Literary terms

1. Allegory: From the Greek allegoria ("speaking in another way"), the term loosely describes any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning.   The allegory is a device for suggesting meanings other than the literal. Typically, the interaction between multiple symbols creates this meaning. An allegorical interpretation often identifies  moral, political, or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than events described in a narrative. Medieval works were frequently allegorical, such as the plays Mankind and Everyman. Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) is a chivalric romance on the surface, but its characters and their actions suggest that it is also a commentary on morals and manners in sixteenth century England. Other allegories you may be familiar with would be The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which is a Christian allegory, or Animal Farm which is a political allegory for the events of Communist Russia.

2. Alliteration: Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Consonance and assonance are two specific types of alliteration. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds (“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”). Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds (“Yet the ear distinctly tells, / In the jangling / And the wrangling, / How the danger sinks and swells / By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells”). Assonance is connected to High- and Low-Pitched Vowels (found below in Onomatopoeia).

3. Allusion: A figure of speech which references an historical or literary figure, event or object; often, a reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” or instance alludes (refers) to the Biblical figure of John the Baptist when he writes, “though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter.” Notice here that Eliot does not say, “I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / Like the prophet John the Baptist.” If he had been more explicit in this way, the allusion would become a simile.

4. Anaphora: The intentional repetition of beginning clauses for the purpose of emphasis. It is different from epistrophe (see below) in that epistrophe is the repetition of phrases or words at the end of clauses and sentences. Anaphora is one of the most common and useful tools in a writer’s arsenal. In Great Expectations, Pip uses anaphora to describe his love for Estella declaring that, “once for all I knew my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be” (179).

5. Apostrophe: The addressing of someone or something usually not present, as though present. An example would be the first lines of this famous Walt Whitman poem: “O Captain, My Captain!  A fearful trip is done.” A very common, modern use of apostrophe would be anytime someone says “Oh, God!” (Often times, apostrophes feature the “O!” at the beginning).

6. Asyndeton: Asyndeton is derived from the Greek word asyndeton, which means “unconnected.” It is a stylistic device used in literature and poetry to intentionally eliminate conjunctions between the phrases, and in the sentence, yet maintain grammatical accuracy. So, in Othello, when Iago commands, “Call up her father. / Rouse him. Make after him, Poison his delight / Proclaim him in the streets. Incense her kinsmen…” the use of asyndeton serves to energize his speech and portray Iago’s anger and jealousy. Asyndeton is related -- but significantly different -- from polysyndeton (see below) in that polysyndeton uses conjunctions (and, but, or) while asyndeton uses none. 

7. Ballad Meter: A form of verse which follows a strict four-line stanza structure. The first and third lines are iambic tetrameter, while the second and fourth are in iambic trimeter and the rhyme scheme is either abcb or abab. While this sounds complicated, it is actually very familiar. “Amazing Grace” is written in ballad meter, for example (with stressed syllables in bold):

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost but now am found

Was blind but now I see.

Ballad meter gives poetry a sing-song feel and, as such, can often be found in children’s nursery rhymes and Christian hymns. It is worth noting that all of Emily Dickinson’s poems were written in ballad meter. Here is an example of the beginning of one of her most famous poems:

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me

The carriage held but just ourselves

And immortality.

8. Blank Verse: Blank verse consists of lines of iambic pentameter without end rhyme. An example from Shakespeare’s Macbeth would be, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / To dusky death…”

9. Cacophony: a combination of words or phrases that create a harsh, jarring, or unpleasant sound

10. Canon: …not “cannon,” “canon.” Basically, works you would find in anthologies – classroom and textbook standards. In this sense, "the canon" denotes the entire body of literature traditionally thought to be suitable for admiration and study. Coming out of American lit, think Huck Finn, Poe’s short stories, The Great Gatsby, etc.

