Literary techniques 📖

Form, language, structure, genre, style etc.

Allegory

an extended metaphor in which characters/places/objects carry a political/religious/moral/historical meaning

Parataxis

words, phrases, clauses, or sentences next to each other so that each element is equally important; usually involves simple sentences or phrases whose relationships to one another—relationships of logic, space, time, or cause-and-effect—are left to the reader to interpret eg. “I came, I saw, I conquered”

Anapaest

a 3 beat metrical foot; unstress, unstress, stress

Cadence

the “rise and fall” of sounds in poetry

Conceit

an extended metaphor, particularly one where a likeness between two things is embellished throughout a text

Feminine rhyme

a rhyme of multiple syllables eg. mystery and history

Heroic couplets

pairs of rhymed iambic pentameters

Masculine rhyme

a line of verse ending on a stressed rhyme

Analepsis

flashback

Bildungsroman

a novel about a character growing up

Dirty realism

a style of fiction featuring terse, hardened characters, action and language

Epistolary

a novel written in the form of letters

Focalisation

the management of point of view

Frame narrative

a story that surrounds another and gives it context

Free indirect discourse

a narrative device in which the author and character’s perspectives merge; the author adopting the point of view and/or language of a character

Intrusive narrator

a narrator who explicitly enters into the text to comment on characters and/or action

Prolepsis

flashforward

Anagnorosis

the moment in which the central character realises a fundamental truth about their situation which they haven’t understood before

Aside

words spoken by a character as if to the audience, unheard by other characters

Comedy of manners

a play which ridicules the social conventions of a society

Farce

a slapstick kind of comedy in which comic situations are pushed to the extreme of improbability

Kitchen-sink drama

modern plays exploring the domestic problems of ordinary people

Stichomythia

choppy patterning of lines alternating between characters, in which words are often repeated or sentiments mirrored

Burlesque

a form of satire in which the style and content of a text is deliberately mismatched

Collocation

patterns of words that often appear together, eg. “fish and chips”

Transferred epithet / hypallage

a figure of speech where an epithet (an adjective or phrase modifying a noun) is transferred from the noun it is intended to describe to another noun in the sentence, usually the object eg. “I had a wonderful day”

Eponymous

named after the main character eg. Oliver Twist

Metalepsis

when the boundary between reality and fictional world is crossed

Intertextuality

the idea that all texts are connected to and composites of other texts

Parallelism

when similar sentence or phrases are side by side

Picaresque

a narrative that chronicles the misadventures of a likeable rogue

Self-reflexivity

writing that draws attention to its own fictionality

Vernacular

the ordinary language of a place or country

Determiner

introduces a noun eg. “the”, “these”

Interjection

expresses sudden feelings and emotions eg. “wow”

Dynamic verb

a verb showing progressive action that will usually happen over time

Phonological features

devices relating to sound

Participle

a verb that acts as an adjective eg. “the smiling boy”

Anadopoton

a figure of speech which is an incomplete sentence, as one clause or phrase is implied eg. “talk of the devil” (“and he doth appear”)

Visual imagery

a technique which stimulates the reader’s “sight” imagination

Auditory imagery

a technique which stimulates the reader’s “hearing” imagination

Olfactory imagery

a technique which stimulates the reader’s “smell” imagination

Gustatory imagery

a technique which stimulates the reader’s “taste” imagination

Tactile imagery

a technique which stimulates the reader’s “touch” imagination

Allusion

a brief, intentional references to a historical, mythic or legendary person/place/event/literary work/movement

Anachromism

something/someone placed in an inappropriate period of time

Anthropomorphism

a form of personification in which human qualities are attributed to anything non-human

Antithesis

contrasting or combining 2 terms, phrases or clauses with opposite meanings

Aphorism

a short phrase that expresses a universal truth (may become an adage)

Apostrophe

an address to a dead or absent person/personification as if he or she were present

Ars poetica

a poem that in itself explains the art of poetry

Assonance

the repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants

Anadiplosis

repetition of the last word of a preceding clause/line at the start of a clause/line

Anaphora

the repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses, lines or stanzas

Ballad

a narrative song passed down orally, often having ABCB quatrains with alternating 4-stress and 3-stress lines

Blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter, also known as heroic verse

Blazon

cataloguing the physical attributes of a subject, often female

Cacophony

harsh or discordant sounds

Canto

a long subsection of an epic or long narrative poem

Cento

a literary work collaged entirely from other authors’ verses or passages

Chiasmus

repetition of any group of verse elements in reverse order

Concrete/pattern poetry

a type of poetry where the visual arrangement of text/space forms a meaningful shape

Consonance

a resemblance in sound between 2 words or words with shared consonants

Dactyl

a metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by 2 unaccented syllables

Didactic poetry

poetry that instructs, either in terms of morals or by providing morals

Dimeter

a line of verse composed of 2 feet

Dissonance

cacophony which depends more on the organisation of sound than on individual words

Dramatic monologue

a poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener

Eclogue

a brief pastoral poem, set in an idyllic/rural place but discussing urban/legal/social/political issues

Ecopoetics

focuses on drawing connections between writing poems and the environment producing poetry

Ekphrasis

a vivid description of a scene or work of art

Elegy

a melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death but tends to end in consolation

Elision

the omission of unstressed syllables, usually to fit a metrical scheme

Ellipsis

the omission of words whose absence does not impede the reader’s ability to understand

End-stopped

a metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break

Epic simile

a detailed comparison which unfolds over the course of several lines

Epigraph

a quotation from another literary work that is placed beneath the title at the beginning of a poem or section of a poem

Epistle

a letter in verse form

Erasure poetry

a poetic form in which a poet blacks out, or in some way erases, words from a pre-existing source to create new poems

Eye rhyme

words that appear to rhyme through visual symmetry but actually don’t

Epiphora

the repetition of words at the end of successive clauses/lines/stanzas

Fourteener

a metrical line of 14 feet

Free verse

non-metrical, non-rhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech

Georgic

a poem or book dealing with agricultural or rural topics, commonly glorifying the country life

Gnomic verse

poems laced with proverbs, aphorisms or maxims

Haiku

three unrhymed lines of 5, 7 and 9 syllables

Heptameter

a meter of 7 feet, usually 14 syllables total

Hexameter

a metrical line of 6 feet, often dactylic

Iamb

a metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable

Invocation

an address to a deity or muse, often taking the form of a request for help

Irony

an implied distance between what is said and what is meant

Iambic pentameter

a poetic meter in which each line consists of five metrical feet; each foot is one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable

Kenning

a figurative compound word that takes the place of an ordinary noun, often relying on myths and legends for meaning, eg. “whale-path” rather than “sea”

Lament

any poetry expressing deep grief

Light verse

whimsical poems eg. limericks or nonsense poems

Limerick

a fixed light verse form of 5 anapaestic (2 unaccented syllables followed by 1 accented) lines forming AABBA

Litotes

a deliberate understatement for effect, especially when a statement is expressed ironically by negating its contrary eg. “it’s not the best weather today”

Lyric poetry

a short poem intended to be spoken, and often possessing song-like qualities of rhythm, expressing a speaker’s emotions

Metonymy

a figure of speech in which a related term is substituted for the word itself eg. “lend me your ears”

Mock epic

a poem that plays with the conventions of the epic to comment on a poem satirically