use of colloquial speech, considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter, complex themes, a liking for paradox and dialectical argument, direct manner, caustic humor, keenly felt awareness of mortality and a distinguished capacity for elliptical thought and tersely compact expression. | | 140 |
| 5158898901 | Meter | A recognizable through varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. | | 141 |
| 5158898902 | Metonymy | Greek for "a change of name", this is a type of metaphor in which something closely associated with another thing is named instead of the other thing. | | 142 |
| 5158898903 | Mock epic | A work in which a trivial subject is made ridiculous by being treated with the elaborate and dignified devices of the epic. | | 143 |
| 5158898904 | Modernism | Literary movement that emerges @WWI characterized thematically by feelings of disillusionment, isolation and despair, and structurally by experimentation with form. | | 144 |
| 5158898905 | Monologue | The verbal expression of a single person speaking alone, with or without an audience. | | 145 |
| 5158898906 | Mood | Atmosphere established by the totality of the literary work. | | 146 |
| 5158898907 | Motif | A theme, character, or verbal pattern which recurs in literature, folklore, or within a single work. | | 147 |
| 5158898908 | Myth | A story, usually with supernatural significance, that explains the origins of gods, heroes, or natural phenomena. Although fictional, they contain deeper truths about the nature of humankind, and are populated with archetypal characters. | | 148 |
| 5158898909 | Narrative poem | A long work that tells a story in verse. | | 149 |
| 5158898910 | Naturalism | Late 19th century literary movement that is an extreme form of Realism, premised on Darwin's theories of natural selection that also maintains that no supernatural reality exists. | | 150 |
| 5158898911 | Nemesis | One that inflicts retribution or vengence; a formidable and often victorious rival or opponent. | | 151 |
| 5158898912 | Nonce word | A word invented for a particular occasion. | | 152 |
| 5158898913 | Octave | Refers to either the first section of an Italian sonnet or an eight-line poem or stanza. | | 153 |
| 5158898914 | Ode | A lyric poem of some length, serious in subject and dignified in style. | | 154 |
| 5158898915 | Omniscient point-of-view | In works with this narrative perspective, the narrator knows everything that needs to be known about all elements of the story. | | 155 |
| 5158898916 | Onomatopoeia | Words whose sounds express or reinforce their meanings. | | 156 |
| 5158898917 | Open form | Poetry that is not dictated to follow a prescribed structure. | | 157 |
| 5158898918 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines two contradictory words, placed side by side. | | 158 |
| 5158898919 | Palindrome | A word, sentence or verse which reads the same forward as back. | | 159 |
| 5158898920 | Parable | A short story illustrating a moral or religious lesson. | | 160 |
| 5158898921 | Paradox | A statement or situation that at first seems impossible or oxymoronic, but which solves itself and reveals meaning. | | 161 |
| 5158898922 | Paralipsis | A figurative device by which a speaker or writer feigns to ignore or pass over a matter and thus draws attention to it. | | 162 |
| 5158898923 | Parallelism | The repeated use of the same grammatical structure in a sentence or series of sentences. | | 163 |
| 5158898924 | Parody | A work which ridicules a serious literary work or the characteristic style of an author by treating the subject matter flippantly or by applying the style to an inappropriate, usually trivial, subject. | | 164 |
| 5158898925 | Pastoral | Literary form concerning idealized country life. | | 165 |
| 5158898926 | Pathos | The quality of a work or passage that appeals to the reader's or viewer's emotions -- especially pity. | | 166 |
| 5158898927 | Periphrasis | Using many or very long words where a few simple words will do. | | 167 |
| 5158898928 | Personification | The attribution of human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object. | | 168 |
| 5158898929 | Picaresque | Episodic depiction of the adventures of a rogue whose behavior implicates him in imbroglios as he moves from one social class to another. | | 169 |
| 5158898930 | Plot | The plan, design, scheme or pattern of events in a play, poem or work of fiction. | | 170 |
| 5158898931 | Poetic Justice | Coined in the late 17th century to convey the idea that the evil are punished appropriately and the good are rewarded as they should be. | | 171 |
| 5158898932 | Point of View | Perspective of the speaker or narrator in a literary work. | | 172 |
| 5158898933 | Portmanteau Word | A word formed by the combining of two or more words. | | 173 |
| 5158898934 | Postmodernism | A general term used to refer to changes, developments and tendencies which have taken place in literature, art, music, architecture, philosophy, etc. in the post WWII era. | | 174 |
