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| a sentence grammatically complete, and usually stating its main idea, before the end. For example, "The child ran as if being chased by demons." |
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| originally designated poems meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre; now any short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion rather than describing a narrative or dramatic stuation. The sonnet and th ode are two types of lyric poetry. |
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| a misleading term for theme; the central idea or statement of a story, or area of inquiry or explanation; misleading because it suggests a simple, packaged statement that preexists and for the simple communication of which the story is written. |
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| One thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them. It is an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal such as like or as. |
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| the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. This is determined by the kind of "foot" (iambic or dactylic, for example) and by the number of feet per line (five feet = pentameter, sex feet = hexameter, for example.) |
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| a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something as in "The White House announced today..." |
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| a feeling or ambiance resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and point of view. This effect is favriated through descriptions of feelings or objects that establist a sense of fear, patriotism, sanctity, hope, etc. For example, many of Thomas Hardy's novels, such as Jude the Obscure, have been ccused of establisting moods of relentless gloom, depression, and despair. |
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| a recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event. For example, in The Great Gatsby, the recurring image, or motif, of the color green is found throughout the novel. |
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| a textual organization based on sequences of connected events, usually presented in a straightforward, chronological framework. |
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| the "character" who "tells" the story, or in poetry, the persona. |
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| a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private. An epithalamium is a wedding poem, for example. |
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| a lyric poem that is somewhat serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style and sometimes uses elaborate stanza structure, which is often patterned in sets of three. Odes are writted to praise and exalt a person, characteristic, quality or object, for example, Poe's "To Helen" or Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale" |
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| also called unlimited focus; a perspective that can be seen from one character's view, then another's, then another's, or can be moved in or out of the mind of any character at any time. The reader has access to the perceptions and thoughts of all characters in the story. |
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| a word capturing or approximating the sound of what is describes; "buzz" is a good example. The purpose of these words is to make a passage more effective for the reader or listener. In Fahrenheit 451, for example, Ray Bradbury used onomatopoeia when he says "Mildred rose and began to move about the room. Bang! Smash! Wallop, bing, bong, boom." |
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| Exaggerated language; also called hyperbole. |
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| a figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elemnts, as in "wise fool" or "jumbo shrimp." |
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| a short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson through the use of analogy. Many parables can be found in the Bible such as the stories of "The Prodigal Son" or "The Loaves and Fishes". |
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| a statement that seems contradictory but may actually be true. A popular paradox from the 1960s was when war protestors would "fight for peace". |
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| a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original. In contemporary music, for example, Weird Al Yankovic has made his fortune writing parodies of popular songs. |
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| the use of similar forms in writing for nouns, verbs, phrases, or thoughts; for example, "Jane likes reading, writing, and skiing." |
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| a poem (also called an ecologue, a bucolic, or an idyll) that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless (and sheepless) life in a world full of beauty, music, and love. |
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| a sentence which is not grammatically complete until the end. For example, "The child, who looked as if she were being chased by demons, ran." |
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| the voice or figure of the author who tells the structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author. |
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| treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by endowing it with human qualities. William Wordsworth speaks of the stars as "Tossing their heads in sprightly dance" and Robert Browning describes "leaping waves" in his poem "Meeting at Night". |
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| also called Italian sonnet, a sonnet that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section of six lines (sestet), usually following the abba abba cde dce rhyme scheme though the sestet's rhyme varies. |
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| the arrangement of the narration based on the cause-effect relationship of the events. |
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| the main character in a work, who may or may not be heroic. For example, Guy Montag is the protagonist in Fahrenheit 451, Oedipus is the protagonist in Oedipus Rex, and Ralph is the protagonist in Lord of the Flies |
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| a poetic stanza of four lines such as William Blake's "The Tyger" |
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| the practice in literature of attempting to describe nature and life without idealization and with attention to detail. Henry James and Mark Trwain are examples of authors in this school. |
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| a repeated stanza or line(s) in a poem or song. |
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| The developement of action in a work, usually at the beginning. The plot thickens. |
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| the repetition of the same or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines. For example, Frost's "The Road Not Taken". |
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| the modulation of weak and strong (stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech. |
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| a form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually harshly or bitterly critical. For example, if a teacher says to a student who sneaks into class an hour late, "Nice of you to join us today," the teacher is being sarcastic. |
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| a literary work that holds up human failing to ridicule and censure. Jonathan Swift and George Orwell both were masters of satire. |
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| the analysis of verse to show its meter. |
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