The Basics
Poetry
Literary Terms
Literary Movements
Genres
100
The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables.
What is alliteration?
100
A fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines that are typically 5-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme
What is a sonnet?
100
A figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses)
What is a simile?
100
18th to 19th century movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, rather than logic and scientific thought
What is Romanticism?
100
An invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot
What is a short story?
200
Repetition of vowels without repetition of consonants (as in stony and holy) used as an alternative to rhyme in verse
What is assonance?
200
Verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical.
What is free verse?
200
The expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence ; also : an instance (as in a story or painting) of such expression.
What is allegory?
200
Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism, formal innovation, or reaction to science and technology.
What is Modernism?
200
literature based on something invented by the imagination or feigned
What is fiction?
300
Systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse: rhythm that continuously repeats a single basic pattern, rhythm characterized by regular recurrence of a systematic arrangement of basic patterns in larger figures.
What is meter?
300
A chiefly French verse form running on two rhymes and consisting typically of five tercets and a quatrain in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain
What is villanelle?
300
An implied or indirect reference
What is allusion?
300
Originally a French movement, influenced by Surrealist painting, that uses surprising images and transitions to play off of formal expectations and depict the unconscious rather than conscious mind
What is Surrealism?
300
A fictitious narrative or statement: as a:) a legendary story of supernatural happenings b:) a narration intended to enforce a useful truth
What is a fable?
400
An ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech
What is rythym?
400
An unrhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively
What is a haiku?
400
A statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true
What is a paradox?
400
An 18th century literary movement based chiefly on classical ideals, satire and skepticism
What are the Augustans?
400
A literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn; trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
What is satire?
500
One of two or more words thus corresponding in sound
What is rhyme?
500
A lyrical fixed form consisting of six 6-line usually unrhymed stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of the three verses of the concluding tercet
What is sestina?
500
Repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect
What is anaphora?
500
19th century American movement: poetry and philosophy concerned with self-reliance, independence from modern technology.
What is Trancendentalism?
500
a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions
What is Stream of Consciousness?
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