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The Key to Literary Terms
Study guide
Imagery:Using the 5 senses to make a picture in the
reader’s mind
Example:
Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?/ Or fester like a soreAnd then run?/ Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-/ like a syrupy sweet? -Langston Hughes
Metaphor: A comparison between two seemingly
unlike things.
Example:
But soft, what light through yonder window Breaks? It is the
east, and Juliet is the sun.
-William shakespeare
Implied Metaphor: Same as a metaphor only one part
of comparison not stated directly
Example:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood -Robert Frost
Simile: a Comparison using like or as
Example:
…born into a family built like an avalanche.
-Ani Difranco
Personification: Giving human characteristics to
something not human
Example:
Perhaps the night dreams/ that it is no longer night;
the fish, that they are boats;
-Ana Maria Iza
Onomatopoeia: when a word imitates a sound
Example:
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed…
-Alfred Noyes
Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds
Example:
while/ All the world wondered.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Stanza: A group of lines
End Rhyme: rhyme that happens at the end of lines
Example:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die;
-Alfred. Lord Tennyson
Internal Rhyme: rhyme that happens inside of lines
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Example: I want to sail on a swallow’s tail and peep through the sky’s blue glass.
I want to see if the dreams in me shall perish or come to pass.
-Georgia Douglas Johnson
Narrative Poem: a poem that tells a story
Speaker: The voice of the poem; not the author
Oxymoron: Putting 2 opposite word together
Ex. Jumbo shrimp
Hyperbole: An exaggeration
Ex: These books weigh a ton.