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A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people, events, or abstract ideas or qualities.
Allegory
Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object.
Anthropomorphism
A character with only one or two traits, often summed up in a single phrase.
Flat Character
Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
Couplet
A form of argumentation that relies more on emotional appeals than on facts.
Persuasion
The use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in the story.
Foreshadowing
Writing that emphasizes the customs, dialect, and setting of a particular region.
Local Color
The use of words whose sounds echo their meaning.
Onomatopoeia
The point of highest tension or turning point in a story.
Climax
The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
Rhythm
The ability to write with varied and complex sentence structures.
Syntactic Fluency
An early 20th-century movement known for experimental styles and forms.
Modernism
The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.
Alliteration
A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life or truth.
Aphorism
A character with more complex and fully developed traits, like a real person.
Round Character
A way of speaking that reflects a particular region or social group.
Dialect
A form of persuasion that appeals mainly to reason rather than emotion.
Argument
Poetry that does not follow a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Free Verse
A sentence where the main clause comes first, followed by additional details.
Loose Sentence
A phrase that combines contradictory terms, like 'jumbo shrimp'.
Oxymoron
The conclusion where conflicts are settled.
Resolution
The art of effective and persuasive communication.
Rhetoric
Very complex sentence structures that are often difficult to follow.
Syntactic Permutation
A 19th-century movement that portrayed life with exact realism.
Naturalism
A reference to someone or something known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or culture.
Allusion
Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place, thing, or personified idea.
Apostrophe
A rhetorical balance in which the second part of a sentence or phrase is reversed in structure from the first.
Chiasmus
A writer or speaker’s choice of words.
Diction
A type of argumentation in which one thing is shown to result from another.
Causal Relationship
An exaggerated statement used for emphasis or effect.
Hyperbole
A poem that expresses the personal thoughts or feelings of the speaker rather than telling a story.
Lyric Poem
A short story that teaches a moral lesson about life.
Parable
The perspective from which a story is told.
Point of View
A question asked for effect, not to be answered.
Rhetorical Question
An exaggerated, humorous story that is clearly unbelievable.
Tall Tale
A writing style that emphasizes simplicity and clarity, often used by Puritans.
Plain Style
When a work deliberately suggests two or more different and conflicting meanings.
Ambiguity
The placement of two or more coordinate elements side by side, with the latter explaining or modifying the first.
Apposition
An overused word or phrase that has lost its original impact.
Cliché
Writing intended to teach a lesson, moral, or proper behavior.
Didactic
Writing that uses language to create a mood or emotion.
Description
A sentence style that uses connecting words to show relationships between clauses.
Hypotactic
A comparison between two unlike things without using like or as.
Metaphor
A statement that seems contradictory but reveals a truth.
Paradox
When the narrator is a character in the story.
First Person Point of View
A story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and succeeds.
Romance
A very short sentence, usually fewer than five words.
Telegraphic Sentence
A style of early American writing focused on religious obedience and moral themes.
Puritanism
A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.
Analogy
The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together.
Assonance
An informal word or phrase used in everyday conversation but not suitable for formal writing.
Colloquialism
A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died.
Elegy
Writing that explains, defines, or “sets forth” information.
Exposition
The use of language to evoke a picture or sensory experience.
Imagery
A metaphor that suggests the comparison without directly stating it.
Implied Metaphor
Repetition of words or phrases with similar grammatical structures.
Parallel Structure
When the narrator focuses on one character’s thoughts and feelings.
Third Person Limited Point of View
Writing that ridicules people or institutions to inspire change.
Satire
The underlying insight about human life revealed in a literary work.
Theme
A 17th-century movement emphasizing reason over tradition or religious authority.
Rationalism
The repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.
Anaphora
The omission of conjunctions between words or phrases in a series, using only commas.
Asyndeton
A story that ends with a happy resolution for the main characters.
Comedy
Repetition of a word or phrase at both the beginning and the end of a line, clause, or sentence.
Epanalepsis
Writing that tells a series of events.
Narrative
The reversal of normal word order in a sentence or phrase.
Inversion
A metaphor that is developed over several lines or throughout a work.
Extended Metaphor
A sentence style that simply places clauses next to one another.
Paratactic Sentence
When an all-knowing narrator tells the story.
Omniscient Point of View
A comparison between two unlike things using 'like' or 'as'.
Simile
The attitude a writer takes toward the subject, characters, or audience.
Tone
A literary style that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing it.
Realism
The inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence for rhythm or emphasis.
Anastrophe
Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance.