11. Caesura: A pause in a line of poetry that is caused by the rhythms of natural speech rather than by the meter of the poem. That is to say, while the poem may have a consistent meter, the reader would nevertheless still take a natural “break” within given lines when reading aloud. These natural pauses are called caesura.

An example can be seen in the little poem below (indicated with the []):

         There is little that is sweeter

         Than a poem with perfect meter

         Sometimes we pause amidst the furor

         And when we do [] that’s caesura!

12. Chiasmus: A literary scheme in which the author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order (logically, it would look something like A→B; B→A). A very famous example comes from President Kennedy when he declared, “ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country!”  Perhaps even more memorable is Peter de Vreis’s advice: “don’t sweat the petty things – and don’t pet the sweaty things.”

13. Conceit: A fairly elaborate figure of speech, especially an extended comparison involving unlikely metaphors, similes, imagery, hyperbole, and oxymoron. One of the most famous conceits is John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," a poem in which Donne compares two souls in love to the points on a geometer's compass. Shakespeare also uses conceits regularly in his poetry. In Richard II, Shakespeare compares two kings competing for power to two buckets in a well, for instance. You will always know the conceit by its length – similes and metaphors are quick and to the point; conceits are long and drawn-out. In this way they are similar to epic similes (see below) – only they are not relegated to epic poems alone.

14. Concrete Poetry: poetry in which the poet's intent is conveyed by graphic patterns of letters, words, or symbols rather than by the meaning of words in conventional arrangement. See Georger Herbert’s seventeenth-century “Easter Wings.”

15. Connotation: The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. For instance, if I say, “Bob is quite vocal during study hall,” vocal would have a straightforward detonation but a negative connotation in the context of the sentence.

16. Couplet: Two lines, the second line immediately following the first, of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit. Romantics loved couplets. Ex: “I have the measles and the mumps / a gash, a rash, and purple bumps.” – Shel Silverstein

17. Crisis: The turning point of uncertainty and tension resulting from earlier conflict in a plot. Crisis is the central component of dramatic structure (see below).

18. Denotation: The minimal, strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary, disregarding any historical or emotional connotation.

19. Diction: The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words – a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature."  It’s our job to figure out why one word and not another, and what is the effect. The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone. In analyzing diction, we discuss what type of diction the author employs (violent, educated, romantic, etc) rather than simply stating that the author uses diction (obviously, given that books and poems are made of words, all authors and poets use diction). 

20. Ekphrasis (or the Ekphrastic Poem): Literature  written  about works of art; an ekphrastic work usually  include an examination of how the work impacts the viewer. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the encounter with an ancient work stimulates wonder alongside a mournful acknowledgement of the unknowability of the object, its subjects, and its makers:  “What men or gods are these? What  maidens  loth?” 

21. Elegy: In classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies -- complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations. Typically, elegies are marked by several conventions of genre:

• The elegy, much like the classical epic, typically begins with an invocation of the muse, and then continues with allusions to classical mythology.

• The poem usually contains a poetic speaker who uses the first person.

• The speaker raises questions about justice, fate, or providence.

• The poet digresses about the conditions of his own time or his own situation.

• The digression allows the speaker to move beyond his original emotion or thinking to a higher level of understanding.

• The conclusion of the poem provides consolation or insight into the speaker's situation. In Christian elegies, the lyric reversal often moves from despair and grief to joy when the speaker realizes that death or misfortune is but a temporary barrier separating one from the bliss of eternity.

• The poem tends to be longer than a lyric but not as long as an epic.

• The poem is not plot-driven.

In the case of pastoral elegies in the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s, there are several other common conventions:

• The speaker mourns the death of a close friend; the friend is eulogized in the highest possible terms, but represented as if he were a shepherd.

• The mourner charges with negligence the nymphs or guardians of the shepherd who failed to preserve him from death.

• Appropriate mourners appear to lament the shepherd's death.

• Post-Renaissance poets often include an elaborate passage in which flowers appear to deck the hearse or grave, with various flowers having symbolic meaning appropriate to the scene.

