A reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well known historical or literary event, person or work.

A speaker’s, author’s, or character’s disposition toward or opinion of a subject.

Are items or parts that make up a larger picture or story.

Alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia are examples of this.  They are used for many reasons, including creating a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, imitating another sound, or reflecting meaning.

Any word  that is important to the meaning and the effect of a passage.  Often several words with a similar effect are worth discussion as they make a particular point, emphasize the mood, are used stylistically, etc.  It is the author’s word choice.

Metaphor, simile and irony are examples of this.  It is writing that is the opposite of literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted. This type of writing uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning.

The images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. Visual, auditory, or tactile (blank) evoked by the words of a literary work or the image that figurative language evokes and can include metaphors and similes.

A figure of speech in which intent and actual meaning differ, characteristically praise for blame or blame for praise; a pattern of words that turns away from direct statement of its own obvious meaning.  This term implies a discrepancy between statement and meaning.

A figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like “as,” “like,” or “than.”

The methods involved in telling a story; the procedures used by a writer of stories or accounts.  (Blank) is a general term (like “devices,” or “resources of language”) that asks you to discuss the procedures used in the telling of a story.  Examples of the techniques you might use are point of view, manipulation of time, dialogue, or interior monologue.

Omniscient point of view

The vantage point of a story in which the narrator can know, see, and report whatever he or she chooses.

Any of several possible vantage points from which a story is told.  The (blank) can be omniscient, limited to a single character, or several. It may be in first person as in Great Expectations or Wuthering Heights where Mr. Lockwood tells us the story that Nelly Dean tells him, a first person narration reported by a second first person narrator!

A general phrase for the linguistic devices or techniques that a writer can use (where you would discuss the style and rhetoric of a passage—diction, syntax, figurative lang., imagery, etc.).

The devices used in effective or persuasive language such as apostrophe, contrast, repetitions, paradox, understatement, sarcasm, and rhetorical question to name a few.

Writing that seeks to arouse a reader’s disapproval of an object by ridicule.  This is usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly.

The background to a story; the physical location of a play, story, or novel.  This term usually involves both time and place.

A directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing tow objects, usually with “like,” “as,” or “than.”  It is easier to recognize one of these than a metaphor because the comparison is explicit.

Strategy (or rhetorical strategy)

The management of language for a specific effect.  There is planning for this term and for poems there is a planned placement of elements to achieve an affect.

The arrangement of materials within a work the relationship of the parts of a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work. The most common principles of (blank) are series (A, B, C, D, E), contrast (A vs. B, C vs. D, E vs. A), and repetition (AA, BB). The most common units of this term are – play: scene, act; novel: chapter; poem: line, stanza.

The mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author.  Within this term the reader can discuss/analyze the terms techniques such as diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery, selection of detail, sound effects, and tone, using the ones that are appropriate.

Something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else.  (Winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as (blanks) of death).

The structure of a sentence; the arrangement of words in a sentence. This could include such considerations to be examined as the length or brevity of the sentences, the kinds of sentences (questions, exclamations, declarative sentences, rhetorical questions-or periodic or loose; simple, complex, or compound).

The manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning.  This is described by adjectives, and the possibilities will not be enough and this may change from chapter to chapter or even line to line.  This is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style, for example.

A story in which people, things, and events have another meaning.

Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible.

Direct address, usually to someone or something that is not present.  (Keats’s “Bright star! Would I were steadfast” is an (blank) to a star, and “To Autumn” is an (blank) to a personified season.

The implications of a word or phrase, as opposed to its exact meaning.

A device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means of expression.  For example, a lover observing the literary love of this cannot eat or sleep and grows pale and lean.  Romeo, at the beginning of the play is a (blank)  lover, while an overweight lover in Chaucer is consciously mocking the (blank).

The dictionary meaning of a word.

Explicitly instructive.  Examples: Pope’s  “Essay on Man” and the novels by Ayn Rand.

The use of material unrelated to subject of a work.

A pithy saying, often using contrast.  This is also a verse form, usually  brief and pointed.

A figure of speech using indirection to avoid offensive bluntness, such as “deceased” for “dead” or “remains” for “corpse.”

Characterized by distortions or incongruities.  The fiction of Poe or Flannery O’Conner is often described as this. 

Deliberate exaggeration, over statement.  As a rule, this is self conscious, without the intention of being accepted literally.  “The strongest man in the world” and “a diamond as big as the Ritz” are (blank).

The special language of a profession or group.  This term usually has pejorative associations, with the implication that it is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to outsiders.  The writings of the lawyer and the literary critic are both susceptible to (blank).

Not figurative; accurate to the letter; matter of fact or concrete.

Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.

