Lit Terms

Abstract (style)

Writing that focuses on ideas, concepts, or emotions rather than concrete, physical details.

Academic (style)

Formal, structured writing that uses precise language and a serious, scholarly tone.

Accent

Emphasis placed on a particular syllable or word through stress or pronunciation.

Aesthetic / Aesthetics

The qualities of a work that create a particular sense of beauty, style, or artistic effect.

Allegory

A story in which characters, events, or settings represent deeper abstract ideas, often moral, political, or social ones.

Alliteration

Repetition of the same initial consonant sound in nearby words.

Allusion

An indirect reference to a well-known person, event, place, text, myth, or cultural idea.

Anachronism

Something that appears in a time period where it does not historically belong.

Analogy

A comparison between two things used to explain or clarify an idea.

Anecdote

A short story or account of an interesting, meaningful, or humorous event.

Antecedent

The word, phrase, or idea that a pronoun or later reference refers back to.

Anthropomorphism

Giving human characteristics, emotions, or behaviors to nonhuman things.

Anticlimax

A disappointing or unexpectedly weak conclusion after events have built toward something more significant.

Antihero

A protagonist who lacks traditional heroic qualities such as courage, morality, or idealism.

Aphorism

A short, memorable statement expressing a general truth or observation.

Apostrophe

Directly addressing an absent person, dead person, object, abstract idea, or something incapable of responding.

Archaism

An old-fashioned word, phrase, or style used to suggest an earlier time period.

Aside

A character’s brief remark intended for the audience to hear but supposedly not heard by other characters.

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.

Atmosphere

The overall emotional feeling or mood created by a work or setting.

Ballad

A narrative poem, often musical in quality, that tells a story and traditionally uses regular rhythm and rhyme.

Black humor

Humor that makes light of serious, disturbing, tragic, or otherwise uncomfortable subjects.

Bombast

Excessively grand, inflated, or pretentious language used to make something seem more important.

Burlesque

A work that humorously imitates or exaggerates another style, subject, or genre.

Cacophony

A harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds, often used to create tension, chaos, or discomfort.

Cadence

The rhythm or rise and fall of a speaker’s voice or a line of poetry.

Canto

A major section or division of a long poem, especially an epic.

Caricature

An exaggerated portrayal of a person or character that emphasizes certain traits, often for humor or criticism.

Catharsis

The emotional release or cleansing experienced by a character or audience, often after intense suffering or conflict.

Chorus

A group or character that comments on the action of a play and may provide background, interpretation, or moral perspective.

Colloquialism

An informal word or expression commonly used in everyday conversation.

Conceit

An extended, often surprising or elaborate comparison between seemingly unrelated things.

Connotation

The emotional, cultural, or implied associations attached to a word beyond its literal meaning.

Consonance

Repetition of consonant sounds within or at the ends of nearby words.

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry that usually work together and often rhyme.

Decorum

The idea that language, behavior, and style should be appropriate for the character, situation, genre, or setting.

Denotation

The literal, dictionary definition of a word.

Diction

An author’s specific choice of words and the effects those choices create.

Dirge

A mournful poem, song, or speech expressing grief, especially for someone who has died.

Dissonance

A combination of harsh, conflicting, or unsettling sounds or ideas that creates tension.

Doggerel

Poor-quality or deliberately simplistic poetry, often characterized by awkward rhyme or rhythm.

Dramatic irony

A situation in which the audience or reader knows something that a character does not.

Dramatic monologue

A poem or speech in which one speaker addresses a silent listener and unintentionally reveals their character or situation.

Elegy

A poem or work expressing sorrow, usually over someone’s death.

Enjambment

The continuation of a sentence or thought from one poetic line into the next without a terminal punctuation mark.

Epic

A long narrative work, usually involving a heroic figure and significant events that affect a culture or nation.

Epitaph

A short inscription or statement written in memory of a deceased person.

Euphemism

A mild or indirect expression used instead of a harsher, more direct, or unpleasant one.

Euphony

Pleasant, harmonious, or smooth-sounding language.