22. Enjambment: French for “straddling,” enjambment refers to a poetic technique in which a line having no pause or end punctuation continues uninterrupted grammatical meaning into the next line. Here is an example from George S. Viereck's "The Haunted House":

I lay beside you; on your lips the while

Hovered most strange the mirage of a smile

Such as a minstrel lover might have seen

Upon the visage of some antique queen. . . .

You will note there is no punctuation or pause at the end of lines one, two, and three. Instead, the meaning continues uninterrupted into the next line. Sometimes, enjambment can make the reader feel uncomfortable or enjambment can make the poem a “flow-of-thought” feel with a sensation of urgency or disorder. Enjambment may also be used to delay the intention of the line until the following line and thus play on the expectation of the reader and surprise them, like a poetic cliffhanger.

23. End-stopped line: a line of poetry that ends with a punctuation mark, indicating a complete thought or phrase.

24. Epilogue: A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem. It is the opposite of a prologue. Often, the epilogue refers to the moral of a fable. Sometimes, it is a speech made by one of the actors at the end of a play asking for the indulgence of the critics and the audience (the best example is Puck’s final speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

25. Epistrophe: the repetition of the same words or words at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. It is a counterpart of anaphora. Examples include “…government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” from the Gettysburg Address and “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child” From Paul’s letter in Corinthians.

26. Epithet: A short, poetic nickname – often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase – attached to the normal name. The Homeric epithet is the most famous.  It often includes compounds of two words such as, "fleet-footed Achilles," "Grey-eyed Athena," or "the wine-dark sea." Historic world leaders often receive epithets -- such as Alexander the Great or Ivan the Terrible -- and certain modern characters could be considered as having epithets -- such as the Great Gatsby and Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. 

27. Euphony: a sound that is pleasing to the ear. It most often refers to a series of words that, when said or heard together, is melodious and pleasant.

28. Hyperbaton: Derived from a Greek word that means “transposition,” hyperbaton refers to an inversion in the arrangement (or syntax) of common words. It can be defined as a rhetorical device in which the writers play with the normal positions of words, phrases, and clauses in order to create differently arranged sentences, which still suggest a similar meaning. Hyperbaton can also be employed to help a line of poetry fit the meter. Consider the following example from Julius Caesar:

His coward lips did from their color fly

And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world

Did lose his luster. I did hear him groan,

Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans

Mark him and write his speeches in their books.

29. Hyperbole: Exaggeration or overstatement.  Ex: I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

30. Idiom: A commonly used phrase that works only on figurative level and is not meant to be taken literally. Examples include: “feeling blue,” “raining cats and dogs,” and (for you actors) “Break a leg!”

31. Imagery:  Refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. The five types of imagery (corresponding to the five senses) are tactile imagery (touch), gustatory imagery (taste), auditory imagery (sound), olfactory imagery (smell), and visual imagery (sight).

32. Irony: A mode of expression, through words (verbal irony), events (situational irony), or dramatic tension (dramatic irony) conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. A writer may say the opposite of what he means, create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not perceived by the character. Here is a breakdown of the three different types of irony:

• Verbal Irony: In verbal irony, the writer's meaning or even his attitude may be different from what he says. An example of verbal irony might be if I said, "Why, no one would dare argue that there could be anything more important in choosing a college than its proximity to the beach." As you can probably tell, verbal irony is very similar to sarcasm.

• Situational Irony:  Situational irony occurs when a severe incongruity appears between what the audience expects to happen, and what actually happens instead. A classic example of situational irony occurs in W.H. Auden’s story “The Gift of the Magi” when a man’s wife sells her most prized possession – her hair – to get her husband a Christmas present, while the husband sells his dearest possession – his gold watch – to get his wife a Christmas present. By the end, it is revealed that neither has the utility of the present bought by the other, as both sell their best things to give the other one a gift. Combs, a gift for the wife, are useless because she has sold her hair. The gold watch chain, the gift for the husband, is useless because he has sold his watch to get the combs. As is often the case with situational irony, the ironic ending of this story is meant to be more amusing though than tragic. 

