Guide to Literary Terms and Techniques

Flashcards for reviewing literary terms and techniques from a lecture.

Alexandrine

An iambic hexameter line- that is, a poetic line consisting of six iambic feet. The last line of a Spenserian stanza is this.

Allegory

A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Thus, this is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

Alliteration

The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant clusters, in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds. When this occurs at the beginning of words, it is called initial __; when it occurs within words, it is called internal or hidden _. It usually occurs on stressed syllables.

Allusion

A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. This may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.

Analogy

A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them. They are often used for illustration (to explain something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar) or for argument (to persuade that what holds true for one thing holds true for the thing to which it is compared).

Antagonist

A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative; a rival of the hero or heroine.

Antithesis

The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words, phrases, or sentences. This is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar grammatical structure is used to express contrasting ideas.

Aphorism

A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman is addressed directly.

Aside

In drama, lines spoken by a character in an undertone or directly to the audience, supposedly not heard by other characters.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in poetry.

Atmosphere

The prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work, often developed through descriptions of setting.

Autobiography

A person's account of his or her own life, generally in narrative form and including introspection.

Ballad

A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung, often stemming from the everyday life of common people.

Ballad Stanza

A four-line stanza with specific stress patterns and rhyme schemes, commonly used in ballads.

Biography

A detailed account of a person's life written by another person.

Blank Verse

Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura

A break or pause in a line of poetry.

Canto

A section or division of a long poem.

Caricature

The use of exaggeration or distortion to make a figure appear comic or ridiculous.

Carpe Diem Tradition

A tradition emphasizing living for today, originating from classical Greek and Latin poetry.

Characterization

The personality a character displays; also, the means by which a writer reveals that personality.

Classicism

A movement emphasizing reason, clarity, balance, and order, reflecting principles of ancient Greece and Rome.

Climax

The point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a narrative, usually marking a story's turning point.

Comedy

A literary work that ends happily, often exposing human folly and depicting the overthrow of rigid social customs.

Conceit

A metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things, often providing the framework for an entire poem.

Conflict

A struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a story, novel, play, or narrative poem.

Connotation

All the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse, distinct from its literal meaning.

Consonance

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

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.

Denotation

The literal or 'dictionary' meaning of a word.

Denouement

The outcome of a plot, where conflicts are resolved and mysteries are explained.

Diction

A writer's choice of words, particularly for clarity, effectiveness, and precision.

Dissonance

A harsh or disagreeable combination of sounds; discord.

Dramatic Monologue

A narrative poem where one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given, revealing the speaker's personality.

Elegy

A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual, or a meditation on death.

Emblematic Image

A verbal picture or figure with a long tradition of moral or religious meaning attached to it.

Epic

A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated.

Epigram

A short, witty, pointed statement, often in the form of a poem.

Epigraph

A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.

Epilogue

A short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work.

Epiphany

A moment of illumination, usually occurring at or near the end of a work.

Epitaph

An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died.

Epithet

A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something.

Essay

A piece of prose writing that deals with a subject in a limited way and expresses a particular point of view.

Exemplum

A tale, usually inserted into the text of a sermon, that illustrates a moral principle.

Exposition

That part of a narrative or drama in which important background information is revealed.

Fable

A brief story that is told to present a moral or practical lesson.

Farce

A type of comedy based on a ridiculous situation, often with stereotyped characters and slapstick humor.

Figurative Language

Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense; uses comparisons between life and other things.

Figure of Speech

A word or an expression that is not meant to be interpreted in a literal sense, involving a comparison between unlike things.

Flashback

A scene in a story that interrupts the action to show an event that happened earlier.

Foil

A character who sets off another character by contrast.

Foreshadowing

The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest what will happen later.

Free Verse

Verse that has either no metrical pattern or an irregular pattern.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech using exaggeration, or overstatement, for special effect.

Iambic Pentameter

A poetic line consisting of five verse feet, with each foot an iamb.

Imagery

Words or phrases that create pictures, or images, in the reader's mind.

Incremental Repetition

The repetition of a previous line, or lines, but with a slight variation each time, advancing the narrative stanza by stanza.

In Medias Res

A technique of plunging into the middle of a story and only later using a flashback to tell what has happened previously.

Inversion

The technique of reversing, or inverting, the normal word order of a sentence.

Invocation

At the beginning of an epic, a call to a muse, god, or spirit for inspiration.

Irony

A contrast or incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens.

Kenning

In Old English poetry, an elaborate phrase that describes persons, things, or events in a metaphorical and indirect way.

Lyric

A poem, usually a short one, that expresses a speaker's personal thoughts or feelings.

Masque

An elaborate and spectacular dramatic entertainment that was popular among the English aristocracy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Maxim

A concise statement expressing a principle or rule of conduct.

Melodrama

A drama that has stereotyped characters, exaggerated emotions, and a conflict that pits an all-good hero or heroine against an all-evil villain.

Metaphor

A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically dissimilar.

Metaphysical Poetry

The poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similar style, characterized by verbal wit, irregular meter, and elaborate imagery.

Meter

A generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something very closely associated with a thing is used to stand for or suggest the thing itself.

Miracle Play

A popular religious drama of medieval England, based on stories of the saints or on sacred history.

Mock Epic

A comic literary form that treats a trivial subject in the grand, heroic style of the epic.

Morality Play

An outgrowth of miracle plays, popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which virtues and vices were personified.

Motif

A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature that generally contributes in some way to the theme.

Motivation

The reasons, either stated or implied, for a character's behavior.

Myth

A story, often about immortals and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that is intended to give meaning to the mysteries of the world.

Narrative Poem

A poem that tells a story.

Narrator

One who narrates, or tells, a story.

Naturalism

An extreme form of realism that depicts the sordid side of life and shows characters who are limited by their environment or heredity.

Neoclassicism

A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature.

Novel

A book-length fictional prose narrative, having many characters and often a complex plot.

Octave

An eight-line poem or stanza; first eight lines of an Italian sonnet.

Ode

A complex and often lengthy lyric poem, written in a dignified formal style on some lofty or serious subject.

Onomatopoeia

The use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning.

Ottava Rima

A form of eight-line stanza with the rhyme scheme abababcc.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory ideas or terms.

Paradox

A statement that reveals a kind of truth, although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue.

Parallelism

The use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or meaning.

Parody

The humorous imitation of a work of literature, art, or music.

Pastoral

A type of poem that deals in an idealized way with shepherds and rustic life.

Pathos

The quality in a work of literature or art that arouses the reader's feelings of pity, sorrow, or compassion for a character.

Personification

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

Plot

The sequence of events or actions in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.

Point of View

The vantage point from which a narrative is told.

Protagonist

The central character of a drama, novel, short story, or narrative poem.

Psalm

A song or lyric poem in praise of God.

Pun

The use of a word or phrase to suggest two or more meanings at the same time.

Quatrain

Usually a stanza or poem of four lines; any group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme.