Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes.
The optic heart must venture . . .
Margaret Avison's "Snow"
100
Using a comma (or other forms of punctuation) to slow down the progression of a line of poetry, most often for emphasis or dramatic effect.
caesura
100
"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green eyed monster which doth mock."
Iago
100
Othello's lieutenant and Iago's rival, this character has a hard time holding his drink.
Michael Cassio
100
This American author of short stories and novels about the South borrows from the myth of Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence, who stumbled upon Venus while she was with a handsome youth.
William Faulkner
200
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
200
Giving inanimate objects human traits, or describing things as though they were capable of human action.
personification
200
"Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries."
Victor Frankenstein
200
This character leaves quietly out the back door as the townspeople of Jefferson finally discover the dark secret of the household he served.
Tobe
200
This American poet, short story writer, and essayist coined the phrase "unity of effect" to describe the way in which short stories are written with their endings in mind.
Edgar Allan Poe
300
My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.
Seamus Heaney's "A Kite for Michael and Christopher"
300
This term owes its name to the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, who investigated the effect of electricity on dissected animals in the 1780s and 1790s.
Galvanism
300
O, these men, these men!
Dost thou in conscience think — tell me, Emilia —
That there be women do abuse their husbands In such gross kind?
Desdemona
300
A physician by trade, this character prescribes a rest cure for his wife in "The Yellow Wallpaper."
John
300
This Greek playwright took issue with the philosopher Thales of Miletus, who rejected mythological explanations of the world in favour of logic and knowledge.
Sophocles
400
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man"
400
A convention of Greek drama, this group of performers describe (and comment on) the action of the play. Speaking as one, they are meant to represent the audience on the stage.
The Chorus
400
"When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is ’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too. And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?"
Emilia
400
This character receives letters from her brother, Robert Walton.
Margaret Walton Saville
400
This self-educated American author turned her experiences with postpartum depression into her most memorable story, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
500
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
W.H. Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening"
500
References to outside stories, poems, myths, or narratives that heighten the meaning of the text in which they appear.
allusion
500
"Then once more I must bring what is dark to light."
Oedipus
500
The blind prophet of Thebes
Tiresias
500
Before she died in child birth, this British essayist wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," which argued for greater equality between men and women. Many of her ideas reappear in her daughter's novel, Frankenstein.