• Dramatic Irony: Originally used in Greek tragedy, dramatic irony is a technique by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character. In this way, the audience is often put into both a privileged but helpless position as we can “see” the future, but we are powerless to prevent it from happening. An example of dramatic irony (where the audience has knowledge that gives additional meaning to a character's words) would be when King Oedipus, who has unknowingly killed his father, says that he will banish his father's killer when he finds him. A more modern example of dramatic irony occurs in the movie Titanic when the arrogant Cal Hockley boards the doomed vessel with the ominous prediction that “nothing could sink this ship.”

33. Juxtaposition: The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. Charles Dickens begins his novel A Tale of Two Cities with a very famous example of juxtaposition:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way …”

In order to give us an idea of the factors responsible for the French Revolution, Dickens uses juxtaposition throughout the novel. Here, the haves and have-nots are put side-by-side to highlight the presence of severe disparity and discord in the then-French society, which ultimately paved the way for the revolution.

34. Kenning: Derived from Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry, kenning is a stylistic device defined as a two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors. Ancient examples of kenning would be “whale-road” for “ocean” and “ship of night” for “moon.” Modern examples of kenning would be referring to a person with a clerical job as a “pencil pusher” or referring to a football as a “pigskin.”

35. Line break: the intentional placement where one line of poetry ends and the next begins. Line breaks are a defining feature of poetry and are used to create rhythm, convey meaning, and make poetry distinct from prose.

36. Metaphor: A comparison between two unlike things that does not use “like” or “as.” Ex: That guy is a pig. By not using “like” or “as” in the comparison, the association becomes a bit more direct or powerful. Sometimes a metaphor can be implied metaphor if the comparison is not explicitly stated or obvious, but the author uses adjectives or verbs that commonly describe one thing and uses them to describe another comparing the two. Ex: Shut your trap! The metaphor “your mouth is a trap, and you should shut it” is not specifically stated, but we get the picture nonetheless. Ineffective metaphors are usually mixed metaphors where the speaker has gotten out of control and mixed up the terms so that they are no longer visually or imaginatively compatible. Ex: “Top [White House] hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore.”  -- Frank Rich, The New York Times, July 18, 2008

37. Meter: A recognizable rhythm through varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. Compositions written in meter are said to be in verse. There are many possible patterns of verse. Each unit of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a "foot." There are five main types of meter:

• Iambic (the noun is "iamb" or "iambus"): a lightly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed syllable.  Ex: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”  Iambic is the most common poetic meter, probably because it follows the natural rhythm of a heartbeat.

• Trochaic (the noun is "trochee"): a stressed followed by a light syllable.  Ex: “Once upon a midnight dreary / While I pondered weak and weary.” Because trochaic inverts the more “natural” sounding rhythm of iambic, trochaic is often used to create an unsettling feeling or tense cadence.

• Anapestic (the noun is "anapest"): two light syllables followed by a stressed syllable: Ex: “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house / Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.”  Anapestic meter is, obviously, longer than iambic or trochaic meter and because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for strong rhymes, anapests can produce the feeling of a dance (such as a waltz) allowing for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity.  BTW, “anapest” is, itself, an anapest.

• Dactylic (the noun is "dactyl"): a stressed syllable followed by two light syllables: Ex: “Picture yourself on a boat on a river with / Tangerine tree­-ees and marmalade skies.” Written in dactylic tetrameter, the verses can feel rolling, almost galloping. Dactyls are the metrical foot of Greek elegiac poetry, which followed a line of dactylic hexameter with dactylic pentameter.  A good mnemonic device is to remember that the first three syllables of “pterodactyl” are dactylic.  

