Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds. Common examples of alliterations include the

tongue-twisters "Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran," and "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."

Alliteration can serve as a mnemonic device. As alliterative phrases are often memorable, they are frequently used in news headlines, corporate business names, literary titles, advertising, buzzwords, nursery rhymes, poetry, and tongue twisters.

Allusion

An indirect reference to another literary work or famous person, place or event.

Martin Luther King Jr. alluded to the Gettysburg Address in starting his "I Have a Dream" speech by saying 'Five score years ago..."; his hearers were immediately reminded of Abraham Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago", which opened the Gettysburg Address. King's allusion effectively called up parallels in two historic moments.

Analogy

Point by point comparison.Often used to explain the unfamiliar with

the familiar. For example, the branching of a river

system is often explained by comparing it to a tree.

Antagonist

Usually the principal character in opposition to the protagonist.

May be a group, an institution or force. If a student is determined to express

him/herself with wardrobe, the school faculty and rules may be seen as an antagonistic force.

Assonance

The repition of vowel sounds within nonrhyming words.

Hear the mellow wedding bells. — Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"

The crumbling thunder of seas — Robert Louis Stevenson

I'm hunched over emotions just flows over these cold shoulders are both frozen you don't know me. - Eminem

Ballad

Poem that tells a story. is a narrative poem, usually set to music; thus, it

often is a story told in a song. Any story form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four stress lines ("ballad meter") and simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain.

the legends of Robin Hood and the pranks of Puck were disseminated through broadsheet ballads; are often typical or humorous.

Biography

True account of a person’s life told by someone else.

(from the Greek words bios meaning "life", and graphein meaning "write") is a genre of literature and other forms of media

A biography is more than a list of impersonal facts like birth, education, work, relationships and death. It also delves into the emotions of experiencing such events.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed poetry written in iambic pentameter. a type of poetry, distinguished by having a

regular meter, but no rhyme. The major achievements in English blank verse

were made by William Shakespeare, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and Milton, whose Paradise Lost is written in blank verse.

Climax

Moment when the reader’s interest and emotional intensity reach the highest point.

Ex: The murder of Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello is the point of highest tension.

Connotation

Attitudes and feelings associated with a word.Ex: The word water may symbolize or mean life

even though literally water is a liquid. The connotative meaning is a subjective cultural

and/or emotional coloration in addition to the explicit or denotative meaning of any specific word or phrase in a language

Couplet

Rhymed pair of lines.Some cultures have decorative traditions associated

with them.Traditionally, Western couplets are dumb rhyme,

although not all couplets rhyme (a poem may use white space to mark out couplets as well). Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets. The Poetic epigram is also in the couplet form. Couplets can also play a role in more complex rhyme schemes.

i.e. Shakespearean sonnets end with a couplet.

Dialect

Form of language as it is spoken in a particular geographic area.

A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.

In popular usage, the word "dialect" is sometimes used to refer to a lesser-known language (most commonly a regional language), especially one that is unwritten or not standardized.

Dialogue

Conversation between two or more characters.

(sometimes spelt dialog) a reciprocal conversation between two or more entities

A literary dialogue comprises a little drama without a theater, and with scarcely any change of scene.

Fiction

Prose that have imaginary elements. the word fiction is derived from the Latin fingere,

"to form, create", works of fiction need not be entirely imaginary, and may include real people, places, and events; may be in either written or oral.

Although not all fiction is necessarily artistic, fiction is largely perceived as a form of art and/or entertainment.

Foil

Character who provides a striking contrast to another.

The author may use the foil to set up situations in which the protagonist can show his or her character traits. The term refers to the practice of putting polished foil underneath a gemstone to make it shine more brightly.

"foil" in literature comes from the play Hamlet by Shakespeare

Foreshadowing

Writers use of hints or clues to indicate events and situations that will occur later in a plot.

a literary device in which an author drops subtle hints about plot developments to come later in the story.

i.e. when a character displays a gun or knife early in the story.

Free Verse

Poetry with no regular rhyme, pattern or meter.

a term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.

Hyperbole

Figure of speech truth is exaggerated for emphasis or humor.

It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, and is not meant to be taken literally.

It is often used in poetry and is a literary device as well as a referendum.

Idiom

Expression that has meaning different from the meaning of its individual words.

meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use.

students of a new language must learn its idiomatic expressions the way they learn its other vocabulary. In fact many natural language words have idiomatic origins, but have been sufficiently assimilated so that their figurative senses have been lost.