| 5158898935 | Prosody | The study of versification, dealing with such subjects as stanza patterns, rhyme, meter, etc. | | 175 |
| 5158898936 | Protagonist | The principal character in a work; often considered the hero or heroine, but the word in and of itself carries no connotation of goodness or virtue. | | 176 |
| 5158898937 | Pun | Humorous play on words that have several meanings or words that sound the same but have different meaning. | | 177 |
| 5158898938 | Quatrain | Four-line stanza. | | 178 |
| 5158898939 | Realism | American literary movement that emerges around the Civil War which attempts to depict life as most people live it, without idealization. | | 179 |
| 5158898940 | Refrain | A line or lines repeated at intervals during a poem, usually at the end of each stanza. | | 180 |
| 5158898941 | Regionalism | The representation in a body of literature, created by either a single author or a group of authors, of a particular locale. In Regional literature, the locale isn't merely a backdrop, it is almost a character itself, influencing the characters and the action. | | 181 |
| 5158898942 | Renaissance | European historical period that followed the Middle Ages. It is said to have begun in Italy in the late 14th century and to have continued through the 16th century, slowly spreading across Europe. In this period, numerous art forms reached an eminence yet to be matched, let alone exceeded. | | 182 |
| 5158898943 | Restoration | The period takes its name from the restoration of the Stuart line to the English throne after the Puritan Interregnum. Lasts from 1660-1700. | | 183 |
| 5158898944 | Revenge tragedy | A form of tragic drama in which someone rights a wrong. | | 184 |
| 5158898945 | Rhetorical Question | A question with an obvious answer, so no response is expected; used for emphasis or to make a point. | | 185 |
| 5158898946 | Rhyme Scheme | The arrangement of rhyme in a unit of verse. | | 186 |
| 5158898947 | Rising action | That part of a play, novel or story which precedes the climax. | | 187 |
| 5158898948 | Romanticism | Literary and artistic movement that emerges in early 19th century as a reaction to and rejection of the order and logic of the Neoclassical period. Characterized by an interest in nature and the natural, organic and primitive way of life; an association of human moods with the moods of nature; an emphasis on natural religion; emphasis on the need for spontaneity in thought or action; an focus on the power and authenticity of the imagination; a tendency to exalt the individual. | | 188 |
| 5158898949 | Round Character | A character in a literary work about whom much is revealed/portrayed. | | 189 |
| 5158898950 | 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 will occur. | | 190 |
| 5158898951 | Sestet | A six-line stanza of poetry; also, the last lines of an Italian sonnet. | | 191 |
| 5158898952 | Sestina | A complex verse form created by the medieval troubadours, consisting of six stanzas of six lines apiece with a final envoi of three lines. The rhyme scheme requires that the same six end words appear at the end of each line of a stanza, but in a particular, fixed order. | | 192 |
| 5158898953 | Setting | The where and when of a story or play; the locale. In drama the term may refer to the scenery or props. | | 193 |
| 5158898954 | Simile | A form of comparison using "like" or "as" that says one thing is similar to another. | | 194 |
| 5158898955 | Situational Irony | Form of irony in which a set of circumstances turns out to be the opposite of those expected; reverse of those anticipated and appropriate. | | 195 |
| 5158898956 | Slang | Common to many languages, it is the rough, often crude, language of the common man, of everyday speech. Typically ephemeral some sland nevertheless survives for decades, even centuries. | | 196 |
| 5158898957 | Slant Rhyme | A rhyme based on imperfect or incomplete correspondence of end syllable sounds. Synonymous with " imperfect", "off" or "near" rhyme. | | 197 |
| 5158898958 | Soliloquy | A speech, often of some length, in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his inner thoughts and feelings. | | 198 |
| 5158898959 | Stanza | A group of lines of verse forming one of the division of a poem. | | 199 |
| 5158898960 | Static Character | A character which does not change during the course of a work. | | 200 |
| 5158898961 | Stichomythia | Dialogue of alternating single lines, particularly in drama; usually involves a kind of verbal parrying, and creates a feeling of tension and conflict. | | 201 |
| 5158898962 | Stock Character | A familiar figure that appears regularly in certain literary forms. | | 202 |
| 5158898963 | Stock Situation | A frequently recurring pattern or incident in drama or fiction. | | 203 |
| 5158898964 | Stream-of-consciousness | A form or writting which replicates the way the human mind works. Ideas are presented in apparently random order, thoughts are often unfinished. | | 204 |
