Poetic Literary Terms De Ochoa

subject

The main topic of a work, whatever the work is “about.”

theme

A generally recurring subject or idea noticeably evident in a literary work.

tone

The mood or manner of expression in a literary work, which conveys an attitude toward the work’s subject.

irony

In language, a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant.

diction

Word choice or vocabulary, refers to the class of words that an author chooses for a particular work.

concrete diction

words that specifically name or describe things or persons

abstract diction

words that express general ideas or concepts.

allusion

brief reference in text to a person, place, or thing; implies a common knowledge between reader and writer

denotation

literal saying of words

connotation

cultural and emotion idea that is suggested beyond that word

image

a word that refers to a lived experience or anything sensory

visual

relating to sight

auditory

relating to sound

tactile

relating to touch (texture)

gustatory

relating to taste

olfactory

relating to smell

organic

relating to an internal sensation

kinesthetic

relating to movement

synaesthesia

The description of the perception of one sense in terms of another

imagery

the collective set of images

Metaphor

a statement that one thing is something else, which, in a literal sense, it is not.

Implied metaphor

a metaphor that uses neither connectives nor the verb to be.

Mixed metaphor:

the (usually unintentional) combining or two or more incompatible metaphors, resulting in ridiculousness or nonsense.

hyperbole

exaggeration used to emphasize a point.

rime

two or more words that contain an identical or similar vowel sound

exact rime

a full rime in which the sounds following the initial letters of the words are identical in sound

consonance

a kind of rime in which the linked words share similar consonant sounds but have different vowel sounds, as in reason and raisin, mink and monk.

End rime

Rime that occurs at the end of lines, rather than within them.

Internal rime

Rime that occurs within a line of poetry, as opposed to end rime.

Rhythm

The recurring pattern of stresses and pauses in a poem. A fixed rhythm in a poem is called meter.

caesura

A light but definite pause within a line of verse.

Run-on line

A line of verse that does not end in punctuation, but carries on grammatically to the next line.

End-stopped line

a line of verse that ends in a full pause, often indicated by a mark of punctuation.

Stanza

A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem

enjambment

the use of run-on lines

couplet

two lines (usually rhymed)

Tercet

Three lines

Quatrain

Four lines

Sestet

six lines

Octet/octave

eight line

Paradox

A statement that at first strikes on as self-contradictory, but that on reflection reveals some deeper sense; often achieved by a play on words.

Metonymy

Substituting a word with a closely associated term.

Persona

A fictitious character created by an author to be the speaker of a literary work.