A major unit of drama. A
play can be subdivided into
several acts. Shakespeare's
Macbeth is divided into five
acts
Act
• A literary work in which all or most of
the characters, settings, and events
symbolize ideas, qualities, or figures
beyond themselves.
• The overall purpose of an allegory is
to teach a moral lesson. Lord of the
Flies is an example of an allegory.
Allegory
• Sound device using
repetition of consonant
sounds at the beginning of
words, in a verse line; used
for rhythm and memory
Alliteration
• A reference in a work of literature
to a well-known person, place,
event, written work, or work of
art. Discovering the meaning of an
allusion can often be essential to
the understanding of a work.
Allusion
• A short written or oral account of
an event in a real person's life.
Essay writers often use anecdotes
to support their opinions or clarify
their ideas, to grab a reader's
attention
Anecdote
• Words and phrases with
opposite meanings balanced
against each other: "To err is
human, to forgive is divine.
Antithesis
• A literary device in which a
speaker talks directly to an
inanimate object, a person who is
absent or dead, or an abstract
quality, such as love.
Apostrophe
• The repetition of the same or
similar vowel sounds in
stressed syllables that end
with different consonant
sounds
Assonance
• A short musical narrative song or
poem that in most cases recounts a
single exciting or dramatic
episode. Folk ballads were passed
down by word of mouth for
generations before being written
down.
Ballad
• Poetry or lines of dramatic verse
written in unrhymed iambic
pentameter. In this verse form,
each line is divided into five units,
or feet, with stress falling on every
second syllable.
Blank Verse
• An obvious pause in a line of poetry. It is
usually found near the middle of a line,
with two stressed syllables before and two
after, creating a strong rhythm.
• A caesura can be indicated by (//) double
slashes.
Caesura
• The methods used to reveal the personality of a
character.
• In direct characterization, the author describes
a character's personality.
• In indirect characterization: the author suggests
traits through a character's words, actions, or
appearance, as well as through the reactions of
other characters to the person being portrayed
Characterization
• The central struggle between two opposing
forces in a story or drama.
• An external conflict exists when a character
struggles against some outside force, such as
another person, nature, society, or fate.
• An internal conflict is a struggle that takes
place within the mind of a character who is
torn between opposing feelings or goals.
Conflict
• The suggested or implied
meanings associated with a word
beyond its dictionary definition,
or denotation.
• Words can have a positive,
negative, or neutral connotation.
Connotation
• The repetition of consonant
sounds, typically within or at
the end of non-rhyming words,
as in the d sounds in : “the
blood- dimmed tide is loosed.”
Consonance
• Rhyming: Two lines of
rhymed verse that work
together as a unit to express
an idea or make a point.
Couplet
• The literal , or dictionary,
meaning of word.
Denotation
• A way of speaking that is
characteristic of a particular
region or group of people.
• Dialects may differ from the
standard form of language in
pronunciation, vocabulary, or
grammar.
Dialect
• Conversation between
characters in a literary work.
Dialogue
• The author's word choice, or use of
appropriate words to convey a
particular meaning.
• Good writers choose their words
carefully to express their intended
meaning precisely.
Diction
• A concluding statement or
section added to a work of
literature.
Epilogue
• A specific device or kind of
figurative language such as
metaphor, personification,
simile, or symbol.
Figures of Speech
• A narrative passage set in an earlier time
that interrupts the chronological order of
the rest of a story.
• Flashbacks allow writers to go back in time
to explain what has happened previously,
giving readers information that may help
explain the main events of a story.
Flashback
• The author's use of hints or
clues to prepare readers for
events that will happen later in
a narrative.
Foreshadowing
• Rhyme that occurs at the end
of a line.
End rhyme
• Serious poem of lament
usually mourning a death or
other great loss
Elegy
• The continuation of a sentence from one line of a poem to
another. Poets use enjambment to emphasize rhyming
words.
Enjambment
• A long narrative poem that
recounts, in formal language,
the exploits of a larger than life
hero.
Epic poem
• A concluding statement or
section added to a work of
literature.
Epilogue
• Poetry that has no fixed pattern or
meter, rhyme, line length, or
stanza arrangement.
• It generally imitates natural forms
of speech.
Free Verse
• A figure of speech that uses
exaggeration to express strong
emotion, make a point, or evoke
humor.
Hyperbole
• The "word pictures" that writers
create to help evoke an emotional
response in readers.
• In creating effective images, writers
use sensory details, or descriptions
that appeal to one or more of the five
senses.
Imagery
• Same a slant rhyme
Imperfect Rhyme
• When a word in the middle of
the line rhymes with a word at
the end of the line
Internal Rhyme
• A contrast or discrepancy between expectation
and reality.
• Verbal irony: exists when a person says one
thing but means another.
• Situational irony exists when the outcome of a
situation is opposite from what someone
expected.
• Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or the
reader knows something that the characters do
not know.
Irony
• A descriptive figure of speech that
takes the place of a common noun,
usually two words or phrase,
especially in Anglo Saxon poetry.
"Storm of swords"
Kenning
• Poetry that expresses a speaker's
personal thoughts and feelings.
• Lyric poems are usually short and
musical.
• The emphasis of the poem is to
experience emotions
Lyric Poem
• A figure of speech that makes a
comparison between two seemingly
unlike things to help readers perceive
the first thing more vividly and to
suggest an underlying similarity
between the two.