| 5158898965 | Style | The way a writer uses language. Takes into account word choice, diction, figures of speech, and so on; the writer's "voice." | | 205 |
| 5158898966 | Sub-plot | A subsidary action in a play or story which coincides with the main action. | | 206 |
| 5158898967 | 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. | | 207 |
| 5158898968 | Synaesthesia | The intermingling of sensations. | | 208 |
| 5158898969 | Synecdoche | Greek for " taking together", this is a metaphor of substitution like metonymy; however, rather than substituting something associated with the subject, a part of the subject is substituted for the whole, or the whole for the part. | | 209 |
| 5158898970 | Syntax | The way in which words, phrases, and sentences are ordered and connected. | | 210 |
| 5158898971 | tercet | A stanza of three lines linked by rhyme. | | 211 |
| 5158898972 | terza rima | The measure adopted by Dante for his "Divina Commedia", consisting of a series of interlocking tercets in which the second line of each one rhymes with the first and third lines of the one succeeding, thus: aba, bcb, cdc. | | 212 |
| 5158898973 | Theme | The central idea of a literary work. | | 213 |
| 5158898974 | Third person point of view | In this form of narration, the narrator is someone outside the story who refers to all characters in the story by name of as "he" "she" or "they." There are generally considered to be two types of third person narration: "omniscient"- in which the narrator knows everything about the characters that needs to be known, including their inner thoughts, feelings, motives, etc.; "limited"- in which the narrator tells the story in third person, but has access to the thoughts, feelings, etc. of only one character. | | 214 |
| 5158898975 | Tone | Refer's to the author's attitude toward the subject, and often sets the mood for the piece. | | 215 |
| 5158898976 | Tongue-in-cheek | Expressing a thought in a way that appears to be sincere, but is actually joking or ironic. | | 216 |
| 5158898977 | Tragedy | Typically, a form of drama concerned with the fortunes and misfortunes, and, ultimately, the disasters, that befall human beings of title, power, and position. In this, the characters' traits of excellence, nobility, and virtuousness are insufficient to save them from self-destruction or destruction brought upon them. | | 217 |
| 5158898978 | Tragic flaw | Traditionally, a defect in a hero or heroine that leads to his or her downfall. | | 218 |
| 5158898979 | tragicomedy | A play in which the action, though apparently leading to a catastrophe, is reversed to bring about a happy ending. | | 219 |
| 5158898980 | Transcendentalism | Literary, philosophical, and religious movement of the Antebellum period that purports the divinity of each individual conscience and that each human is animated by the same divinity; paid particular attention to the unspoiled natural world, believing that God is best revealed in man when man is in nature; likewise believed that truth can be discovered through intuition and trusting the inner voice. | | 220 |
| 5158898981 | Transition/Segue | The means to get from one portion of a poem or story to another smoothly. | | 221 |
| 5158898982 | Trope | Synonym for "figure of speech." | | 222 |
| 5158898983 | Turn | The change in thought or feeling which separates the octave from the sestet in the Italian sonnet; synonym for "volta". | | 223 |
| 5158898984 | Unity | The quality in a work wherein there is a logical relationship of part to part and part to whole. | | 224 |
| 5158898985 | Universality | The quality in a work that enables it to transcend time, place, location, culture etc. and thus have applicability and relevance to people of all time and places. | | 225 |
| 5158898986 | Utopia | Word coined by Sir Thomas More which literally means "no where", an ironic comment on the connotative meaning of the word, which is a place of earthly perfection, with no strife or discord. | | 226 |
| 5158898987 | Verbal Irony | Most commonly used form of irony, one in which there is a contradiction between what is stated and what is actually meant. | | 227 |
| 5158898988 | Victorianism | British historical and artistic period spanning the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901); usually oversimplified in description as a period of prudery, materialism and complacency, but in actuality a time of stress, doubt and change in all areas of society. | | 228 |
| 5158898989 | Villain | An evil or wicked character who acts in opposition to the hero. | | 229 |
| 5158898990 | Villanelle | Fixed form of poetry originating @ the 16th century; comprised of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain. Each stanza follows a set pattern of repetition. | | 230 |
| 5158898991 | Volta | The moment in the Italian sonnet that changes from the octave to the sestet, from the problem to the solution; synonym for "turn". | | 231 |
| 5158898992 | Zeugma | The use of a single word standing in the same grammatical relationship to two other words, but with significant differences in meaning. | | 232 |
