Poetry Terms

antithesis

A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas.

assonance

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in a phrase.

Ballad

A poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas.

Bias

Occurs when an author prejudices the audience in favor of one side of an issue.

Bildungsroman

A coming of age text; a novel focusing on the psychological and moral growth of its main character.

caesura

A pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse.

consonance

The repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words.

Context

The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement or idea.

colloquialism

The use of ordinary or familiar words or phrases in a poem or story.

diction

The use of words in a literary work.

elegy

A sustained and formal poem meditating upon death or another solemn theme.

end-stopped

A line with a pause at the end, indicated by punctuation.

enjambment

The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next.

Epigram

A brief, witty, or terse saying or aphorism.

Juxtaposition

A literary device that places contrasting elements side by side.

meter

The repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry.

Monologue

A long speech given by a single person, often in a dramatic work.

Mood

The atmosphere that pervades a literary work intending to evoke a certain emotion.

paradox

A situation or action that appears contradictory but turns out to be true.

Persona

A voice or character representing the speaker in a literary work.

Point of View

The perspective from which a story is told.

satire

Writing that seeks to arouse disapproval by ridicule.

Scansion

The metrical analysis of a verse.

Sibilance

The repetition of hissing or shushing sounds to create a high-frequency sound.

Syntax

The ordering of words into patterns or sentences.

Understatement

Representing something as being much less than it really is.