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| Symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a second meaning. |
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| Repetition of constant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. |
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| Indirect or passing reference to some person, place, or events; or to a piece of literature or art. |
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| Illustration of an idea by means of an example that is similar or parallel to it in some significant features. |
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| A detailed examination of the separate parts or elements of work. |
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| Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in "com-pre-HEND". |
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| A brief story of an interesting incident |
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| Force that opposes the central character which can be another person(s), the character's own weakness, environment or nature. |
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| Action that takes place before the story line opens |
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| A speech addressed to a dead or absent person or abstract object. |
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| Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, which are not "heard" by the other characters on stage during a play |
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| The repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds. |
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| Narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. |
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| A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
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| A strong pause within a line of verse. |
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| Distorted representation to produce a ridiculous effect. |
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| The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the falling action of a play. |
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| An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. |
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The means by which writers present and reveal character.
ex) speech, dress, manner, and actions |
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| A group of characters that comment on the action of the play without participation in it. |
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| A group of characters who comment on the action of the play without participation in it. |
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| The measurement of time or the ordering of events. |
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A phrase that is commonly used. A stereotyped expression, sentence of phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea.
ex) "In the nick of time" means something happened just in time. |
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| The turning point of the action in the plot of a play. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. |
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| The pointing out of similarities. |
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| A type of drama in which characters experience reveals of fortune, usually for the better. |
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| The use of a comic scene to interrupt a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments. |
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| An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. |
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| Solid, physical not theoretical or abstract. |
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| A struggle between two opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. |
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| The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. |
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| The parts just before and after the word in a passage that determine its meaning. |
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| A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in the Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. |
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| A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem |
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| A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, such as "FLUT-ter-ing". |
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| A conclusion reached by logic or reasoning, or by examining all the available information. |
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| The dictionary meaning of a word |
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| The resolution of the plot of a literary work. |
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| A god who resolves the entanglements of a play by supernatural intervention. |
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| Conversation of characters in a literary work. |
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| The selection of words in a literary work. |
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| Distinct differences between two things that should not be different, or that should correspond. |
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| Harsh sound or discordance. Can be emotional or intellectual. |
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| A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue. |
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| Latin for the characters or persons in a play. |
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| A lyric poem that laments the dead. |
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| The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. |
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| The poetic technique by which the reader is forced to continue reading through a poem in order to complete the thought being expressed. A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line to the next. |
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| A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero, |
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| A final address to the audience, often delivered by a character in the drama. |
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| A brief witty poem, often satirical. |
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| The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. |
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| A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters. |
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| In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards it's resolution. |
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| Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. |
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| a literary genre. Characters that aren't found in real life. |
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| A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. |
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| An interruption of work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame. |
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| A character who contrasts and parallel the main character in a play or story. |
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| A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
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| A technique whereby an event or incident is indicated beforehand when the author includes hints of what is to come in the main events of the play or a story. |
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| Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. |
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| A figure of speech involving exaggeration for effect. |
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| An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY. |
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| A concrete representation of sense impression, a feeling or an idea. |
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| The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images in a literary work. |
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| Words that seem to imitate the sounds to which they refer. |
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A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
Dramatic: In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to other characters.
Situational: In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs.
Verbal Irony: characters say the opposite of what they mean (sarcasm) |
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| Special vocabulary of a particular group or activity. Sometimes used for confusing or unintelligible language. |
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| The giving of reasons or support. |
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| The deliberate contrast of characters, settings or situations for effect. |
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| Literal language or Literal meaning |
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Definition
| A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. |
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| A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. |
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| An alteration in appearance or character. |
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A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as.
ex) My love is a red, red rose. |
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| The measured pattern of rhythmic accent in poems. |
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A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea.
