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Mock heroic
Refers to the style where something trivial is treated with ridiculous comic grandeur.
Zeugma
A figure of speech where one verb yokes together widely differing ideas.
Exp. I lost my keys, my bag and my mind.
Bathos
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, using the contrast to heighten the effect. Anticlimax.
Wit
Understanding or intelligence, showing imagination.
Iambic pentameter
A line of five feet (weak stress followed by a trong stress)
exp. ti-tum
Heroic couplet
Lines of iambic pentameter rhymed in pairs, each pair tends to be a complete sentence.
Juxtaposition
Contrasting ideas placed side by side to increase effect.
Deification
The transformation of someone into a god/goddess.
Parody
An imitation of a work of literature to ridicule its characteristic features.
Satire
Literature which holds up folly or vice to ridicule.
Irony
Saying one thing while meaning another.
Panegyric
A speech or poem praising someone wholeheartedly.
Rhetoric
The art of speaking or writing effectively so as to persuade an audience to your point of view.
Hyperbole
A figure of speech that emphasises through exaggeration.
Antithesis
‘Opposite placing’ - using contrasting ideas in neighbouring sentences or clauses.
Epic simile
A comparison or likeness, often using ‘as when’ to introduce sustained images.
Romantic. Archaic.
Enjambement
A line of poetry which is not end stopped and the sentence runs on the next line without pause.
Epithet
An adjective or adjectival phrase which defines a special quality or attribute.
Litote
Understatement.
Exp. ‘It’s not the best weather today.’ During a hurricane.
Allusion
Indirect references to something outside of the poem.
Anaphora
The act of beginning a series of successive sentences or clauses with the same phrase.
Exp. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
Assonance
Repeats vowel sounds in a word or phrase to create rhythm.
Exp. Go slow down that lonely road.
Blank verse
Poems written in regular meter, but with unrhymed line. Almost always iambic pentameter.
Chaismus
Reversal of words or ideas
Exp. My heart burned with anguish and chilled was my body when I heard of his death. ‘Body’ and ‘heart’, ‘burned’ and ‘chilled’
Consonance
Repetition of consonant sounds in a word or phrase. Opposite of assonance.
Exp. Betty Botter bought a but if butter from the butter shop.
Epistrophe
Successive sentences or sentence fragments end with the same phrase.
Imagery
Visually descriptive
Metaphor
Presents one thing as another completely different thing so as to draw a powerful comparison of images.
Meter
Rhythm is measured in poetry.
Number of syllables,
How each syllable is either stressed or unstressed,
Metonym
Uses an image or idea to stand in place of something
Exp. Mother tongue - native language, Press - journalists
Motif
Symbol or idea that appears repeatedly to help support what the poet is trying to communicate.
Myth
Myths are stores that tell of how something came to be.
Exp. Noah’s ark
Onomatopoeia
Words that are spoken a loud imitate sounds like what they intend to mean.
Exp. Buzzing
Personification
Gives anything non-human, human characteristics.
Reptition
Repeating the same word/phrase.
Rhyme
Correspondence of two or more words with similar-sounding final syllables placed so as to echo one another.
Rhythm
Shape and pattern the poem takes.
Simile
Express similarities using the word ‘like’ or ‘as’
Synecdoche
Looks at a physical part of the whole
Exp. Give me hand - means give me some assistance.
Tmesis
Cuts a word in half for emphasis.
exp. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely’
Note 
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