Literary Terms

Alliteration

the repetition of speech sounds in a sequence of nearby words; these are most often consonants and only when the sound is empathic because of a beginning stressed syllable on the word; g., “Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, / He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.” Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.155-56.

Allusion

reference to something outside the poem that carries a history of meaning.

Anaphora

deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of each one of a sequence of sentences, paragraphs, lines of verse, or stanzas; g., “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” Shakespeare, sonnet 18, lines 13-14.

Assonance

the repetition of identical or similar vowels in a sequence of nearby words; g., “The Thane of Fife had a wife.” Repetition of the short 'i' sound” Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1.44.

Caesura

a short pause within a line, often (though not always) signaled by a mark of punctuation such as a comma.

Chiasmus

a two-part sentence or phrase, where the second part is a reversal of the first (this does not mean the same words are used); e.g., “The mind is its own place and in itself / Can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven.” Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4.254-55.

Consonance

repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants with different intervening vowels; g., pitter patter.

Couplet

a pair of rhymed lines that are equal in length; g., “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” Shakespeare, sonnet 18, lines 13-14.

End Stopped Line:

Line of verse in which the natural pause of a sentence, clause or other syntactic unit occurs at the end of the line.

Enjambment

commonly known as the run-on line, the pressure of the incomplete syntactic unit toward closure carries over past the end of the line (into the next); g., “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time,” Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.22-24.

Extended metaphor (allegory)

A comparison between two things that continue throughout a series of lines in prose or poetry; g., the summer of Shakespeare’s sonnet 18.

Metaphor

word or expression that in literal usage denotes one kind of thing is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing without asserting a comparison; g., “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow” Shakespeare, Sonnet 2, line 1.

Metonymy

when a term for one thing is applied to another which has become closely associated with because of a recurrent relation in common experience; g., the crown is used to stand for the king; Hollywood for the film industry.

Onomatopoeia

designates a word whose sound seems to resemble closely the sound it denotes; e.g., Buzz.

Oxymoron

the conjunction of two words with meanings that contradict each other (e.g., darkness visible (PL) or sweet sorrow (R&J); bittersweet, old news, pretty ugly).

Paradox

a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true; e.g., less is more.

Personification

involves treating an abstraction, such as death or justice or beauty, or an inanimate object, as if it were a person.

Prolepsis

a future act or development is represented as if already accomplished or existing; e.g., Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech (Band of Brothers).

Repetition

repeating a word, phrase, or sentence is a rhetorical technique to add emphasis, unity, and/or power; g., “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.22-23

Simile

A comparison made between two distinctly different things explicitly indicated using the word like or as; g., “His beard was as white as snow.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.5.218.

Synecdoche

a part of something used to signify the whole, or the whole used to signify the part;
g., using the term “hands” for workers as in “all hands on deck”