Poetry Terms
General Lit Terms
Lit Lenses
Tone and Style
Figurative Language
100
the narrative voice of the poem.
What is the speaker?
100
the emotional quality of a passage or the perceived attitude of a speaker towards a thing or idea in the text.
What is tone?
100
the reader analyzes writing based on facts about the author.
What is biographical?
100
intense sarcasm; stinging
What is caustic? (Also accepted: sardonic)
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
the reader considers male and female relationships and power.
What is feminism?
200
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
200
a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement
What is hyperbole?
300
the repetition of vowel sounds: “which din dims the light.”
What is assonance?
300
what a word suggests beyond its denotative (precise or dictionary) meaning, including social or emotional connections.
What is connotation?
300
the reader considers the economic advantages and disadvantages of the characters
What is Marxist?
300
serious in purpose and convention (no slang, contractions; no idioms).
What is formal?
300
A statement that appears self-contradictory but that reveals a kind of truth
What is paradox?
400
the speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer, something nonliving or inanimate.
What is apostrophe?
400
the insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work
What is theme?
400
the reader considers symbolism and patterns among characters (such as the hero, the villain)
What is archetypal?
400
indifferent (an "I don't care" attitude)
apathetic
400
a discrepancy between appearances and reality
What is irony?
500
represented by a two syllable foot that contains one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
500
a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or institutions in an attempt to bring about a change
What is satire?
500
the reader only considers the structure and contents within the text itself.
What is formalism/New criticism
500
learned, polished, scholarly.
What is erudite?
500
in this point-of-view type, the narrator tells the story from the vantage point of many characters
What is third person omniscient?
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