Farce

A comedic work that uses exaggerated situations, absurdity, physical humor, and unlikely events.

Feminine rhyme

A rhyme involving two or more syllables, with the stress usually falling on the next-to-last syllable.

Foil

A character whose differences from another character highlight or reveal that character’s traits, values, or qualities.

Foot

The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, consisting of a particular arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Foreshadowing

Hints or clues that suggest events or developments that will occur later.

Free verse

Poetry that does not follow a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern.

Gothic novel

A genre featuring mystery, fear, darkness, supernatural or seemingly supernatural elements, and often isolated or threatening settings.

Hubris

Excessive pride or self-confidence, often leading a character to make destructive decisions.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or effect; it is not meant to be taken literally.

Interior monologue

A representation of a character’s private thoughts and internal reasoning.

Inversion

A deliberate reversal of normal word order or sentence structure.

Irony

A contrast between what is expected or stated and what actually occurs or is meant.

Lampoon

A work that mocks or ridicules a person, institution, or idea, usually through humor or exaggeration.

Lyric

A short poem that primarily expresses the speaker’s personal thoughts, emotions, or feelings rather than telling a narrative.

Masculine rhyme

A rhyme involving a single stressed syllable, usually at the end of a line.

Melodrama

An overly emotional or exaggerated style that emphasizes dramatic situations and clear extremes of good and evil.

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike things without using 'like' or 'as.'

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something is referred to by the name of something closely associated with it.

Nemesis

A character, force, or situation that brings about another character’s downfall or serves as a formidable opponent.

Objectivity

Presenting information or events without personal feelings, opinions, or bias.

Onomatopoeia

A word whose sound imitates or resembles the sound it describes.

Oxymoron

A combination of two seemingly contradictory words that creates a meaningful expression.

Parable

A short fictional story that teaches a moral, spiritual, or ethical lesson.

Paradox

A seemingly contradictory statement or situation that contains a deeper truth.

Parallelism

The use of similar grammatical structures or patterns to emphasize related ideas.

Parody

An imitation of a work, style, or genre that exaggerates its characteristics, often for humor or criticism.

Pastoral

A literary work that idealizes rural life, nature, or the simplicity of the countryside.

Pathos

A quality that evokes feelings of pity, sympathy, sadness, or compassion in the audience.

Persona

The voice, character, or identity adopted by an author or speaker in a literary work.

Personification

Giving human qualities, emotions, or actions to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea.

Plaint

A poem or expression of sorrow, grief, or lamentation.

Protagonist

The main character whose experiences and conflicts drive the story.

Pun

A play on words that uses multiple meanings or similar sounds to create humor or additional meaning.

Refrain

A repeated line, phrase, or group of lines in a poem or song.

Requiem

A work, especially a musical or poetic one, honoring or mourning the dead.

Rhapsody

An enthusiastic, highly emotional, or expressive literary or musical work.

Rhetorical question

A question asked for effect rather than to receive an actual answer.

Satire

The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize human flaws, institutions, or society.

Simile

A comparison between two unlike things using 'like' or 'as.'

Soliloquy

A speech in which a character, typically alone, expresses their private thoughts aloud to the audience.

Stanza

A grouped set of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph in prose.

Stock characters

Conventional, recognizable characters based on familiar stereotypes or roles.

Subjectivity

Presenting something through personal feelings, opinions, experiences, or perspective.

Subjunctive mood

A grammatical mood used to express hypothetical, imagined, wished-for, doubtful, or contrary-to-fact situations.

Summary

A concise statement of the main events, ideas, or points of a work.

Symbolism

The use of an object, character, setting, action, or image to represent a larger idea or meaning.

Theme

A central idea or insight about life, humanity, or society that a literary work develops.

Thesis

A clear, defensible claim or interpretation that establishes the main argument of an essay.

Tragic flaw

A character trait or error in judgment that contributes significantly to a tragic protagonist’s downfall.

Travesty

A distorted or exaggerated imitation of something serious, often making it ridiculous or absurd.

Truism

A statement expressing an obvious or generally accepted truth.