a story in which the characters, settings, and events stand for abstract or moral concepts
What is allegory?
100
poetry that focuses on expressing private emotions or thoughts
What is lyric poetry?
100
the literal, dictionary definition of a word
What is denotation?
100
a poem in which a speaker addressed one or more listeners (think drama)
What is dramatic monologue?
100
a character who is used as a contrast to another character
What is foil?
200
a brief and sometimes witty story that focuses on a single interesting incident or event, often in order to make a point or teach a moral lesson.
What is anecdote?
200
an apparent contradiction that is actually true
What is a paradox?
200
the repetition of final consonant sounds after different vowel sounds
What is consonance?
200
poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme
What is free verse?
200
the technique of starting a story in the middle and then using a flashback to tell what happened earlier
What is in medias res?
300
a song or songlike poem, often from the oral tradition, that tells a story.
What is ballad?
300
an anonymous, traditional story that explains a belief, a custom, or a mysterious natural phenomenon
What is a myth?
300
an epic's larger-than-life main character whose mighty deeds reflect the values admired by the society that created the epic
What is epic hero?
300
a very brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or a practical lesson about life
What is a fable?
300
an expression peculiar to a particular language that means something different from the literal meaning of the words
What is an idiom?
400
an account of a person's life written or told by another person
What is biography?
400
the overall emotion created by a work of literature
What is mood?
400
a story that is written to be acted out in front of an audience
What is drama?
400
an adjective or other descriptive phrase that is regularly used to characterize a person, place, or thing
What is an epithet?
400
a long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings
What is a soliloquy?
500
an expression that was fresh and apt when it was first coined but is now so overused that it has become hackneyed and stale
What is cliche?
500
A play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that may sound alike but have different meanings.
"When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds"
What is a pun? Shakespeare is regarded as one of the great punsters of all time.
500
the use of run-on lines to complete a tought from one line of verse (in poetry) to the next
What is enjambment?
500
a brief, unrhyme, three-line poem developed in Japan in the 1600s.
What is haiku?
500
a figure of speech that consists of saying less than what is really meant or saying something with less force than is appropriate