• Spondaic (the noun is “spondee”): two or more stressed syllables concurrently. Ex: Break, break, break /  O thy cold grey stones…” Spondaic meter, for perhaps obvious reasons, is basically an impossible meter in which to write an entire poem (you are going to have an unstressed syllable eventually). Instead, spondees in an otherwise metered poem can draw attention to a particular line and/or create a sense of urgency.

Iambs and anapests, since the strong stress is at the end, are called "rising meter"; trochees and dactyls, with the strong stress at the beginning with lower stress at the end, are called "falling meter." Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, two feet is a dimeter, and so on – trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter.  So then the first example, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” would be five feet of iambs, or iambic pentameter which is the most widely employed rhythmic pattern.

Sometimes a poet will intentionally drop a syllable from the beginning of ending of a line or lines, thus creating metrically incomplete lines of verse, which is called catalectic line or catalectic meter (see above).  For instance, William Blake begins his poem “The Tyger” with “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright / In the shadows of the night.”  The lines are trochaic (Tyger, Tyger, burning bright / In the shadows of the night”) but both lines are missing the final syllable, making them catalectic (this could have easily been fixed if Blake had written “brightly” instead of just “bright”). Catalectic meter is often used to instill the line or poem with a sense of tension, loss, or incompleteness.

38. Metonymy: Substitution of one word or phrase to stand for a word or phrase similar in meaning.  For example, stating that "the pen is mightier than the sword" to suggest that the power of education and writing is more potent for changing the world than military force. Similar to synecdoche, although synecdoche is part of a thing standing in for the whole of it, while metonymy is one word standing in for another word or a larger idea.

39. Ode: An ancient form of poetic song, usually a celebratory poem.  Highly lyrical or profoundly philosophical, odes pay homage to whatever the poet may hold dear – another person, a place, an object, an abstract idea. For instance, "Ode to the West Wind" is about the winds that bring change of season in England.

40. Onomatopoeia: The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect. For instance, “buzz,” “click,” “rattle,” and “grunt” make sounds akin to the noise they represent. A higher level of onomatopoeia is the use of imitative sounds throughout a sentence to create an auditory effect. For instance, Tennyson writes in The Princess about "The moan of doves in immemorial elms, / And murmuring of innumerable bees." All the /m/ and /z/ sounds ultimately create that whispering, murmuring effect Tennyson describes. In similar ways, poets delight in choosing sounds that match their subject-matter, such as using many clicking k's and c's when describing a sword fight (to imitate the clack of metal on metal), or using many /s/ sounds when describing a serpent, and so on.

Another manner in which a poet might write onomatopoetically without actually employing literal onomatopeias such as “wizz” or “bang” is though high- and low-pitched vowel sounds. All vowels have a natural pitch. “Aaa,” “Eee,” and “Iee” for example have a high pitch. “Ooo,” “Ahh,” and “Uhh” have a low pitch. A poem might employ high-pitched vowels then to imbue the poem with a feeling of energy or anxiety. Low-pitched vowels on the other hand might make a poem sound more relaxed or dull. For an example, consider the following poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool” and notice how the vowels move from low- to high pitched and back again which mirrors the excitement of a night out on the town with a possible catastrophic end.

We real cool. We   

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We   

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We   

Die soon.

41. Oxymoron: Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Simple or joking examples include such oxymora as “jumbo shrimp,” “pretty ugly,” or “Microsoft Works.” The richest literary oxymorons seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions and, in poetry, they can often function as a kind of riddle. These oxymorons are sometimes called paradoxes. Below is a speech given by Romeo after having first having come upon Juliet and then realizing that her family and his are bitter rivals. The accumulation of oxymorons in this speech serves to highlight the internal conflict within Romeo himself:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O anything, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

Dost thou not laugh?

42. Paradox: derives from the Greek word “paradoxons,” meaning contrary to expectation. In literature, a paradox is a literary device that contradicts itself but contains a plausible kernel of truth.