Metaphor
• A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables that gives a line of poetry a predictable
rhythm (iambic, trochaic, spondaic, anapestic,
dactylic).
• The basic unit of meter is known as the foot.
• The length of a metrical line is often expressed in
terms of feet ( monometer, dimeter, trimeter,
tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter
Meter
• A long speech by a character
in a play spoken to others or
as if alone.
Monologue
• The emotional quality, or
atmosphere, of a work of
literature. (How the reader feels)
Mood
• Refers to the way a story is told.
Recital of events, especially in
chronological order, as the story is
narrated in a poem or story.
Narration
• Verse that tells a story.
• Ballads, epics, and romances
are all types of narrative
poetry.
Narrative Poem
• A long serious poem that is
elevated in tone and style.
• Some odes celebrated a person,
event or even a power; others are
more private meditations.
Ode
• The use of words with sound
that imitate or suggest their
meanings
Onomatopoeia
• A statement that appears to be
contradictory but is actually true,
either in fact or in a figurative
sense
Paradox
• A figure of speech in which an
animal, object, force of nature, or idea
is given human qualities.
Personification
• The sequence of events in a
narrative work: exposition, rising
action, climax, falling action,
denouement.
Plot
• A form of literary expression that
differs from prose in emphasizing the
line as the unit of composition.
• It contains emotional, imaginative
language; use of metaphor, simile, and
other figures of speech; division into
stanzas, rhyme; and regular pattern or
meter
Poetry
• The relationship of the narrator to the
story
Point of View
• The narrator is a character in
the story, referred to as "I."
• The reader sees everything
through the character's eyes.
First Person Point of View
• The narrator is speaking to the
audience directly.
• Uses the pronoun "you."
Second Person POV
• (Limited) The narrator reveals the thoughts,
feelings, and observations of only one character,
referring to that character as he/she.
• (Omniscient) All knowing point of view, the
narrator is not a character in the story, but
someone who stands outside the story and
comments on the action.
Third Person Point of View
• An introductory section of a play,
speech, or other literary work.
Prologue
• The central character in a story,
drama, or dramatic poem around
whom most of the action revolves.
• During the course of a work, the
protagonist undergoes some
conflict that is crucial to the plot.
Protagonist
• Word play which suggests two or
more meanings by exploiting multiple
meanings of words or similar
sounding words, for an intended
humorous effect.
Pun
• The recurrence of sounds, words, phrases,
lines, or stanzas in speech or piece of
writing.
• Writers use repetition to emphasize an
important point, to expand upon an idea, to
help create rhythm, and to increase the
feeling of unity within a work.
Repetition
• Final outcome of a plot is
revealed.
Resolution
• The art of using language to
present facts and ideas in order
to persuade.
Rhetoric
• The repetition of the same stressed
vowel sounds and any succeeding
sounds in two or more words.
Rhyme
• The pattern that end rhymes form in a
stanza or poem
Rhyme Scheme
• The intentional use of verbal irony
in which the speaker seems to be
praising something but is actually
insulting it.
Sarcasm
• Literature that exposes to
ridicule the vices or follies of
people or societies through
devices such as exaggeration,
understatement, and irony.
Satire
• The analysis of meter of a line of
verse.
• To scan a line of poetry means to
note the stressed and unstressed
syllables and divide the line into
its feet.
Scansion
• The time and place in which events of literary work
occur.
• The setting includes not only physical elements, but also
the ideas, customs, values, and beliefs of the people who
live there.
Setting
• Otherwise known as the volta, used in the
sonnet
• At the end of the octave (first eight lines)
in a Petrarchan sonnet
• At the end of the twelfth line in
Shakespearean sonnets to signal a shift in
thought.
Shift or turn
• A figure of speech that uses the
words like or as to compare two
seemingly unlike things.
Simile
• An approximate rhyme based on
assonance, the repetition of a
vowel sound, or on consonance,
the repetition of a consonant
sound at the end of the word.
Slant Rhyme
• A dramatic device in which a
character, alone on stage or while
under the impression of being alone,
reveals his private thoughts and
feelings as if thinking aloud.
Soliloquy
• A lyric poem of fourteen lines
with a definite rhyme scheme set
in iambic pentameter.
Sonnet
• Elements of poetry that appeal to
the ear.
• In poetry, sound devices such as
alliteration and assonance are used
to emphasize certain words and
underscore their meaning.
Sound devices
• An instruction written into the script
of a play, indicating stage actions,
movements of performers, or
production requirements.
Stage Directions
• A group of lines forming a
unit in a poem.
• A stanza in a poem is
similar to a paragraph in
prose.
Stanza
• The framework or general plan of
a literary work.
Structure
• The expressive qualities that
distinguish an author's work,
including word choice, sentence
structure, and figures of speech.
Style
• The anticipation of the outcome of
events, especially as they affect a
character for whom one has sympathy.
• Suspense produces a feeling of
uncertainty that causes anxiety.
Suspense
• Any person, animal, place, object, or event that exists on
a literal level within in a work but also represents
something on a figurative level.
Symbol
• Refers to the use of symbols.
Symbolism
• The study of the patterns of formation
of sentences and phrases from words.
Syntax
• The main idea of a story, poem, novel,
or play, sometimes expressed as a
general statement about life.
Theme
• A reflection of the writer's attitude
toward a subject conveyed
through such elements as a word
choice, punctuation, sentence
structure, and figures of speech.
Theme
• Language that makes something
less important than it really is.
Understatement