Imagery

Descriptive words and phrases that re-create sensory experiences.

Any the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste).

Essentially, imagery is any series of words that engage one of the five senses (especially sight).

Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification, and assonance. Imagery helps the reader picture what is going on.

Irony

A special kind of contrast between appearance and reality-usually one in which reality is the opposite from what it seems.

Irony may also arise from a discordance between acts and results, especially if it is striking, and seen by an outside audience.

Tragic (or dramatic) irony occurs when a character on stage or in a story is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her eventual fate, as in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.

Lyric Poem

Short poem in which a single speaker expresses personal thoughts and feelings.

refers to either poetry that has the form and musical quality of a song, or a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings, which may or may not be set to music.

lyric poetry in the Western tradition is the 14-line sonnet, either in its Petrarchan or its Shakespearean form, lyric poetry appears in a variety of forms. Ballades and villanelles are other forms of the lyric.

Metaphor

Figure of speech that compares not using like or as.

is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects.

More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way.

Mood

Feeling that the writer creates for the reader.

describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent.

Many languages express distinctions of mood through morphology, by changing (inflecting) the form of the verb.

Narrative Poem

Poem tells a story. In its broadest sense, it includes epic poetry; some

would reserve the name narrative poetry for works on a smaller scale and generally with more direct appeal to human interest than the epic.

Many scholars of Homer, from Quintus Smyrnaeus forward, have concluded that his tales of the Iliad and Odyssey were composed from compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes (suitable for evening entertainment.)

Onomatopoeia

BUZZ.word or a grouping of words that imitates the

sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click," "buzz," or "bluuuh," or animal noises such as "oink", "quack", or "meow".

The word is a synthesis of the Greek words "onoma" (name) and "poio" (verb meaning "to create") thus it essentially means "name creation".

Paradox

Statement that seems to contradicts itself but is true.

The word paradox is often used interchangeably and wrongly with contradiction; but whereas a contradiction asserts its own opposite, many paradoxes do allow for resolution of some kind.

Sometimes the term paradox is used for situations that are merely surprising. The birthday paradox, for instance, is unexpected but perfectly logical.

Personification

Human qualities are attributed to an object, animal or idea.

These attributes may include sensations, emotions, desires, physical gestures, expressions, and powers of speech, among others.

Personification is widely used in poetry and in other art forms. Personification can also be used in English to emphasize a conversational point.

Protagonist

The central character or hero whom the audience indentifies with – good guy.

Protagonists cannot exist in a story without opposition from a figure or figures called antagonist(s). Classically in literature, characters with good will are unusually the protagonists, however, not all characters who assist the protagonist are required to be simple protagonistic.

Pun

Play on words. figure of speech, or word play which consists of a

deliberate confusion of similar words within a phrase or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious.

A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor.

Satire

Ideas or customs are ridiculed for the purpose of improving society.

chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement.

It is used in graphic arts and performing arts as well.

Setting

Time and place of action.The term is relevant for various forms of

literary expression, such as short stories, novels, dramas, and screenplays.

For example, many of William Faulkner's novels are set in the early 20th Century in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional county in the American South.

Soliloquy

Speech in which a character speaks thoughts aloud.

Also known as a monologue.It is a common feature in drama,

animated cartoons, and film.

Stanza

Grouping of two or more lines. Paragraph or poetry.

In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse" (as distinct from the refrain, or "chorus").

stanzas can be identified and grouped together because they share a rhyme scheme or a fixed number of lines (as in distich/couplet, tercet, quatrain, cinquain/quintain, sestet).

Symbol

A person, place, activity or object that stand for something.

For example, in the United States and Canada, a red octagon is a symbol for the traffic sign meaning "STOP".

Common examples of symbols are the symbols used on maps to denote places of interest, such as crossed sabers to indicate a battlefield. Red could symbolize anger or blood, a caged bird could be used to symbolize someone’s freedom or thoughts being held hostage.

Theme

Main idea in a work of literature.Broad idea in a story, or a message or

lesson conveyed by a work. This message is usually about life, society or human nature.

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Themes are usually implied rather than explicitly stated.

Tone

Attitude a writer takes toward a subject. Intended to shape the reader’s emotional response may reflect writer’s feelings.

a literary technique, that is a part of composition, that encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work.

Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, condescending, or many other possible attitudes.

Voice

Writer’s unique use of language that allows a reader to “hear” a personality.

Voice is a combination of a writer's use of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works). Voice can also be referred to as the specific fingerprint of an author, as every author has a different writing style.