A narrative or description having a second "deeper" meaning beyond the surface layer. It could have both a literal and figurative meaning.

Ex: Using concrete images or characters to represent abstract ideas.

Ex: Faith from "Young Goodman Brown"

The repetition of a consonant sound in a line of poetry. It could be used in more than one line of poetry and appears at the beginning of each word.

Ex: Mirror - Moon

    Kick - Candy

        Pray - Approval

Something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time.

Ex: Using a sword in modern warfare

The repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines.

Ex: "Anaphora will repeat an opening phrase or word;
       Anaphora will pour it into a mould (absurd)!
      Anaphora will cast each subsequent opening;
      Anaphora will last until it's tiring."
(John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Yale Univ. Press, 1989)

-any force aligned against the protagonist

-can be persons

-may be conventions of society

-could be the protagonist's own character traits

Addressing someone absent or dead or something inhuman as if it were alive and present and could reply.

Ex: Rain, rain

Go away.

Come again another day!

The close repetition of middle vowel sounds between different consonants.

Ex: F  ade/ P  ale

The people who take part in events.

Dynamic: a changing character; one who undergoes an awakening of some kind or gains some insight.

Static: a character remaining the same throughout; does not experience change or grow as an individual.

Flat: a simple character with only a few traits.

Round: a complex character with many qualities and traits.

Direct: is when the author tells us info about the characters.

Indirect: is when the author shows the reader the character and some determination or inference about the character is made by the reader.

An extended metaphor or simile often yoking together two apparently unconnected ideas.

Ex:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
by
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

A struggle, conflict, or battle.

Man v. Man - where conflict is between people

Man v. Himself - where conflict is psychological, character grapples with his or her values/morals or some situation affecting his or her life.

Man v. Nature - where conflict is between the protagonist and the elements of nature.

The meaning a word suggests beyond its basic dictionary definition or denotation.

Ex: A red rose represents love/passion

The repetition of consonant sounds at the end of a word.

Ex: Spook-Plaque-Sticker

The literal definition of a word as opposed to an implied meaning (connotation).

Ex: A red rose is a red rose.

A story performed by actors for an audience.

Realistic Convention in drama is a convention which preserves the illusion of actual, everyday life.

Non-realistic Convention in drama is a convention which departs from preserving the illusion of actual, everyday life.

The employment of "run-on" lines which carry the completion of a statemnt from one line to another without rhetorical pause.

Ex:

Trees
by
Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

A type of understatement replacing an offensive term with a more mild one less likely to offend or be thought of as harsh.

Ex: substituting the term "downsizing" for "lay-off"

Action that shows better understanding by interrupting to show an eevnt that happened in the past.

Ex: Soap operas often use flashbacks

A minor character whose situation or actions parallel a major character's. By contrast, the minor character illuminates distinctive qualities of the major character.

Ex: Mercutio is a foil to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Mercutio makes light of every situation using bawdy and witty language in his comments on romance. His character emphasizes Romeo's romantic view of love and his lovesick nature.

"An act of injustice" either unknowingly or for the greater good to be achieved.

Hamartia, from the Greek for “error,” is a mistake in judgment committed by a tragic hero. While the character’s intentions and personal flaws play a central role in this process, hamartia specifically refers to the character’s erroneous action. This error may be the result of a lack of knowledge or moral flaw and it generally brings about the sorrow, downfall, or death of the hero. The results of hamartia are usually the direct opposite of the character’s expectations.

Ex: Oedipus the King

An extreme exaggeration in order to emphasize a truth.

Ex: I waited in line for centuries.

A rhytmical pattern of syllables consisting of poetic lines of five feet of unstressed and stressed syllables. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (like the word goodbye with bye being the unstressed syllable). Pentameter is a line that has 5 feet.

Ex: These lines in iambic oentameter are from "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare. The feet are separated by slashes and the stressed syllables are in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS while the unstressed syllables are in lowercase letters.

Shall I/ com PARE/ thee TO/ a SUM/mer's DAY?

Thou ART/ more LOVE/ly AND/ more TEM/per ATE (Sonnet 18)

It grounds the poem in concrete and the specific. It provides details that stimulate our senses and helps the reader see the world the author creates.

Auditory (sound)

Olfactory (smell)

Gustatory (taste)

Tactile (touch)

Organic (internal feeling)

Kinesthetic (movement/tension in the muscles

Dramatic: When the audience knows something that the character does not. Ex: In "The Scarlet Letter" when the audience knows Dimmesdale is the father and the governer does not.

Situational: When there is a disparity between appearance and reality or when a disparity exists between an actual situation and what is appropriate or when there is a situation with a recognizable oddity. Ex: Owner of an airline wins a free plane ticket.

Verbal: saying one thing but meaning the opposite. Ex: saying"What a clean room you have here" when the room is an absolute pig stye.

is divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyming sounds. The first 8 lines is called the octave and rhymes:

a b b a a b b a

The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways:

c d c d c d

c d d c d c

c d e c d e

c d e c d e

c d c e d c

In English all sonnets make use of iambic pentameter as a common practice although there have been variations.

