L.E.T.'s do this!
Something that stands for or suggests something larger and more complex than what it actually is.
What is a symbol?
Elizabethan poet and playwright who wrote at least 37 plays and over 150 poems.
Who is William Shakespeare?
This structural technique occurs when a poetic line moves onto the next without terminal punctuation. It is often used to maintain a poem's rhythm or to create a specific pacing that reflects the speaker's state of mind
Enjambment
This character, often mistakenly called by his creator's name, is a "man of parts" who projects the perils of a man seeking to play God.
Who is Frankenstein's Monster? (Or Creature)
An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, theme or work made to enrich meaning through the connotations they carry.
What is an allusion?
What is existentialism?
A phrase, line, or group of lines repeated at intervals throughout a poem, often at the end of a stanza. This "patterned" repetition serves to emphasize core themes or shift the poem's emotional weight.
Refrain
In Invisible Man, this manipulative leader recruits the narrator into the Brotherhood but ultimately uses him for political purposes.
Brother Jack
A story or poem that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
What is an allegory?
Harsh, unpleasant, or discordant sounds.
What is cacophony?
A 19th-century (1800 to 1860) literary movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, rather than logic and scientific thought in response to the Enlightenment.
What is Romanticism?
In drama, this occurs when a character speaks directly to the audience or another character while being "unheard" by others on stage. It is a critical tool for revealing a character's internal conflict or private motivations that contradict their public actions
[aside]
In Crime and Punishment, this character represents moral redemption and encourages Raskolnikov to confess.
Sonia (Sofya Marmeladov)
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
[name that poem]
Ode on a Grecian Urn
A 20th century literary genre that often involves supernatural phenomena in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting.
What is magical realism?
This figure of speech uses a part of something to represent the whole (e.g., "all hands on deck"). In literature, writers use this to focus the reader's attention on specific, significant details that stand in for a larger, more complex reality.
Synecdoche
This character stands alone in a high-stakes dramatic situation, using "relevant and sufficient evidence" to challenge the "overarching thesis" of his peers and maintain his "pride and self-respect" against a majority opinion.
Juror 8 (12 Angry Men)
Associated with thinkers like Jacques Derrida, this school of literary theory argues that language is unstable and texts contain internal contradictions that undermine fixed meaning.
Poststructuralism (Deconstruction)
A long speech that a character gives to the audience to express their deepest thoughts and emotions.
What is a soliloquy?
A novelist whose parents were well-known political philosophers and feminist activists.
Who is Mary Shelley?
a form of extended metaphor that often appears in poetry, developing complex comparisons that present images, concepts, and associations in surprising or paradoxical ways.
Conceit
In Crime and Punishment, this calculating character uses Luzhin’s failed scheme to expose his moral corruption and assert his own intellectual dominance.
Arkady Svidrigailov
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!"
[name that poem and poetic device]
Dover Beach, Apostrophe