43. Persona: A character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem. 

44. Personification: Giving human-like qualities or human form to objects and abstractions. Personification is a form of metaphor. Ex: “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me” (Emily Dickinson), or “that car is begging to be washed.”  This technique is also called anthropomorphism but is different from zoomorphism, which is giving inanimate object animal-like qualities. (see below). 

45. Prose: Any material that is not written in a regular meter like poetry. Essentially, you can easily recognize prose by the simple fact that it is written in paragraphs. Many modern genres such as short stories, novels, letters, essays, and treatises are typically written in prose.

46. Quatrain: Stanza or poem of four lines. A quatrain usually has a rhyme scheme, such as abab, abba, or abcb.

47. Rhyme: A matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical. Rhyming is frequently more than mere decoration in poetry. It helps to establish stanzaic form by marking the ends of lines, it is an aid in memorization when performing oral formulaic literature, and it contributes to the sense of unity in a poem. Types of rhymes include:

• End Rhyme: Rhyme in which the final syllable (or syllables) of one line mimic the sound of the final syllable (or syllables) of another line. Example: “Once upon a midnight dreary, / While I pondered, weak and weary.”

• Internal Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs inside a line. Example: “The knell of the bell saddened me.”

• Masculine rhyme: Rhyme in which the final syllable of one line mimics the sound of the final syllable of another line. Examples: black, back; hell, well; crude, dude.

• Feminine rhyme: Rhyme in which the final two syllables of one line mimic the sound of the final two syllables of another line. Examples: repeat, deplete; farrow, narrow; companion, canyon. Please note that both syllables must rhyme, so multisyllabic words with only one syllable rhyme -- estate and checkmate, for example -- would still be masculine. 

• Slant Rhyme/Near Rhyme: Rhymes created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. Examples: saunter, daughter; topic, knocked it.  While slant rhymes can at times be evidence of lazy poetic composition, slant rhymes are sometimes employed to provide more interesting, sometimes even surprising, sound combinations. It should be noted though that slant rhymes were not utilized by serious, respected poets until the 19^th century.

• Eye Rhyme: Word comprised of similar spellings, though not pronunciation, such as in “rough” and “through.” With some older poems, rhymes that appear to us now as eye rhymes, were once actually true rhymes, but the pronunciation has changed. So, while “blood” and “good” appear to us now as eye rhymes, they were, in Shakespeare’s time, true rhymes because “blood” was pronounced “blo͝od.”

48. Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of rhymed words in a stanza or generalized throughout a poem, expressed in alphabetic terms. Consider the following lines from Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know. - A

His house is in the village, though; - A

He will not see me stopping here - B

To watch his woods fill up with snow. - A

My little horse must think it queer - B

To stop without a farmhouse near - B

Between the woods and frozen lake - C

The darkest evening of the year. - B

He gives his harness bells a shake - C

To ask if there is some mistake. - C

The only other sound's the sweep - D

Of easy wind and downy flake. - C

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. - D

But I have promises to keep, - D

And miles to go before I sleep, - D

And miles to go before I sleep. - D

In an analysis of the poem, the rhyme scheme above would be expressed as AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD.

49. Sibilance is a literary device and a characteristic of human speech that involves the repetition of hissing or hushing sounds.

50.  Simile: An analogy or comparison implied by using “like” or “as”, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. Ex: “In the morning, the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood” (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath).

51. Sonnet: A lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines, called the turn. There are two major forms:

• Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet: Petrarchan sonnet has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a six line stanza (called a sestet) which represents the volta (turn). The octave has two quatrains rhyming abba, abba, the first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce. Ex:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Sonnet XLIII”)

• Shakespearean or English Sonnet: Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a “volta” (from “volte-face,” or “about-face”) because they reverse, undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction. Ex:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XVIII”)

52. Stanza: A major subdivision in a poem, essentially a poetic paragraph. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet; a stanza of three lines is called a tercet; a stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," consists of four rhymed tercets followed by a rhymed couplet. The following illustrates the look of a stanza:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

     I have walked out in rain-and back in rain.

