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
A literary, historical, religious, or mythological reference
What is an allusion?
100
ridiculing human failings to show weakness in order to make a point, teach.
What is satire?
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
overstatement using exaggerated language
What is hyperbole?
200
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
200
a comparison using "like" or "as"
What is a simile?
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 central or dominant idea or focus of a work.
What is theme?
300
serious in purpose and convention (no slang, contractions; no idioms).
What is formal?
300
when a part is used to represent the whole
What is synecdoche?
400
the speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer, something nonliving or inanimate.
What is apostrophe?
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
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?
400
short, to the point.
What is terse?
400
an elaborate, intellectually ingenious metaphor that shows the poet's realm of knowledge; it may be brief or extended.
What is a metaphysical conceit (or simply conceit, for short)?
500
represented by a two syllable foot that contains one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
500
a moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character's sudden revelation about life or his or her own circumstances. (Think James Joyce - "Araby")
What is epiphany?
500
seemingly contradictory statement that may be true
What is paradox?
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.