Literary Terms

Allegory

A literary work that portrays abstract ideas concretely.

Alliteration

Repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence.

Anachronism

An error of chronology or timeline in a literary piece.

Anagnorisis

The startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge.

Anapestic

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable.

Antithesis

A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.

Aphorism

A pithy observation that contains a general truth.

Adage

A short, memorable saying based on facts and considered a veritable truth.

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, art, history, or current events.

Anaphora

Repetition of an initial word or words to add emphasis.

Antagonist

Character who opposes the protagonist and creates or intensifies a conflict.

Apostrophe

A direct address to an abstraction, thing, animal, or absent person.

Archetypal hero

A hero in literature who possesses great qualities and overcomes obstacles.

Archetype

A very typical example of a certain person or thing; universal recurrent symbol or motif.

Aside

A dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience.

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words.

Ballad

A sung poem that recounts a dramatic story.

Bathos

An effect of anticlimax created by a shift from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.

Biblical Free Verse

Biblical poetry without a rhyme scheme or consistent metrical pattern.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, closest to natural patterns of speaking in English.

Bombastic

Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language.

Cacophony

A combination of words or phrases that sound harsh and unpleasant.

Cadence

Quality of spoken text formed from combining rhythm and inflection.

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry, often mirroring natural speech.

Carpe Diem

A theme meaning 'seize the day' and enjoy the present.

Catastrophe

The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the falling action.

Catharsis

The emotional release felt by the audience at the end of a tragic drama.

Climax

The point in a story when the conflict reaches its highest intensity.

Comedy

A dramatic work with a light, amusing plot and a happy ending.

Comedy of Manners

A satiric dramatic form that lampoons social conventions.

Conceit

A metaphor that compares two very unlike things in a surprising and clever way.

Conflict

The tension, opposition, or struggle that drives a plot.

Connotation

Meanings or associations readers have with a word beyond its dictionary definition.

Consonance

Identical final consonant sounds in nearby words with different vowel sounds.

Couplet

A two-line, rhyming stanza.

Dactylic Foot

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones.

Denotation

The literal definition of a word.

Denouement

The phase of a story's plot where the conflict has been resolved.

Deus ex Machina

A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention.

Dirge

A brief hymn or song of lamentation and grief, typically performed at a funeral.

Doggerel

A low, loosely constructed form of verse often used for comedy and satire.

Double Entendre

A phrase or figure of speech with multiple senses or interpretations.

Dramatic monologue

A poem in which the speaker addresses an audience that is present in the poem.

Euphony

Pleasing harmony of sounds achieved through the use of serene imagery.

Elegy

A contemplative poem on death and mortality, often written for someone who has died.

End stopped lines

Lines of poetry that conclude with punctuation, marking a pause.

English sonnet

A fourteen-line poem with three quatrains and a couplet, rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Enjambment

A poetic technique in which one line continues to the next without a pause.

Epigram/epigraph

A brief witty poem, often satirical.

Epiphany

A character's transformative moment of realization.

Exposition

Contextual and background information about characters, plot, setting, and situation.

Fable

A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author.

Falling action

The phase of a plot that follows the climax and resolves the conflict.

Farce

A dramatic form marked by absurd situations, slapstick, and raucous wordplay.

Foil

A character who contrasts and parallels the main character.

Foreshadowing

Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or story.

Free Verse

Poetry without a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme.

Hamartia

A concept used to describe tragedy.

Heroic Couplet

Rhyming pairs of verse in iambic pentameter.

Homily

A sermon or speech that offers a moral change in direction.

Hubris

An extreme expression of pride or self-confidence in a character.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect.

Iambic

A metrical foot made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.

Imagery

A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds.

Implied Author

The source of a work's design and meaning inferred by readers from the text.

Implied Reader

The author's image of the recipient fixed and objectified in the text.

In Media Res

A technique in which a narrative begins in the middle of the action.

Irony - Verbal

A figure of speech where what is said is the opposite of what is meant.

Irony - situational

A discrepancy between what is expected and what actually happens.

Irony - Dramatic

Tension created by the contrast between what a character says or thinks and what the audience knows to be true.

Irony - cosmic

Irony involving fate and destiny controlling human hopes and desires.

Italian Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem with an octave and a sestet, rhyme scheme abba, abba, cdecde.

Juxtapose (Juxtaposition)

Placing two things side by side for comparison or contrast.

Litote

A form of understatement in which a sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary.

Lyric poetry

Poetry with a musical rhythm that explores romantic feelings or strong emotions.

Malapropism

The mistaken use of an incorrect word resulting in a nonsensical or humorous utterance.

Meiosis

A figure of speech that intentionally understates something or implies it is lesser in significance or size.

Melodrama

Plays with stereotyped villains and heroes representing extremes of good and evil.

Metaphor

A figure of speech that compares or equates two things without using like or as.

Metaphysical conceit

A striking analogy between two entities that would not usually invite comparison.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing related to it.

Metrics

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line.

Miracle and morality plays

Allegorical dramas that personify moral values and abstract ideas to teach lessons.

Mock Heroic

Poems that use a grand and formal style to describe a common or trivial subject.

Motif

A recurring pattern of images, words, or symbols that reveals a theme.

Octave

An eight-line unit or section of a poem.

Ode

A form of poetry used to meditate on or address a single object or condition.

Omniscient point of view

A narrator who is privy to the thoughts and actions of all characters.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that refer to sound and mimic those sounds.

Parable

A tale told explicitly to illustrate a moral lesson or conclusion.

Pastoral

Literature that romanticizes farm or rural life.

Pathos

A quality of a play's action that stimulates pity for a character.

Personification

A figure of speech in which an animal or object is imbued with human qualities.

Picaresque Novel

A novel that relates the adventures of a rogue or adventurer as they drift from place to place.

Plot vs. story

The arrangement of events in a narrative and the events themselves.

Point of view

The perspective from which a work is told.

Pun

A play on words that derives its humor from the replacement of one word with another.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza.

Resolution

The working out of a plot's conflicts following the climax.

Reversal

When the protagonist's fortunes take an unforeseen turn.