an association or additional meaning that a word, image, or phrase may carry, apart from its literal denotation or dictionary definition.
Denotation
the literal, dictionary meaning of a word.
Tone
the attitude toward a subject conveyed in a literary work.
Persona
latin for mask. A fictitious character created by an author to be the speaker of a poem, story or novel.
Irony
a literary device in which a discrepancy of meaning is masked beneath the surface of the language.
Sarcasm
a conspicuously bitter form of irony in which the ironic statement is designed to hurt or mock its target.
dramatic irony
a special kind of suspenseful expectation, when the audience or reader understands the implication and meaning of a situation on stage and foresees the oncoming disaster or triumph but the character does not.
cosmic irony
eveals the gap between human hopes and the indifferent universe, highlighting the futility of dreams against life's unpredictability.
Diction
word choice or vocabulary
Allusion
a brief reference in a text to a person, place, or a thing-fictitious or actual.
Dialect
a particular variety of language spoken by an identifiable group or social class of persons.
Metaphor
a statement that one thing is something else, which, in a literal sense it is not.
implied metaphor
a metaphor that uses neither connectivenes nor the verb to be.
Apostrophe
a direct address to someone or something.
Understatement
an iconic figure of speech that deliberately describes something in a way that is less than the true case.
Metonymy
figure of speech in which the name of a thing is substituted for that of another closely associated with it.
Synecdoche
the use of a significant part of a thing to stand for the whole of it or vice versa.
Paradox
a statement that at first strikes one as self-contradictory, but that on reflection reveals some deeper sense.
Stanza
from the italia meaning stopping-place or room. A recurring pattern of two or more lines of verse, poetry’s equivalent to the paragraph in prose.
Alliteration
the repetition of two or more consonant sounds in successive words in a line of verse or prose.
Assonance
the repetition of two or more vowel sounds in successive words, which creates a kind of rhyme.
Cacophony
a harsh, discordant sound often mirroring the meaning of the context in which it is used.
Euphony
the harmonious effect when the sounds of the words connect with the meaning in a way pleasing to the ear and mind.
Onomatopoeia
a literary device that attempts to represent a thing or action by the word that imitates the sound associated with it.
end rhyme (end rime)
rhyme that occurs at the end of lines, rather than within them.
eye rhyme (end rime)
rhyme in which the spelling of the words appears alike, but the pronunciation differs.
internal rhyme (internal rime)
rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry, as opposed to end rhyme
Caesura
a pause within a line of verse.
run on line
a line of verse that does not end in punctuation, but carries on grammatically to the next line.
Foot
the unit of measurement in metrical poetry.
Meter
a recurrent, regular, rhythmic pattern in verse.
iambic pentameter
the most common meter in English verse- gives iambic feet per line.
Scansion
a practice used to describe rhythmic pattern in a poem by separating the metrical feet, counting syllables, marking accents, and indicating the pauses.