Figurative Language
Lively description which creates vivid pictures in the mind, or appeals to other sensory experience.
Imagery
The recurrence of initial consonant sounds of different words within the same sentence.
Alliteration
Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.
Stanza
The writer's attitude or moral outlook towards the subject and/or readers.
Tone
An author's insight on the human condition. The main idea, lesson, message, or universal meaning of a literary work.
Theme
Assigns the physical or emotional attributes of a human to a non-living thing.
Personification
A type of poetry which avoids the patterns of regular rhyme or meter.
Free verse
What is this 2-syllable rhythmic pattern:
u /
Iambic
A literary technique which imitates and ridicules another author, work, or genre.
Parody
The use of words or objects to represent other things.
Symbolism
An indirect reference to a person, idea, object, literary work, event, concept, element of pop culture, or some other noun that the reader is likely already familiar with.
Allusion
Unrhymed poetry written with regular rhythm and meter.
Blank verse
Rhyme that occurs within a line.
Internal rhyme
A way of writing about a flaw or failure in society by exaggerating it to absurdity. Often offered as a societal corrective.
Satire
When the audience perceives something that a character in literature does not know.
Dramatic irony
A comparison between two things, but without the use of “like” or “as.” Commonly uses “to be” between each word in the comparison.
Metaphor
The close repetition of similar vowel sounds in proximate words, usually in stressed syllables.
Assonance
Identify the meter:
(/ u) (/ u) (/ u) (/ u)
Tetrameter
A story which makes sense on a literal level, but also conveys an abstract meaning. The deeper meaning is usually spiritual, moral, or political.
Allegory
A story that traces the moral and psychological growth of its protagonist from childhood to adulthood, often exploring themes of identity, self-discovery, and societal influences.
Bildungsroman
Suggests a comparison of two things, instead of explicitly stating that one thing is being compared to another.
(Ex. The room erupted in laughter.)
Implied metaphor
A three-line stanza rhymed as follows: aba bcb cdc ...
(Hint: Dante's Divine Comedy)
Terza Rima
Normally a 14-line poem in rhymed iambic pentameter.
Sonnet
A figure of speech where a concept or object is referred to by a related term, rather than its literal name, to create a vivid and evocative image or convey a deeper meaning.
(Ex. The crown has decreed...)
Metonymy
A figure of speech where a part of something is used to represent the whole, or the whole to represent a part.
(Ex. All hands on deck!)
Synecdoche