A word that compares one thing or idea to another.

Ex: My love is a rose.

A figure of speech characterized by substituting an aspect or detail from the experience or closely related to the experience to represent the whole experience.

Ex: Using the words "the crown" to denote the king

The repetition of an idea or theme.

Ex: the repetition of the reference to light and darkness in The Heart of Darkness

A word that imitates the sound it represents.

Ex: bang

click

pop

buzz

A contrasting statement or phrase which illuminates a truth or insight.

Ex: evil innocence

Giving human qualities to an inanimate object.

Ex: the skies wept in sadness

The angle from which a story is told.

Omnicient: all knowing. The author knows everything the characters are thinking and feeling and can relate any piece of information desired to the reader.

Third-person Limited: when the author tells the story from one character's perspective. Everything the reader learns is told from how this character sees it.

Third=person Objective: when the author tells the story using third-person but is limited to reporting what the characters say and do. The author doesn't give any commentary on character behavior; he/she merely presents the story.

First-person: when one of the characters tells the story using first-person.

A repeated work, phrase, or line or group of lines, normally at some fixed position in a poem written in stanzas.

Ex: A famous example of a refrain are the words  " Nothing More" and “Nevermore” which are repeated in “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe.

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted nevermore.

Stories refer to works recognizing the difference of specific areas of the country by focusing on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other particular features of the region.

Ex: Louisiana is described in great detail using local color/regionalism in The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

The pattern of rhyming words in a stanza.

Ex: a b a b

     c d d c

     d d e e

A comparison of two unlike things using the words "like" or "as".

Ex: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.

The sea roared like a wounded beast.

A 14-line lyric poem that focuses on a single theme.

The "Shakespearean/Elizabethan sonnet" consisted of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opion, or image.

Ex: The cowboy and Indian are American stereotypes

A line-for-line, verbal fencing match, used by the principal characters who retort sharply to each other, echoing their opponent's words and figures of speech. It is a play on words.

Ex: There are MANY examples in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

something having a literal meaning as well as another meaning beyond the literal. Authors may use symbols in their works to represent people, places or ideas that have special meaning.

Ex: The flag. It can represent a country, a group, a state, or a concept.

Authors often use colors symbolically. Ex: The Scarlet Letter

The pattern of formation of sentences or phrases in a language. Authors and poets manipulate the order of words to create meaning and purpose.

Ex: Patrick Henry's speech includes "Give me Liberty, or give me death!" By placing contrasting phrases right next to each other, Henry has created emphasis of his idea that liberty must be gained at all costs.

A group of three lines of verse, often rhyming together or with another triplet.

Ex:

From Second Satire
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)

My mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin,

They sang sometimes a song of the field mouse,
That for because their livelihood was but so thin

Would needs go seek her townish sister’s house.

She thought herself endured to much pain:
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse...

A figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or saying what one means with less force than the situation requires in order to reveal truth.

Ex: "The grave's a fine and private place,

       But none, I think, do there embrace."

       (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")

Creating an accurate and truthful portrayal of something.

Ex: a teenager (not you of course) goes somewhere without her parents permission and tells her parents that she was really at the library. If the teenager adds creative details about what happened while she was there (even though she is making the details up), she is attempting to add verisimilitude to her story.

It is a 5-line non-sense poem often meant to be humorous.

Ex:

There once was a man from Peru,
Who dreamed of eating his shoe,
He awoke with a fright,
In the middle of the night,
And found that his dream had come true!

A figure of speech containing an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.

Ex: "[W]ith a vigorous and sudden snatch, I brought my assailant harmlessly, his full length, on the not over clean ground--for we were now in the cow yard."
(Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855)

The work of poets, particularly those of the 17th century, that uses elaborate conceits, is highly intellectual, and expresses the complexities of love and life.

It is more of a technique with analyzing rather than expressing feelings and emotions.

A term consisting of contradictory elements juxtaposed to create a paradoxical effect.

Ex: Loud silence.

Jumbo shrimp.

A figure of speech in which a part signifies the whole (50 masts for 50 ships) or the whole signifies the part (days for life). When the name of a amterial stands for the thing itself, as in pigskin for football, that, too, is synecdoche.

Ex: 50 head of cattle  for 50 cows

refer to ideas or concepts; they have no physical referents.

Ex: abstract terms include love, success, freedom, good, moral, democracy, and any -ism (chauvinism, Communism, feminism, racism, sexism). These terms are fairly common and familiar, and because we recognize them we may imagine that we understand them—but we really can't, because the meanings won't stay still.

refer to objects or events that are available to the senses.

Ex: concrete terms include spoon, table, velvet eye patch, nose ring, sinus mask, green, hot, walking. Because these terms refer to objects or events we can see or hear or feel or taste or smell, their meanings are pretty stable. If you ask me what I mean by the word spoon, I can pick up a spoon and show it to you. [I can't pick up a freedom and show it to you, or point to a small democracy crawling along a window sill. I can measure sand and oxygen by weight and volume, but I can't collect a pound of responsibility or a liter of moral outrage.]

Exposé