Literary Terms A
The message the poet wants to communicate in the poem.
What is the theme?
The pattern of sound in a poem.
What is the rhythm?
The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of a series of words.
What is alliteration?
The direct comparison between two dissimilar items such as "conscience is a man's compass."
What is a metaphor?
A deliberate exaggeration to make a point.
What is hyperbole?
A collection of appeals to the five senses in a poem.
What is imagery?
Something in a poem that represents a concept, idea, or feeling.
What is a symbol?
Matching sounds at the ends of lines of poetry.
What is rhyme?
A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem.
What is a stanza?
The unspoken, unwritten series of associations made with a particular word in a poem.
What is connotation?
A reference in one piece of literature to something from another piece of literature or to persons/events/places in history, religion, or myth.
What is allusion?
The literal meaning of the word that a person would find in the dictionary.
What is denotation?
A phrase, line or expression that has been so overused, it is boring and commonplace, such as “it was a dark and stormy night” or “red with anger.”
What is a cliché?
An apparently contradictory statement that, despite the contradiction, has an element of truth in it.
What is a paradox?
A device that is the opposite of hyperbole and achieves its effect by stating less than what is necessary.
What is understatement?
A line of poetry that is ten syllables in length, in which the syllables follow a pattern of unstressed-stressed, unstressed-stressed.
What is iambic pentameter?
The repetitive use of vowel sounds within a single line of text.
What is assonance?
A difference between what is written and what is meant.
What is irony?
A pair of single-word opposites placed side by side for dramatic effect to create a contradiction, as in "jumbo shrimp."
What is an oxymoron?
A form of irony that is directed at a person, with the intent to criticize.
What is sarcasm?
The predominant feeling created by or in the poem, usually through word choice or description.
What is the mood?
An unconventional, logically complex, or surprising metaphor that appeals to the intellect rather than to the senses.
What is a conceit?
The narrator’s attitude toward the subject of the poem and, sometimes, toward the reader of the poem.
What is the tone?
The term for words that sound like what they mean.
What is onomatopoeia?
The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation.
What is enjambment?