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Allegory
Narrative of an extended metaphor with characters that are personified abstractions, which are sometmes capitalized
Death, Greed, Virtue
Alliteration
Repetition of the same consonant sounds
Allusion
Reference to a person, text, or event outside the text
Ambiguity
Doubftulness or uncertainty in interpretation
Ambivalence
Coexsitence of opposing attitudes or feelings
Anachronism
Something that is out of its proper chronological order
Analogy
Broad term for comparison based on similarity; simile, metaphor, conceit, and allegory are examples
Anadiplosis
Repetition of words that ends one clause at the beginning of the next
There is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false impression.
Anaphora
Repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of a series of phrases, lines, or sentences. Similar to parallelism, but in parallelism there is repetition of grammatical construction, not necessarily the same word or words at the beginning.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; / I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise
Anecdote
Brief story about an amusing or interesting (usually autobiographical) event.
Anticlimax
Something trivial or commonplace that follows a series of significant events; usually these follow the climax of a story.
Antithesis
Figure of speech that emphasizes opposing ideas or attitudes by a juxtaposition of contrasting, but parallel words and phrases
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
Bathos
When a writer strives to express the sublime or sentimental, but goes too far and the piece becomes absurd, ridiculous, and subject to satire.
Biography
Account of a person’s life written, assembled, or produced by another.
Characterization
Act of creating and developing a character.
Direct Characterization
Whe the writer states or directly describes a character’s traits.
Indirect Characterization
When the writer shows a character's personality through his or her actions, thoughts, feelings, words, and appearance, or through another character's observations and reactions.
Chiasmus
When the word order in one clause is inverted in the other; also called inverted parallelism:
I’ll do’t, but it dislikes me
Cliche
Trite or overused expression or idea:
Wise as an owl
Be there for someone
He didn't know his own mind
See the writing on the wall
Comfort zone
Think outside the box
Making the best of it
Conceit
Elaborate extended metaphor comparing two very different things, creating a surprisingly apt parallel:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Conflict
Opposition between characters or forces in a work of drama or fiction, especially opposition that motivates or shapes the action of the plot:
Human versus human
Human versus Nature
Human versus him/herself
Connotation
Associative meanings of a word in addition to its literal sense, as in stench (negative), odor (negative/neutral), smell (neutral), aroma (positive. Connotation may be personal and individual, or general and universal.
Denotation
Specific or direct meaning of a word found in the dictionary, in contrast to its figurative or associated meaning.
Determinism
Philosophical doctrine that every event, action, and decision is the inevitable consequence of elements of fate, independent of human will.
Dialect
Regional variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary.
Diction
Choice and use of words in speech or writing, as part of a writer's style. Diction may be, e.g., formal or informal, plain or ornate, common or technical, abstract or concrete, polysyllabic or monosyllabic; a writer could also use ______ from a certain area, such as natural or mechanical.
Epanalepsis
Repetition of a word or words at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause:
I am not what I am.
Epic Simile
Extended simile elaborated in great detail.
Epiphany
Comprehension or perception of reality by a sudden realization or discovery of a truth that changes a character; also called a crystallized moment.
Epistrophe
Repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or lines:
...of the people, by the people, ...for the people.
Existentialism
Philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the indivdual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions.
Extended Metaphor
Analogy that continues to be elaborated through detail.
Figurative Language
Language that uses imagery and figures of speech, like simile, metaphor, personafication, hyperbole, etc.
Flashback
Literary or cinematic device in which an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronological order of a narrative; showing events that happened at an earlier time, often used in modern fition.
Foreshadowing
Technique of arranging events and information so that later events are prepared for or hinted at early in a narrative.
Genre
Category of artistic composition, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content, such as epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy, satire, drama, novel, short story, and nonfiction.
Hyperbole
Figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect:
I could sleep for a year
This book weighs a ton
Imagery
Use of vivid language to represent objects, actions, or ideas. May be visual (from sight), auditory (from sound), olfactory (from smell), tactile (from touch), gustatory (from taste), or kinesthetic (from body movement).
Incongruity
Something in the work that shows a discrepancy or contradiction.
Intertextuality
Various links in form and content that bind a text to other texts, such as when a novel contains a song or poem from outside the narrative.
Jargon
Voabulary peculiar to a group or profession.
Juxtaposition
Act of placing things side by side for the purposes of comparing or contrasting.
Leitmotif
A recurring or repeated theme in a musical, artistic, or literary work.
Literal
Primary, non-figurative meaning of a word.
Litotes
Figure of speech that contains an understatement for emphasis, the opposite of hyperbole:
Saying “not bad” to something that is very good or beautiful
It took a few days to build the Great Wall of China
Local Color
Use of detail peculiar to a particular region and environment to add interest and authenticity to a narrative, including description of the locale, dress, customs, and music.
Macrocosm
The universe in its entirety, the larger reality or “big picture.”
Microcosm
A sort of miniature system that represents a larger system.
Magical Realism
Technique in which highly imaginitive elements (supernatural, myth, dream, fantasy) invade and contrast with the realism of a work.
Malapropism
Incorrect use of a word by substituing a similar sounding, usually polysyllabic word, creating a comic effect:
I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious [contiguous] countries.
Metalanguage
A type of writing that addresses the devices of fiction or written composition, self-consciously and draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually through irony and self-reflection.
The Things They Carried
Metaphor
Figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison:
All the world's a stage.
Has a tenor (original subject) and vehicle (what gives the original subject new attributes; in the above example, world is the tenor, and stage is the vehicle.