A combination of opposites;  the union of contradictory terms.  Romeo’s line “feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health” has four examples of this device.

A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question.  (Blanks) are allegorical stories.

A statement that seems to be self-contradicting, but, in fact, is true.  The figure in Donne’s holy sonnet that concludes I never shall be “chaste except you ravish me” is a good example of the device.

A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic effect.  Fielding’s Shamela is a (blank) of Richardson’s Pamela.  A contest for these of Hemingway draws hundreds of entries each year.

A figurative use of language that endows the nonhuman (ideas, inanimate objects, animals, abstractions) with human characteristics.  Keats (blank)  the nightingale, the Grecian urn, and autumn in his major poems.

A quality of some fictional narrators whose word the reader can trust.  There are two types of these narrators, that is tellers of a story who should or should not be trusted.  Most narrators are (blank) (Fitzgeral’s Nick Carraway, Conrad’s Marlow), but some are clearly not to be trusted (Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” several novels by Nabokov).  And there are some about whom readers have been unable to decide (James’s governess in The Turn of the Screw, Ford’s The Good Soldier).

A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply.  No reply is expected because the question presupposes only one possible answer.  The lover of Suckling’s “Shall I wasting in despair / Die because of a lady’s fair?” has already decided the answer is no.

A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud.  A monologue also has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to others who do not interrupt.  Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” and “O!  What a rogue and peasant slave am I” are examples of these.  Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and “Fra Lippo Lippi” are monologues, but the hypocritical monk of his “(Blank) of a Spanish Cloister” cannot reveal his thoughts to others.

A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea.  In literature, this could apply to the unvarying plot and characters of some works of fiction (those of Barbara Cartland, for example) or to the stock characters and plots of many of the greatest stage comedies.

A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them.  A (blank) begins with a major premise (“All tragedies end unhappily.”) followed by a minor premise (Hamlet is a tragedy.”) and a conclusion (Therefore, “Hamlet ends unhappily.”).

The theme, meaning, or position that a writer undertakes to prove or support.

The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words.  “Gnus never know pneumonia” is an example of this because despite the spellings, all four words begin with the “n” sound.

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.  “ A land laid waste with all its young men slain” repeats the same “a” sound in “laid,’ “waste,” and “slain.”

A four line stanza rhymed abcb with four feet in lines  one and three and three feet in lines two and four.  O mother, mother make my bed./O make it soft and narrow./Since my love died for me today,/I’ll die for him tomorrow.

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.  Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell/From heaven, they fabled, throuwn by angry Jove/ Sheer o’er the crystal battlements: from morn/ To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve. This is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays as well as that of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

A metrical foot of three syllables, an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.

A line with a pause at the end.  Lines that end with a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark are (blank) lines.

Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical.  The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best known example of (blank).

Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.  When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,/ And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,/ This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame,/ And ‘midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.

A line containing six feet.

A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.  The (blank) is the most common foot in English poetry.

Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.  “God save thee, ancient Mariner!/ From the friends, that plague thee thus!/ Why look’st thou so?” With my / crossbow/ I shot the Albatross.  Line three contains this with the words “so” and “bow.”

Onomatopoeia

The use of words whose sound suggest their meaning.  Examples are “buzz,” “hiss,” or “honk.”

A line containing five feet.  The iambic (blank) is the most common line in English verse written before 1950.

A seven line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets.

Normally a fourteen line imbiac pentameter poem.  The conventional Italian, or Petrachan, (blank) is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, (blank) is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

A three line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc.  Dante’s Divine Comedy is written in this.

A line of four feet

That which goes before, especially the word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun refers.

A group of words containing a subject and its verb that may or may not be a complete sentence.  In the sentence “When you are old, you will be beautiful, “the first (blank) (When you are old”) is a dependent (blank) and not a complete sentence.  “You will be beautiful” is an independent (blank) and could stand by itself.

The omission of a word or several words necessary for a complete construction that is still understandable.  “If rainy, bring an umbrella” is clear though the words “it is” and “you” have been left out.

The mood of a verb that gives an order.  “Eat your spinach” uses an --- verb.

To restrict or limit in meaning.  In the phrase “large, shaggy dog,” the two adjectives (blank) the noun; in the phrase “very shaggy dog,” the adverb “very” (blanks) the adjective “shaggy” which (blanks) the noun “dog.”

A similar grammatical structure within a sentence or within a paragraph. Winston Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields” speech or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech depend chiefly on the use of (blank).

A sentence grammatically complete on a the end.  When conquering love did first my heart assail,/Unto mine aid I summoned every sense. In this type of sentence the important idea is at the end.

A sentence that is grammatically complete before the period.  Fair is my love, and cruel as she’s fair. In this sentence, the important idea is first.

The structure of a sentence.