Literary Terms
By, Samantha Bye
Alliteration
• The repetition of initial consonant sounds.
• “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
on page 42.
• “Casey at the Bat” has a lot of alliteration for
example day and play, rest, breast.
Blank Verse
• Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.
• Romeo and Juliet which is on page 801, where blank
verse was used. And it is written by William
Shakespeare.
• Blank verse is used in Romeo and Juliet when Romeo
is speaking, “Than twenty of their swords! Look thou
but sweet.”
Dialect
• The form of language spoken by people in a
particular region or group.
• Dialect was used in “The Invalid’s Story” on page
596. Which was written by Mark Twain.
• “Friends of yourn?”
• “Yes,” I said with a sigh.
• “He’s pretty ripe, ain’t he!”
Extended Metaphor
• A writer speaks or writes of a subject as though it
were something else. An extended metaphor
sustains the comparison for several lines or for an
entire poem.
• The “Caged Bird” of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s
“sympathy” which is found on page 292.
• It is an extended metaphor for a person who is not
free.
Imagery
• The descriptive or figurative language used in
literature to create word pictures for the reader.
• Imagery is used in Single Room, Earth View on page
637.
• In Single Room, Earth View Sally Ride expresses
imagery on what she saw from space.
Meter
• The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern.
• “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William
Wordsworth on page 896.
• “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud” has good meter.
Narrative Poem
• One that tells a story.
• “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, on page 940.
• “The Raven” is a serious narrative poem.
Protagonist
• The main character in a literary work.
• In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Steve Gietschier
on page 715.
• The protagonist in this story is Madeleine Blais.
Speaker
• The imaginary voice assumed by the writer of
a poem.
• “The Eagle” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson on page
906.
• The imaginary voice would be the eagle.