Metonymy
Figure of speech which replaces or substitutes the name for something closely associated with it
the crov for the monarchy
the press for the news media
the bench for the judiciary
the law as the police
Motif
Recurring element in a work that has thematic signifi-cance; it may consist of a character, an object, a repeated image, or a verbal pattern. Differs from a theme in that a theme is an idea set forth by a text, where a _____is a recurring element which symbolizes that idea:
The green light in The Great Gatsby
Myth
Explanations of the natural order and cosmic forces; story that is not “true,” involves supernatural events and explains how something came to exist.
Narrator
Person or entity telling a story to a reader in a literary work; in a poem, though, the preferred term is persona or speaker. A reader needs to determine to what extent they are reliable or unreliable.
Naturalism
Works that show a strong interest in, sympathy with, and love of natural beauty. A belief that everything that exists is apart of nature and can be explained by natural causes.
Non Sequitur
Statement that bears no relationship to the context preceding.
Omniscient
A point of view in a narrative in which a third- person narrator is able to reveal insights into characters and settings that would not be otherwise apparent from the events of the story and which no single character could be aware of.
Limited Omniscient
A point of view in a narrative in which a third person narrator reveals the thoughts of one character.
Objectivity
The writer is otside the work, writing about other people and therefore is detached from it.
Onomatopoeia
Formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
Oxymoron
Figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined:
A deafening silence
Sweet sorrow
Honest thief
Paradox
Seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true:
Standing is more tiring than walking.
Parallelism
Repetition of a sentence pattern or grammatical structure (not necessarily the same exact words).
Parataxis (Asyndeton)
The absence of connecting words such as conjunctions or transitions; the effect is terseness and compression:
He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac.
Parody
Imitative use of words, style, attitude, tone, and ideas of an author in such a way as to make the author or his or her ideas look ridiculous.
Pastoral
Literary work that portrays or evokes rural life, usually in an idealized manner, displaying nostalgia for the past or a hypothetical state of love and peace that has been lost.
Person
Either the speaker (1st), the individual addressed (2nd), or the individual or thing spoken (3rd).
Personification
Figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions given human qualities or are represented possessing human form.
Ploce
Repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis, or to extend meaning by using different grammatical forms of a word:
Make war upon themselves—brother to brother / Blood to blood, self against self
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death?
Point of View
Position of a narrator in a piece of literature: first person ("I"), third person limited omniscient (narrator enters the mind of one character), and third person omniscient (the narrator enters the minds of all characters).
Polyptoton
Repetition of words derived from the same root, such as different parts of speech:
Thou art of blood, joy not to make things bleed
Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are
Greeks are strong, and skillful to their strength, fierce to their skill, and their fierceness valiant
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder
Polysyndeton
Repetition of conjunctions (and, nor, for, etc.) in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses:
Either by speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline, or from what over course you please
Around the dinner table sat my father and my mother and her sister and me and an empty chair for my brother
Proverb
Short, pithy saying in frequent and widespread use that expresses a basic truth or practical precept:
Actions speak louder than words
Kindness begets kindness
Pun
Play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
Realism
The documenting of life with bare truth, not idealsm; focus on gritty, truthful scenes of people and their (usually difficult) lives.
Reasoning
The process of looking for evidence to support beliefs, conclusions, actions, or feelings. There are three types.
Deductive
A type of reasoning. Valid because the argument’s conclusion must be true when the premises are true:
Humans are mortal. Margaret is human. Margaret is mortal.
Inductive
A type of reasoning. The premises do not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Instead, the conclusion follows with some degree of probability:
The sun has risen in the east every morning up until now. The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.
Fallacious (False)
A type of reasoning. It is invalid because of logical fallacies in the form or content of the argument:
If A, then B. Not A, therefore not B.
She is the best poet I have ever read because she is the best poet.
Sarcasm
Verbal irony that is intendd to make its victim the subject of contempt or ridicule.
Satire
Literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
Sentimentality
False or exaggerated emotion used to evoke a reader response.
Simile
Figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as:
How like the winter hath my absence been
So are you to my thoughts as food to life
Slang
Language of the street, common, informal language, also called colloquial speech.
Stereotype
Conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image:
Southerners are lazy and Northerners are smart.
Stream of Consciousness
Literary technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as the thoughts develop”
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good.
Style
The way or manner in which something is written. May be analyzed by studying diction, figurative language, rhetorical devices, syntax, and a piece’s formal structure.
Subjectivity
Conveys personal experience and feeling (such as anecdote and autobiography).
Subtext
What is implied but not written.
Suspense
Anxiety or apprehension resulting from an uncertain, undecided, or mysterious situation.
Symbol
Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible. Dependent on culture. Common examples:
fire - passion or anger
lily - purity or innocence
light and darkness - life and death or knowledge and ignorance or joy and sorrow
dove - peace
closed fist -- aggression
raised hands -- surrender
Symploce
The use of anaphora and epistrophe in the same sentence:
When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part of something is substituted for the whole (it is a type of metonymy):
Hands ~ workers
Suits ~ businesspeople
Synesthesia
Description of one kind of sense impression by using words that usually describe another, such that it appeals to multiple senses:
Blinding roar
Soft wind
Heavy silence
Black look
Hard voice
Cold eye
Syntax
Order or sequence of words in a sentence.. May be conventional (as in everyday speech, which in English is subject-verb-object), unconventional (breaking the rules or conventions of grammar), or balanced (word arrangement for parallelism or contrast).
Sometimes a writer will invert normal ______ to enhance compression or rhythm:
Whose woods these are I think know.
Tautology
Redundancy or needless repetition of the same sense in different words; saying the same thing twice.
Tone
General quality, effect, atmosphere, and mood; the writer's attitude or manner toward the subject or readers/audience. Some adjectives to describe it:
formal or informal
intimate or impartial
ironic
defensive or condescending
somber, anxious, serious
playful, celebratory, empathetic
Transition
Word, phrase, sentence, or series of sentences connecting one part of a discourse to another; good transitions give coherence in writing.
Note 
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