the repetition of accented consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to each other, usually to create an effect, rhythm, or emphasis.

"Big bad barking dog. The noisy gnat knit nine sweaters."

"Allie's allusions are actually amiably atrocious." Haha that one doesn't really work.

"Tom takes the train to Tonka Toys." So bad.

a reference in literature or in art to previous literature, history, mythology, pop culture/current events, or the Bible.

"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles And see the great Achilles, whom we knew." Tennyson, in Ulysses

He alludes to the Happy Isles, or Elysium, where warriors (according to Greek mythology) spent the afterlife. He also alludes to Achilles, a heroic leader in the Trojan War.

quality of being intentionally unclear. Events or situations that are ambiguous can be interpreted in more than one way.

"There she lies, still and cold." Dead, or sleeping?

An element in a story that is out of its time frame; sometimes used to create a humorous or jarring effect. Beware: this can also occur because of careless or poor research on the author's part.

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare mentions caps, which the Romans did not wear. Or, imagine Romeo going to Mantua in a Porsche. Shakespeare speaking to his agent on a cell phone.

An analogy clarifies or explains an unfamiliar concept or object, or one that cannot be put into words, by comparing it with one which is familiar. By explaining the abstract in terms of the concrete, an analogy may force the reader to think more critically about a concept. Analogies tend to appear more often in prose than in poetry. They enliven writing by making it more interesting, entertaining, and understandable. Similes and metaphors are two specific types of analogies.

Knowledge always desires increase: it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself. - Samuel Johnson

The island in Lord of the Flies before the boys arrived is analogous to Eden.

the process of examining the components of a literary work

An analysis of Jane Eyre might make reference to the novel's Gothic setting, elements of suspense, the author's style, romantic and feminist themes, the use of symbolism and figurative language, and the novel's religious aspects.

the poetic foot (measure) that follows the pattern unaccented, unaccented, accented. The poet is usually trying to convey a rollicking, moving rythmn with this pattern.

I am MONarch of ALL I surVEY.

A short and often personal story used to emphasize a point, to develop a character or a theme, or to inject humor.

In The Great Gatsby there is the anecdote about Tom Buchanan's liaison with the chambermaid during his honeymoon that speaks volumes about his character.

A character who functions as a resisting force to the goals of the protagonist.

The antagonist is often a villain, but in a case where the protagonist is evil (for example, Macbeth), the antagonist may be virtuous (for example, Macduff).

The word of phrase to which a pronoun refers. It often precedes a pronoun in prose (but not necessarily in poetry).

"O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew." --> Flesh is the antecedent; itself is the pronoun that refers to it.

An often dissapointing, sudden end to an intense situation.

Many critics consider Jim's capture and rescue in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn an example of an anticlimax.

a concept that is directly opposed to a previously presented idea. (basically, one thing's the opposite of another)

STAR WARS!!!! Darth Vader represents ideas that are antithetical to those of Jedi Knights!

a terse statement that expresses a general truth or moral principle; sometimes considered a folk proverb.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Emerson "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." -Benjamin Franklin

a rhetorical (not expecting an answer) figure of direct address to a person, object, or abstract entity.

Antony's address to the dead Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar

Elevating someone to the level of God.

Many people revere Martin Luther King. Helen of Troy is considered an apotheosis of beauty.

a character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all culture because it occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore.

Character: The archetypal gunslinger, having been forced to kill once more, rides off into the sunset, leaving behind a town full of amazed and awestruck citizens. (so, a cliche kind of thing?)

Situation: Just when it looks like the battle will be won by the enemy, reinforcements arrive.

Symbol: the dove of peace

A short speech or remark made by an actor to the audience rather than to the other characters, who do not hear him or her.

This happens a lot in Shakespeare's works. Example: Macbeth uses an aside to tell the audience his plans: "To the castle of Macduff I will surprise..."

the repeated use of a vowel sound.

How now brown cow. Twice five miles in a mazy motion.

the author's feelings toward the topic he or she is writing about. Attitude, often used interchangeably with "tone," it is usually revealed with word choice.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (author) uses an innocent and unjaded child narrator to express her own attitude toward prejudice.

a poem or song about lovers who must leave each other early in the morning.

"Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With every thing that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise: Arise, arise!"

Shakespeare, Cymbaline

a folk song or poem passed down orally that tells a story which may be derived from an actual incident or from legend or folklore. Usually composed in four-line stanzas (quatrains) with the rhyme scheme ABCB. Ballads often contain a refrain.

"Barbara Allen" (anonymous)

unrhymed poetry of iambic pentameter (5 feet of two syllables each - unstressed and stressed); favored technique of Shakespeare

"When honour's at the stake, how stand I then, That have a father kill'd a mother stain'd..." Shakespeare, Hamlet

harsh, discordant sounds, unpleasant to the ear; used for effect.

Nails on a chalkboard

"And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, and with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon of each."

