Literary Terms
1. Involving Comparisons
image:
Anything concrete or abstract introduced figuratively to represent
something which it strikingly resembles: sleep for death
imagery:
Images (as defined above) collectively; also their use as in description.
Figurative language, especially when used for ornament.
simile:
('like') comparison of two unlike things by saying that one is like the
other, or by using as...as:
The sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.
(Laurie Lee: Cider With Rosie)
metaphor: ('transferring') comparison of two unlike things by saying that one is the
other:
The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas.
(Noyes: “The Highwayman”)
dead metaphor: one used so often we no longer think of the comparison between
objects:
the heart of the matter
a cutting remark
mixed metaphor: two (or more) metaphors used in the same sentence, and
therefore confused:
The ship of democracy almost sank in the flames of barbarism.
extended or sustained metaphor: where one image is continued or amplified in
two or more lines:
Methinks I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
(Shakespeare: Macbeth)
personification: a metaphor which gives inanimate objects some feature of human
beings:
the sun smiled down on us.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets its hour upon the stage
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And then is heard no more.
(Shakespeare: Macbeth)
conceit: A particularly ingenious or logical extended image or series of images;
common in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.
There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies grow.
(Campion)
hyperbole: ('over-shooting') deliberate exaggeration, for serious or comic effect:
Will all great Neptune's oceans wash this blood
Clean from my hands? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
(Shakespeare: Macbeth)
litotes: ('frugality') deliberate understatement (also called meiosis)
"The reports of my death," commented Mark Twain, "are greatly
exaggerated."
2. Involving Association
metonymy: ('name change') the name of something associated with an object is
substituted for it:
'red tape'
'to go on the bottle'
Sceptre and crown /Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made / With the poor scythe and crooked
spade. (Shirley)
The vines of France and the milk of Burgundy.
(King Lear)
synecdoche: a kind of metonymy where a part or attribute of something is used to
signify the whole:
'Many hands make light work.'
'Fifty head of cattle'
'the crowned heads of Europe' (= the monarchs)
As a stranger to my heart...
(King Lear)
or the whole is used for the part: 'New Zealand won the toss and put
England in to bat.'
antonomasia: ('to name instead') the use of a proper noun for a common name:
a Hitler (tyrant); a Solomon (wise person)
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allusion: a reference to a well-known person, place or work which will be
recognised by the reader:
If a face can launch a thousand ships...
The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble…
(T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland)
alludes to Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water.
( Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra)
3. Involving Sound Effects
alliteration: repetition of consonants, especially at the beginning of words:
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
After life's fitful fever…
(Wilfred Owen)
(Macbeth)
assonance: repetition of identical or related vowel sounds:
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time.
(Keats: "Ode to a Grecian Urn")
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sigh.
(Dylan Thomas)
onomatopoeia: ('name-making') use of words which have sounds, (when spoken)
that resemble the sound they describe: hiss; buzz; rustle; snap; crackle
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
(Tennyson: "The Princess")
rhyme: repetition of the sounds of words usually at the ends of lines of poetry:
face/place (masculine rhyme); crying/flying (feminine rhyme)
internal rhyme: within a line of poetry:
And the tedding and the spreading of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the high Pyrenees…
(Hilaire Belloc: "Tarantella')
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half-rhyme or para-rhyme: where the consonants rhyme but the vowel sounds
change:
Think how it wakes the seeds –
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?
(Wilfred Owen: "Futility")
4. Involving Word Choice
pun: a play on words with the same sound but different meanings; effect can be
humorous or serious:
Mercutio (who has been fatally stabbed): Ask for me tomorrow and you will
find me a grave man.
(Romeo and Juliet)
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt.
(Macbeth)
When I'm dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet but his books were read.
(Hilaire Belloc)
ambiguity: words used with more than one meaning: Lady Macbeth (of the visiting
Duncan whom she plans to murder): “He that's coming must be
provided for”
euphemism: ('good speech') describing something unpleasant in a more tasteful
way: 'She passed away'
circumlocution: saying in a roundabout manner what could be said much more
simply: 'Dwellers in vitreous residences should refrain from indulging in the
ejection of petrified missiles.'
irony: where what is said is the opposite to what is meant:
Mark Anthony, of the men who have just assassinated Caesar: For Brutus is an
honourable man; so are they all, all honourable men.
(Shakespeare: Julius Caesar)
sarcasm: mocking or ironic language intended to convey scorn or insult; heavyhanded praise for actual dispraise: 'That was a fine thing to do - I don't think!'
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dramatic irony: a situation or speech in a play (or novel) in which the audience
(reader) knows facts of which the character is unaware:
Duncan (to Lady Macbeth, who is planning his murder): Fair and noble
hostess…
(Macbeth)
tragic irony: dramatic irony used to tragic effect; when a character confidently
predicts an outcome that comes true but in an unexpected or tragic way:
Lady Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan: A little water clears us of
this deed...
Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan: Macbeth does murder sleep.....
 she sleep-walks, endlessly 'washing' her hands; he has nightmares
and cannot sleep
cosmic irony /irony of fate: where tragedy or disaster is unavoidable, despite the
efforts of the participants to avoid it; e.g. in the novels of Thomas Hardy
innuendo: a form of irony in which the underlying (usually unpleasant) meaning is
merely suggested or hinted at: "That's odd - a single man and a scout
master!"