ex) We have always remained loyal to the crown. |
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| A speech by a single character without another character's response. |
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| A person's state of mind or complex of emotions at any given time. When a writer so orders the setting, action, and characters, as to suggest a dominant emotion or pattern of emotions. |
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| A recurring theme, situation, incident, idea, image, or character-type that is found in literature. |
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| A poem that tells a story. |
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| The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. |
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| An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet. |
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| A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem. |
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Definition
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe.
ex) Buzz, boom |
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| A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. |
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A combination of two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox.
ex) pretty ugly |
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| A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. |
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An apparently self-contradictory statement that is in fact true.
ex) Slow and steady wins the race. |
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Definition
| The arrangement of similarity constructed clauses, verses, or sentences, suggesting some corresponding between them. |
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Definition
| A word, phrase, or passage that explains or modifies a thought. |
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Definition
| A humorous, mocking imitation of literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in it's playful imitation. |
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| A quality of a play's action that simulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well. |
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Definition
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities.
ex) I'm as hungry as a horse |
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Definition
The unified structure of incidents in a literary work.
Initial incident: The first action pertaining to the central conflict.
Raising action: A series of conflicts or complications which build towards a climax.
Climax: The most intense point of dramatic action, or turning point in the literature.
Falling action: The action of a story which works out the decision arrived at during the climax which ends the resolution.
Moment of final suspense: The falling action might contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.
Resolution: The point at or near the end of the story where the problem is resolved.
Crisis/turning points: A moment of intense conflict which forces the character to make a decision which directly affects the outcome. |
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Definition
The angle of vision from which a story is narrated.
First person: In which the narrator is a character or an observer. Narrator only knows what themselves think, feel, do, see, and hear.
Objective: In which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader. The story is told with out telling character's thoughts and feelings.
Omniscient: The narrator knows everything about the characters. Normally told in third person.
Limited omniscient: The narrator knows everything about one character including thoughts, feelings and actions. Usually in third person. |
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| Something that serves as an example or justification for subsequent situations. |
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| An introduction to a play, often delivered by the chorus who plays no part in the following action. |
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| The main character of a literary work. |
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| A humorous expression that depends on a double-meaning, either between senses of the same word or between two similar-sounding words. |
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Definition
| A metrical foot with two stressed syllables (of the). |
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| A four-stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. |
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| The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. |
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| The sorting out or unravelling of a plot at the end of play, novel, or story. |
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| The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. |
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Definition
| The art of speaking or writing. |
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| A question for which a reply is not required or even wanted. |
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Definition
| The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. |
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Definition
| The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. |
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Definition
| Contemptuous laughter or derision (contempt and mockery). |
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Definition
| A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. |
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Definition
| Poetic meter such as iambic and anapaestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to stressed syllable. |
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Definition
| A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. |
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Definition
| A six-line unit or verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem. |
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Definition
| A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in Iambic pentameter. |
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Definition
| The time and place of a literary work that establish it's context. |
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Definition
| A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like or as. |
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Definition
| A speech in a play that is meant to be heard by the audience but not by the other characters on the stage. |
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Definition
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Definition
| A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables, such as knock-knock. |
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Definition
| A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors) with information about the dialogue, settings and action of a play. |
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Definition
| A division or unit of a poem that is represented in the same form -- either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. |
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Definition
| The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of a dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery and other literary techniques. |
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Definition
| What a story is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme |
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Definition
| A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. |
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Definition
A form of logical argument that derives a conclusion form two premises.
ex) All Jews are unscrupulous. Shylock is a Jew. Therefore, Shylock is unscrupulous. |
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Definition
| An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself |
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Definition
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole.
ex) lend me a hand. |
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Definition
| The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of a verse or dialogue. |
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Definition
| A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. |
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Definition
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Definition
| The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. |
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Definition
| A statement that is made as the first step in an argument or a demonstration. |
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Definition
| The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work. |
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Definition
| A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. |
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Definition
| A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero. |
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Definition
| A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering. |
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Definition
| An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball. |
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Definition
| A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. |
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Definition
| The idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period. |
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| A nineteen-lined lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. |
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