didactic

story, speech, eassay, or play 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. "Gratitude and Grief do not go together" is the moral at the end of "The Wolf and the Crane"

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

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

In poetry, the runnign over of a sentence from one verse of starnza 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

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

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.

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

Jocasta's sudden realization that her husband is her son is an epiphanous moment in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex."

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

C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters."

A short composition on a single topic expressing the point of view or interpretation of the writer on that topic.

Johnathan Swift's "A modest proposal" is one of the most famous essay ever written.

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

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

The quality of a pleasant or harmonious sound of a word or group of words as an intended effect. Often acheived through long vowels and sometimes consonants.

"The gray sea and the long black land;

And teh yellow half-moon large and low."

farce

A kind of comedy that depends on exaggerated or improbable situations, 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"

flat character

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

Tybalt is Romeo's foil.

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

ARthur Miller's "The Crucible" is a drama.

In poetry a rhymed couple written in iambic pentameter (five feet, each with one undstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.)

 "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,

With loads of learned lumber in his head."

An extreme exaggeration for literary effect that is not meant to be interpreted literally.

"A greenhouse arrived from Gatsby's."

A five-foot line made up of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable. It is the most common metric foot in English-language poetry.

When I was five years, that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.

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

The Odyssey, Medea, and Oedipus Rex.

A rhyme that is within the line, rather than at the end. They rhyming may also be within two lines, but again, each rhyming word will be within its line, rather than at the beginning or end.

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;  (within the line.)

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry

It was bare and bright and smelled like a stable-  (within two lines)

A switch in the normal word order, often used for emphasis or for rhyme scheme.

Strong he was.

Affirmation of an idea by using a negative understatement. The opposite of a hyberbole.

He was not averse to taking a drink.

She was no saint.

A radical change in a character, either physical or emotional.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

a figure of speech which compares two dissimilar things, asserting that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another.

"Life's but a walking shadow."

A figure of speech that replaces the name of something with a word or phrase closely associated with it. Similar to synecdoche.

"The White House" instead of "the president" or "the presidency."