Newspaper headline: 'Ex-convict author arrives: valuable painting stolen'.
cliché: an expression used so often as to have lost any effect in meaning: as good
as gold; the cup that cheers; his better half; it was not to be; he made the
supreme sacrifice
caricature: ridicule of person or thing by over-emphasising specific or easily
recognisable features: Charles Dickens' character sketches
malapropism: confusion - through ignorance - between words that resemble each
other; named after Mrs Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's play The Rivals,
though used before that.
Dogberry: Is our whole dissembly here?
(Much Ado About Nothing)
'He is as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.'
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5. Involving Sentence Construction or Word Order
antithesis: balanced contrast, often of grammatical pattern and meaning:
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. (Bible)
To err is human; to forgive divine.
(Alexander Pope)
oxymoron: ('sharp-dull') an idea is expressed by means of words or phrases usually
considered contradictory:
'bitter-sweet' Death in life
(Romeo and Juliet)
'an eloquent silence'
I must be cruel only to be kind…
loving hate
(Shakespeare: Hamlet)
Fairest Cordelia, that are most rich, being poor, most choice, forsaken: and most
loved, despised. (King Lear)
paradox: a statement that seems to contradict itself, to make no sense, but which
contains a truth.
One short sleep past, we shall wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
'The child is father to the man.'
climax: arrangement of words, phrases, ideas in ascending order of importance:
I came, I saw, I conquered.
(Julius Caesar)
anticlimax: descending order to spoil the effect of climax - often deliberate and for
humour:
Here, thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey
Didst sometimes counsel take - and sometimes tea.
(Pope)
inversion: reversal of natural word order, often for emphasis.
Money I will give you, but not my blessing.
How are the mighty fallen.
They shall grow not old…
(Binyon: "For the Fallen")
transposition: words out of their natural order, often for rhythmic purposes in blank
verse:
'Good my lord'
repetition: deliberate repeating of a word or idea for emphasis
Alone, alone, all all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea.
(Coleridge: "Rime of the Ancient Mariner")
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parallelism: a balance of phrase or clause, with repetition of meaning and/or
construction.
Be wise now therefore, O ye kings:
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
rhetorical question: a question, often used in oratory, to which the answer is
assumed.
I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse: Was
this ambition?
(Shakespeare: Julius Caesar)
6. Miscellaneous
motif: frequently recurring character, incident or concept in literature or folklore;
deliberate repetition of a significant phrase in a single work. (cf theme =
thesis or doctrine of a work.)
leit motif: Recurring image patterns associated with a particular idea, person,
or situation having a unifying effect, e.g. the animal imagery in King Lear.
symbol: That which stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship,
association, convention, or accidental resemblance.
e.g. in Lord of the Flies: the boys symbolise mankind, the conch democracy
etc
apostrophe: Abstract address; speaking directly to an imagery person, object, real
or imagined, or an abstract idea.
Thou, Nature, art my Goddess.
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(Shakespeare: King Lear)
Names of Forms and Other Terms
free verse: poetry with no regular rhythm or rhyme scheme.
blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter = 10 syllables per line, with the stress on
every second syllable: as used in Shakespeare's plays
end-stopped line: a normal pause at the end of the line.
enjambment: carry over of meaning without pause from one line to the next
couplet: two successive lines of verse, usually rhymed, and with the same metre.
stanza: a verse of poetry, from the Italian stanza = a room
quatrain: four lined stanza
ballad: a simple narrative poem in short stanzas:
"Patrick Spens"
lyric: a short poem expressing the writer's own thoughts and emotions: Wordswoth
"Daffodils".
sonnet: poem of 14 lines, in iambic pentameter, with a definite rhyme scheme. The
three main types are
 Italian (Petrarchan), which is divided into an octet and a sestet; rhyme
scheme:
abba abba cdecde or cdcdee or cdcdcd
 English (Shakespearean): three quatrains and a concluding couplet;
rhyme scheme:
abab cdcd efef gg
 Miltonic: octave and sestet but no break in thought or sense between
them.
elegy: a song of lamentation for the dead, or of regret for the past:
Gray: "Elegy in a Country Churchyard"
ode: a poem of noble sentiment, in an exalted and dignified style, and in majestic
and meditative tone: Keats: "Ode to Autumn"
metre: rhythm in poetry systematically arranged and measured.
iambic: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
trochaic: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
tetrameter)
(5 feet = pentameter)
(4 feet =
anapaestic: The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.
dactylic: Merrily, merrily shall I live now.
tragedy: play with a serious theme, ending with the death of the main character(s):
Othello
comedy: a play written to amuse; or one with a happy ending: Shakespeare: As
You Like It
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prologue: an address, usually in verse, introducing a play or other literary work.
dénouement: the unravelling of the complications of the plot in a play, novel etc.
soliloquy: a speech made by one character alone on the stage – the character's
thoughts.
didactic writing: any writing in prose or verse designed to instruct: Pope: Essay on
Man
allegory: a narrative which illustrates a moral point by means of an extended
metaphor:
John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress;
Spenser: The Faerie Queene
fable: a story with a secondary meaning as well as a surface one, usually using
animals:
George Orwell: Animal Farm
Aesop's Fables
parable: a symbolic or allegorical story based on common experience and
illustrating a moral point:
The Prodigal Son
John Steinbeck: The Pearl
parody: an amusing, exaggerated imitation of a literary work.
satire: literary composition ridiculing vice or folly:
(Animal Farm, Truman Show)
epigram: a concise and witty saying: Nothing succeeds like success.
What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole:
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
(Coleridge)
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