Browning, "Caliban Upon Setebos" (sq, st, ck, ch, ft, t, k, sc, ch

Latin for "seize the day;" frequent in 16th and 17th century court poetry. Expresses the idea you only go around once; refers to the modern saying, "life is not a dress rehearsal."

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"

in his Poetics, Aristotle wrote that a tragedy should "arouse pity and fear in such a way as to accomplish a catharsis of such emotions in the audience." The term refers to an emotional cleansing or feeling of relief.

Many cry at the end of Gone With the Wind, empathizing with Scarlett O'Hara and her losses. They are experiencing catharsis.

the opposite of parallel construction; inverting the second of two phrases that would otherwise be in parallel form.

basically, half a YODA

parallel: "I like the idea; I don't like its construction."

chiasmus: "I like the idea; its execution, I do not."

of or relating to the slang or regional dialect, used in familiar everyday conversation. In writing, an informal style that reflects the way people spoke in a distinct time/place.

Pap's speech in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 "Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here - you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what HE is.

"Like OMG, really? That's soo TMTH. It's just TFB. Wicked sad!"

Humor that provides a release of tension and breaks up a more serious episode.

Some of the nurse's speeches in Romeo and Juliet, and the grave-digging scene in Hamlet provide perfectly timed comic relief.

In Over the Tavern, after Act I Scene 5 (Ellen and Chet dancing and romancing in the kitchen), Rudy has a kneeler scene and the audience laughs at that.

When George said "Shit!" at inopportune times.

a far-fetched comparison between two seemingly unlike things; an extended metaphor that gains appeal from its unusual or extraordinary comparison.

"Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare Where we almost, yea more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is."

John Donne, "The Flea"

Donne begs his beloved not to kill the flee that has bitten both of them because their blood is mingled with the flea, representing three lives. The conceit is that he compares the flea to a marriage bed and a temple.

Associations a word calls to mind. The more connotative a piece is. the less objective its interpretation becomes. Careful, close reading often reveals the writer's intent.

House and home have the same denotation, or dictionary meeting - a place to live. But home connotes warmth and security; house does not.

  Very connotative words are "light, fire, mother, father, rose, water, home."

same consonant sound in words with different vowel sounds.

Work, stack, ark, belong, among

a character with traits that are expected or traditional. Heroes are expected to be strong, adventurous, and unafraid. Conventional female characters often yearn for a husband, or once married, stay at home and care for their children; conventional men are adventurers. If married, they tend to "wear the pants in the family."

Mrs.Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is a conventional wife and mother who wants to see her daughters married.

2 successive rhyming lines of the same number of lables, with matching cadence.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast; /Man never is, but always to be blest."

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Foot of poetry with three syllables, one stressed and two short or unstressed. Think of the waltz!

"Just for a handful of silver he left us."

Robert Browning, "The Lost Leader"

the dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phrase (compare / contrast to connotation).

the denotation of "thin" is "not fat." "Skinny" and "scrawny" also refer to someone or something that is not fat, but the imply or connote "underfed" or "unattractively thin."

the outcome or clarification at the end of a story or play' the winding down from climax to ending. The final resolution.

in "The Scarlet Letter," by Hawthorne, the denouement occurs after Dimmesdale's death.

Literally, when the gods intervene at a story's end to resolve a seemingly impossible conflict. Refers to an unlikely or improbable coincidence; a cop-out ending.

In Greek mythology, Medea murders her children and is whisked away by a chariot of the gods.

In "Sleeping Beauty," the handsome prince kisses the beautiful princess and she awakes from her seemingly eternal slumber.

Basically....Instead of finding some creative ending, the author or playwright or whoever brings in some outside force instead of having some logical development in what they've already established.

the deliberate choice of a style of language for a desired effect or tone. Words chosen to achieve a particular effect that is formal, informal, or colloquial.

The diction of Hawthorne in "The Scarlet Letter" is formal, whereas Mark Twain's diction is often highly informal.

a didactic story, speech, essay, or play is one in which the author's primary purpose is to instruct, teach, or moralize.

Many of Aesop's fables fall into this category, ending with moral lessons. For example, "Gratitude and grief go not together" is the moral at the end of "The Wolf and the Crane."

Senior speeches are often used to instruct underclassmen.

An exaggeration or stretching of the truth to achieve a desired effect.

Gregor Samsa waking up as a large insect in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" is a distortion of reality.

Someone one day waking up blind or mute or deaf to show the value of these senses, and then after understanding that value, waking up with that sense again.

In poetry, the running over of a sentence from one verse or stanza into the next without stopping at the end of the first.

"I like to see it lap the Miles

And lick the Valleys up -

And stop to feed itself at Tanks -

And then, prodigious, step

Around a Pile of Mountains"

(Emily Dickinson, "I like to see it lap the Miles")

A short, clever poem with a witty turn of thought.

 "Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Roumania."

(Dorothy Parker, "Comment")

Poems are made by fools, I fear,

But only Bud can make a beer!

(Just kidding.)

A brief quotation found at the beginning of a literary work, reflective of theme.

Toni Morrison's Beloved opens with the epigraph "Sixty Million and more," which says volumes about slavery.

