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| the time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play. George Lucas's Star Wars opens by telling us that it was "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." |
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| also called an English sonnet: a sonnet form that divides the poem into three unites of four lines each and a final unit of two lines, usually abab cdcd efef gg. (Shakespeare's 34th) |
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| another name for concrete poetry: poetry that is shaped to look like an object. John Hollander's "A State of Nature" is shaped to look like New York state. |
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| a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another usually using the words like or as to draw the connection. |
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| a monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to himself or herself. A famous example of soliloquy is Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" speech. |
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| the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem. |
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| a section of a poem demarcated by extra line spacing. Some distinguish a stanza, a division marked by a single pattern of meter or rhyme, from a verse paragraph, a division marked by thought rather than pattern, not unlike a paragraph in prose writing. Stanzas can be identified by the number of their lines. Couplet, Tercet, Quatrain, Cinquain, Sestet, Heptatich, Octave. |
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| a characterization based on conscious or unconscious assumptions that some one aspect, such as gender, age, ethnic or national identity, religious, occupation, marital status, and so on, are predictably accompanied by certain character traits, actions, even values. |
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| one who appears in a number of stories or plays such as the cruel stepmother, the femme fatale, etc. |
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| the organization or arrangement of the various elements in a work. |
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| a distinctive manner of expression; each author's style is expressed through his or her diction, rhythm, imagery, and so on. It is a writer's typical way of writing. Style includes word choice, tone, degree of formality, figurative language, rhythm, grammar, structure, sentence length, organization, and every other feature of a writer's use of language. For example, Hemingway wrote primarily with short, simple sentences while Joseph Conrad wrote long, rambling prose. |
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| a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or "stands for" something else. Often the thing or iea represented is more abstract, general, non- or superrational than the symbol, which is more concrete and particular. The poem "The Sick Rose" by William Blake, is full of symbolism. |
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| When a part is used to signify a whole, as in All hands on deck! and The rustler bragged he'd absconded with five hundred head of longhorns. "Hands" stand for the whole of the sailors, and the rustler obviously took mor ethan just the heads and the horns of the animals he was stealing. |
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| the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and snetences. Syntax is sentence structure and how it influences the way the reader receives a particular piece of writing. |
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| a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is written in terza rima. |
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