Poetry Terms
General Lit Terms
Syntax
Style/Tone
Figurative Language
100
the narrative voice of the poem.
What is the speaker?
100

the perceived attitude of a speaker towards a thing or idea in the text, usually revealed through diction.

What is tone?

100

the omission of conjunctions; creates more rapid prose.  

What is Asyndeton?

100
ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point, teach.
What is satirical?
100
a basic comparison of two generally unlike things that produced insight.
What is metaphor?
200
a combination of sounds that produces a harsh or discordant effect.
What is cacophony?
200
the author's choice of words based on their exact or connotative meaning for effect.
What is diction?
200

what we call a sentence where the most important idea comes first and the rest of the sentence unfolds easily after that (revealing information not critical to the climax).

What is a loose sentence?

200
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
200

using one thing—usually a physical object or phenomenon—to represent something more abstract

What is Symbolism?

300

the physical structure of the poem: the length of the lines, rhythm and meter, the system of rhymes and repetition etc.

What is form?

300
what a word suggests beyond its denotative (precise or dictionary) meaning, including social or emotional connections.
What is connotation?
300

to place two things near or next to each other so the reader will compare and contrast them.

What is Juxtaposition?

300
serious in purpose and convention (no slang, contractions; no idioms).
What is formal?
300

figure of speech in which something is called by a new name that is related in meaning to the original thing or concept. example: “Washington” for the United States government

What is metonymy?

400

the repetition of vowel sounds: “which din dims the light.”

What is assonance?

400
a clever little story; a short account of an interesting situation relevant to the text and used as example.
What is an anecdote?
400

when two opposites are in parallel structure.

What is Antithesis?

400
short, to the point.
What is terse?
400

figure of speech in which a word or phrase that refers to a part of something is substituted to stand in for the whole, or vice versa

What is a Synecdoche?

500

the speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer, something nonliving or inanimate.

What is apostrophe?

500
a moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character's sudden revelation about life or his or her own circumstances.
What is epiphany?
500
this type of sentence construction (or even paragraph construction) contains balanced grammatical structures that provide similar rhetorical value.
What is parallel sentence or parallel structure?
500
learned, polished, scholarly.
What is erudite?
500
a short quotation or verse that precedes a poem (or any text) to set the tone, provide a setting, or give other context for the poem.
What is an epigram?
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