     I have outwalked the furthest city light.

     I have looked down the saddest city lane

     I have passed by the watchman on his beat

     And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

53. Stream of Consciousness: Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often such writing makes no distinction between various levels of reality – such as dreams, memories, imaginative thoughts or real sensory perception. One famous example of a novel written in stream of consciousness style is Catcher in the Rye.

54. Symbol: In a literary work or film, a person, place, thing or idea that represents something else. Writers often use a snake, for example, as a symbol for evil, as in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." Other commonly used symbols include the eagle (strength), a flag (patriotism), and the sea (life).  There are three main types of symbols:

• Universal symbol: A (usually natural) symbol whose meaning could be understood and agreed upon by almost anyone, regardless of cultural background. A “river” as a symbol for “time,” for example, would be a universal symbol.

• Conventional symbol: A symbol whose meaning has been established by and for a specific culture. The American flag or a stop sign are examples of conventional symbols.

• Literary Symbol: A symbol that can only be understood within a certain literary context. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in The Great Gatsby, for example, is a literary symbol. 

55. Synesthesia: Based on a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway (for example: sight) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway (for example: hearing), synesthetes then report being able to “hear colors” or “taste music”. In literature, synesthesia can be employed to provide out-of-the-box descriptions as in “I drink the pale drug of silence” from George Meredith’s “Modern Love.” More clichéd examples would be a “loud shirt” or a “blue note.”

56. Synecdoche: A rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. For instance, a writer might state, "Twenty eyes watched our every move." Rather than implying that twenty disembodied eyes are swiveling to follow him as he walks by, she means that ten people watched the group's every move. When a captain calls out, "All hands on deck," he wants the whole sailors, not just their hands. In the demonic play Faust, Marlowe writes of Helen of Troy, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" The thousand ships is a synecdoche for the entire Greek army: i.e., men, horses, weapons, and all. Likewise, the towers are a synecdoche; they are one part of the doomed city's architecture that represents the entire city and its way of life. Helen's face is a decorous synecdoche for Helen's entire sexy body, since her suitors were presumably interested in more than her visage alone. Synecdoche is often similar to and overlaps with metonymy (see above).

57. Syntax: The standard word order and sentence structure of a language, as opposed to diction (the actual choice of words) or content (the meaning of individual words).

58. Tone: Prevailing mood or atmosphere in a literary work. One may compare the tone of a poem, a novel, a play, or an essay to the tone of the human voice as it projects the emotions of the speaker or to the appearance of the sky as it dispenses rain or sunlight. Thus, the tone of a literary work may be joyful, sad, brooding, angry, playful, and so on. The tone of Catcher in the Rye, for example is anxious and cynical, while the tone of The Odyssey is, obviously, heroic.   

59. Understatement: Also called meiosis, understatement lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant. For instance, if I were to say, “I got a bit nervous when the chainsaw-wielding serial killer started heading my way,” that would be an understatement.

60. Verisimilitude: Having the appearance of truth; realism. In a fictional work, a writer creates unreal characters and situations and asks the reader to pretend that they are real. To help the reader in this task, the writer tells his tale in such a way that he makes it seem credible – that is, he gives it “verisimilitude.”

61. Volta: The Italian word for “turn,” a volta is a rhetorical shift that marks the change of a thought or argument in a poem. In a Petrarchan sonnet, the volta comes after the octave; in an Elizabethan sonnet, the volta comes before the final couplet. 

62. Zoomorphism: a literary technique in which animal attributes are imposed upon non-animal objects, humans, and events; and animal features are ascribed to humans, gods, and other objects. Oftentimes, zoomorphism is used to dehumanize characterize and make them seem cruder and more primal, such as in the following example from Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass when the character of Lord Asriel is introduced to the reader:

Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it.