In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the following lines of William Butler Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" appear at the beginning of the book, foretelling the story's theme:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

A sudden flash of insight; a startling discovery and/or appearance; a dramatic realization.

Eureka!

Jocasta's sudden realization that her husband is her son is an epiphany (Oedipus Rex).

a novel in letter form written by one or more of the characters. The novelist can use this technique to preset varying first-person point of view and does not need a narrator.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

and

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

a short composition on a single topic expressing the view or interpretation of the writer on that topic. The word comes from the French "essayer" (which means to attempt or try). It is one of the oldest prose forms.

Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is one of the most famous essays ever written.

E.B. White's collection of essays in One Man's Meat.

Substitution of an inoffensive word or phrase for another that would be harsh, offensive, or embarrassing. A euphemism makes something sound better than it is but is usually more wordy than the original.

"He passed on," rather than "he died."

A dishwasher calling herself a "utensil maintenance technician."

The quality of a pleasant of harmonious sound of a word or group of words as an intended efect. Often achieved through long vowels and some consonants, such as "sh."

"The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low."

(Robert Browning, "Meeting at Night")

Farce

A kind of comedy that depends on exaggerated or improbable situation, physical disasters, and sexual innuendo to amuse the audience. Many situation comedies on television today might be called farces.

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Brandon Thomas' Charley's Aunt, Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway.

That crazy play with Maurice Blase and the cheating husband and twin maids!

Unlike literal expression, figurative language uses figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, metonymy, personification, and hyperbole. Figurative language appeals to one's senses. Most poetry contains figurative language.

Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire,

Hoar Winter's blooming child; delightful Spring!

Whose unshorn locks with leaves

And swelling buds are crowned...

(Anna Leatitia Barbauld, "Ode to Spring")

A character in the story tells the story, using the pronoun I. This is a limited point of view since the narrator can relate only events that he or she is told about.

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is written in first person - Nick Carraway:

"Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets...I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without."

 

Interruption of a narrative by the introduction of an earlier event or by an image of a past experience.

Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods uses this technique at crucial points to help the reader better understand John Wade and what happened in the past to make him the way he is now.

A simple, one-dimensional character who remains the same, and about whom little or nothing is revealed throughout the course of the work. Flat characters may serve as symbols of types of people, similar to stereotypical characters.

Mrs.Micawber, in Dickens' David Copperfield, is the ever-loyal wife who repeatedly says "I will never desert Mr.Micawber." Mme Ratignolle is portrayed as a Mother Earth figure throughout Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Another example is the morally reprehensible Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

A character whose contrasting personal characteristics draw attention to, enhance, or contrast with those of the main character. A character who, by displaying opposite traits, emphasizes certain aspects of another character.

Fortinbras is Hamlet's foil.

Tybalt is Romeo's foil.

Foreshadowing hints at what's to come. It is sometimes noticeable only in hindsight, but usually it is obvious enough to set the reader wondering.

In that terrible movie version of All the King's Men, the opening credits center on the great golden seal where Adam and Willie die.

Poetry that does not have rhythm or rhyme.

On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner,

He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,

He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,

With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.

(Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass)

Fever by John Updike, pg 119 of Anthology

The category into which a piece of writing can be classified - poetry, prose, drama. Each genre has its own conventions and standards.

Poem - Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Prose - Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

Drama - Arthur Miller's The Crucible

In poetry, a rhymed couplet written in iambic pentameter.

"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head."

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

A 5-foot line made up of unaccented and then accented syllables. It is the most common metric foot in English-language poetry.

"When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain."

John Keats, "When I Have Fears"

Anything that affects of appeals to the reader's senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

Wait for a while, then slip downstairs

And bring us up some chilled white wine,

And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine

Ruddy-skinned pears.

Richard Wilbur, "A Late Aubade"

In literature, a work that begins in the middle of the story.

The Odyssey, Medea, and Oedipus Rex all begin "in medias res."

A literary technique used in poetry and prose that reveals a character's unspoken thoughts and feelings. It may be presented directly by the character, or through a narrator. (See also STREAM OF CONCIOUSNESS)

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"

A fairly short, emotionally expressive poem that expresses the feelings and observations of a single speaker.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely hands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Tennyson, "The Eagle"

The rhythmical pattern of a poem. Just as all words are pronounced with accented (or stressed) syllables and unaccented (or unstressed) syllables, lines of poetry are assigned similar rhythms. English poetry uses 5 basic metric feet.

iamb - unstressed, stressed; before

trochee - stressed, unstressed; weather

anapest-unstressed, unstressed, stressed; contradict

dactyl - stressed, unstressed, unstressed; satisfy

spondee - equally stressed; one-word spondees are very rare in the English language; a spondac foot is almost always two words, for example, "WOE, WOE for England..."

A figure of speech that replaces the name of something with a word of phrase closely associated with it. Similar to synecdoche (many authors do not distinguish between the two).

"the White House" instead of "the president" or "the presidency";

"brass" to mean "military officers";

"suits" instead of "supervisors"