Balance
An elaborate or unusual metaphor comparing two very different things.
Conceit
A long narrative poem about the heroic deeds of a character who embodies the values of a culture.
Epic
The act of analyzing and interpreting the meaning of a text, often through close reading.
Explication
A discrepancy between appearances and reality.
Irony
A metaphor that has been used so often it no longer feels vivid.
Dead Metaphor
A work that humorously imitates another by copying its style.
Parody
When the narrator tells the story without personal commentary.
Objective Point of View
A long speech made by a character alone on stage.
Soliloquy
A story in which a heroic character meets an unhappy or disastrous end.
Tragedy
Literature that emphasizes specific geographic settings and speech patterns.
Regionalism
A brief story told to illustrate a point or show the character of an individual.
Anecdote
The process by which a writer reveals the personality of a character.
Characterization
Poetry that uses intimate details from the poet’s own life.
Confessional Poetry
A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work that suggests its theme.
Epigraph
A very short story that teaches a practical lesson about life.
Fable
When someone says one thing but means another.
Verbal Irony
A confusing metaphor that combines incompatible images.
Mixed Metaphor
A sentence that places the main idea at the end.
Periodic Sentence
Using many conjunctions between words or phrases in a series.
Polysyndeton
A fixed, oversimplified idea of a character or group.
Stereotype
A sentence with three parts of equal length and importance.
Tricolon
A movement reacting against rationalism, emphasizing emotion and imagination.
Romanticism
The opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero in a story.
Antagonist
When the author reveals a character through actions, appearance, speech, thoughts, or the reactions of others.
Indirect Characterization
The struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story.
Conflict
Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences.
Epistrophe
A type of comedy involving exaggerated, ridiculous characters in silly situations.
Farce
When there is a difference between what is expected to happen and what actually happens.
Situational Irony
A figure of speech in which something is referred to by something closely associated with it.
Metonymy
Giving human qualities to objects, animals, or ideas.
Personification
The central character who drives the action of the story.
Protagonist
Writing that portrays the continuous flow of a character’s thoughts.
Stream of Consciousness
A statement that intentionally says less than what is true.
Understatement
A 20th-century movement seeking to express the unconscious mind over reality.
Surrealism
The repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
Antimetabole
When the author directly tells the reader what the character is like.
Direct Characterization
A struggle between a character and an outside force such as another person, nature, society, or a machine.
External Conflict
A descriptive adjective or phrase frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality.
Epithet
Language that is not literal and uses figures of speech like similes or metaphors.
Figurative Language
When the audience knows something a character does not.
Dramatic Irony
The atmosphere created by a writer’s word choice and details.
Mood
The sequence of related events that make up a story.
Plot
A play on words that relies on multiple meanings or similar sounds.
Pun
A feeling of curiosity or uncertainty about what will happen next.
Suspense
The quality of a work in which all parts contribute to one central idea.
Unity
A 19th-century French movement using symbols to reveal deeper truths.
Symbolism
The balancing of strongly contrasting words, phrases, or ideas, often by using grammatical structure.
Antithesis
A character who does not change much throughout the story.
Static Character
A struggle within a character’s own mind between opposing desires or beliefs
Internal Conflict
A short nonfiction work that discusses some aspect of a subject.
Essay
A scene that interrupts the story’s chronological order to show something from the past.
Flashback
Placing unassociated ideas, words, or phrases next to one another to create surprise or contrast.
Juxtaposition
A recurring element such as an image, phrase, or idea that unifies a work.
Motif
The introduction of characters, setting, and situation.
Exposition
A stanza or poem of four lines.
Quatrain
A person, object, or event that represents more than itself.
Symbol
The everyday language spoken by people in a specific region.
Vernacular
A 19th-century movement emphasizing spiritual intuition beyond reason and experience.
Transcendentalism
A central character who lacks the qualities traditionally associated with heroes.
Antihero
A character who changes in some important way as a result of the story’s action.
Dynamic Character
The emotional associations and meanings attached to a word beyond its dictionary definition.
Connotation
A form of writing that uses logic, ethics, and emotional appeals to convince the reader to think or act a certain way.
Argumentation
A character who contrasts with another character to highlight differences.
Foil
A form of understatement that emphasizes the positive by denying the negative.
Litotes
The reasons behind a character’s actions.
Motivation
Events that create complications or build conflict.
Rising Action
A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines in a poem.
Refrain
A figure of speech where a part represents the whole.
Synecdoche
A movement in art and literature focused on personal impressions rather than exact reality.
Impressionism