Literary Terms

Allegory

A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings.

Alliteration

Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group.

Allusion

A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work.

Aphorism

A brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman.

Aside

A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem.

Blank Verse

Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura

A pause introduced into the reading of a line of poetry - by a mark of punctuation.

Characterization

The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work.

Classicism

A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome.

Climax

The decisive moment in a drama, the climax is the turning point of the play to which the rising action leads.

Conceit

A far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things.

Conflict

In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the play.

Connotation

The emotional content of a word.

Denotation

The dictionary definition of a word.

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry.

Couplet

A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming.

Diction

An author's choice of words.

Dramatic Monologue

The occurrence of a single speaker communicating with a silent audience.

Elegy

A lyric poem lamenting death.

End Rhyme

Rhymes that occur at the end of lines.

End-stopped line

A line that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation.

Epic

A major work dealing with an important theme, or in poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes.

Epigraph

A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work.

Mending Wall

A poem by Robert Frost where two neighbors walk a property line and discuss the necessity of a wall.

My Last Duchess

A dramatic monologue by Robert Browning revealing the duke's personality and disapproval of his former duchess.

Gone with the Wind

A film considered an epic motion picture set in the antebellum and Civil War South.

Paradise Lost

A book length epic poem by John Milton consisting of twelve subdivisions called books.

The Iliad

An epic poem by Homer concerning the Greek invasion of Troy.

The Odyssey

An epic poem by Homer dealing with the Greek victory over the Trojans and Odysseus's journey home.

T. S. Eliot

The author of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' which includes an epigraph from Dante's 'The Inferno.'

Joachim Du Bellay

The author of 'Elegy on His Cat,' a lyric poem lamenting the death of a pet.

King Claudius

A character in Shakespeare's Hamlet who speaks a couplet about prayers for forgiveness.

Ernest Hemingway

An author known for his meticulous choice of words, having rewritten the ending of 'A Farewell to Arms' thirty-nine times.

Good fences make good neighbors

A phrase spoken by the neighbor in 'Mending Wall' emphasizing the importance of boundaries.

Silent audience

The audience that listens to a speaker in a dramatic monologue without responding.

Epithet

In literature, a word or phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character.

Euphemism

A mild word or phrase which substitutes for another which would be undesirable because it is too direct, unpleasant, or offensive.

Farce

A type of comedy based on a humorous situation such as a bank robber who mistakenly wanders into a police station to hide.

Figurative Language

Language that means something other than itself. This includes similes, metaphors, symbols, allusions, and personification.

Foil

A character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison.

Foot

The basic unit used in scansion or measurement of verse. A foot usually contains one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables.

Foreshadowing

Refers to the use of words or phrases which function as hints as the work unfolds; these hints often refer to something that will happen without revealing the details or spoiling the suspense.

Free Verse

Nonmetrical verse. Poetry written in free verse is arranged in lines, may be more or less rhythmical, but has no fixed metrical pattern or expectation.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs.

Iamb

A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Imagery

Language that appeals to sensory experience. It can be both literal and figurative and creates an image or sensory experience in the mind of the reader.

Irony

Irony takes many forms. In situational irony, the result of an action is the reverse of what the character expected.

Juxtaposition

In juxtaposition, two or more ideas, places, characters, and their actions are placed side by side in a work for the purpose of developing comparison and contrast.

Metaphor

A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words 'like' or 'as.'

Meter

Regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of (or something closely related to) an experience is used to represent the whole experience.

Mood

The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work, partly by a description of the objects or by the style of the descriptions.

Ode

A poem in praise of something divine or expressing some noble idea.

Onomatopoeia

A literary device wherein the sound of a word echoes the sound it represents.

Oxymoron

A combination of contradictory terms.

Paradox

A situation or a statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not.

Parallel Structure

A repetition of sentences using the same structure.

Pastoral

A literary work that has to do with shepherds and a rustic setting.

Pathetic Fallacy

A fallacy of reasoning that suggests that nonhuman entities act with human feelings.

Personification

A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human characteristics.

Point of View

A perspective used in literature where the speaker tells things from his or her own perspective (first person) or from the perspective of an onlooker (third person).

Omniscient

A speaker who knows everything including the actions, motives, and thoughts of all the characters.

Third Person Limited Narration

A narrative style where the speaker is unable to know what is in any character's mind but his or her own.

Rhyme

A pattern of repeated sounds in poetry.

Internal Rhyme

A rhyme that occurs within a line rather than at the end.

Near Rhyme

A form of rhyme where the look rather than the sound is important.

Rhyme Scheme

Any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas.

Satire

A piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work, aiming to arouse contempt rather than amuse.

Scansion

The process of measuring verse or marking accented or unaccented syllables, dividing lines into feet to identify the metrical pattern.

Simile

A figure of speech that compares two unlike quantities using the words 'like' or 'as'.

Soliloquy

A moment in drama when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud.

Sonnet

A mixed form of poetry consisting of fourteen lines, normally in iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme.

Symbolism

A device in literature where an object represents an idea.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole.

Theme

An ingredient of a literary work that gives it unity and provides an answer to the question 'What is the work about?'.

Tone

The author's attitude toward his or her subject, expressed through the writing.

Understatement

A statement that lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant.