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Main > Teachers8 > RoseE
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Literary Terms
| Alliteration—repetition of the initial letter or sound in two or more words.
Anthropomorphism—literally, “the changing into a man,” usually the portrayal of animal as a human, for example, showing it speak, walk upright, or share human motives.
Assonance—similarity or repetition of a vowel sound in two or more words. Also called partial or near rhyme (“lake” and “stake” are rhymes, “lake” and “fate” are assonance).
Ballad—a simple, narrative verse telling a story to be sung.
Blank verse—unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, as opposed to “free verse.”
Cacophony—harsh, discordant, unpleasant arrangement of syllables
Commentary—an explanatory essay.
Consonance—repetition of consonant sounds within a line or verse. Consonance is similar to alliteration except that the repeated sound is not limited to the initial letter of a word.
Dichotomy—division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions.
Dramatic monologue—a lyric poem in which the speaker tells the audience about a dramatic moment in his or her life that reveals his or her true nature.
Elegy—a poem of lament, usually meditating on the death of an individual.
Epic—a long, dignified narrative poem giving an account of a hero who embodies the values of his nation or race.
Euphony—smooth, pleasant arrangement of poetic sound
Exigency—the need, demand, or requirement intrinsic to a circumstance, the purpose for which a literary work is created in its zeitgeist; theme is usually a response to it.
Figure of Speech—an expression in which the words are used in a nonliteral sense.
Foot—a unit of meter containing two or three syllables, generally a stressed and one or more unstressed syllables.
Types of Metrical Feet
Iamb or Iambic Foot—one unstressed and one stressed syllable: “I ran and grasped.”
Trochee or Trochaic Foot—one stressed and one unstressed syllable: “Trotting down the alley.”
Anapest or Anapestic Foot—two unstressed followed by one stressed syllable: “At a bound he had leaped on the foe.”
Dactyl or Dactylic Foot—one stressed followed by two unstressed: “drearily murmuring.”
Spondee or Spondaic Foot—two stressed syllables: “Green-hued oak leaves.”
Free verse—unrhymed lines without regular rhythm, as opposed to “blank verse.”
Idiom—a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements; the specific syntactic, grammatical, or structural character of a given language.
Lyric—subjective, reflective poetry with regular rhyme scheme and meter which reveals the poet’s thoughts and feelings to create a single, unique impression.
Metaphor—impled comparison between two unlike things indicating a likeness or analogy—says one thing is another.
Meter—patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Kinds of Metrical Lines:
Monometer—one-foot line
Dimeter—two-foot line
Trimeter—three-foot line
Tetrameter—four-foot line
Pentameter—five-foot line
Hexameter—six-foot line
Heptameter—seven-foot line
Octometer—eight-foot line
Mood—the emotion the author intends to evoke in the reader, usually conveyed through diction and imagery.
Narrative—nondramatic, objective verse with regular rhyme scheme and meter which relates a story or narrative.
Ode—elaborate lyric verse on a dignified theme.
Personification—giving human characteristics to inanimate objects, abstractions, or animals.
Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet—an octave and sestet, between which a break in thought occurs, rhyming abba abba cde cede or in the sestet any variation of c, d, and e.
Rhyme—likeness of sound at the end of two words
Position of Rhyme—end or internal rhyme
Masculine Rhyme—one-syllable word rhymes with another: “dog, log”
Feminine Rhyme—last two syllables of two words rhyme: “lawful, awful”
Triple Rhyme—three syllables of words rhyme: “victorious, glorious.”
Shakespearean (English) sonnet—three quatrains and a concluding rhymed couplet in iambic pentameter, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg or abba cddc effe gg.
Simile—comparison between two unrelated things indicating a likeness between them.
Sonnet—a rigid 14-line verse form with variable structure and rhyme scheme according to type: Shakespearean (English) and Petrarchan (Italian).
Stanza—sections of poetry unified by idea and separated from others by a space break, named according to number of lines as follows: 2=couplet, 3=tercet, 4=quatrain, 5=cinquain, 6=sestet, 7=septet, 8=octet (octave), and afterward “9-lined stanza” and so on.
Syntax—the way in which linguistic elements such as words are put together to form constituents, such as phrases or clauses; harmonious arrangement of parts or elements; the part of grammar dealing with arrangement of words into phrases or clauses; (it is not sentence length).
Tautology—needless repetition, as in “a widow woman” or “adequate enough;” in logic a statement that is necessarily true, as in “it will either rain or it will not;” a circular statement that asserts itself, as in “This novel about slavery addresses enslavement.”
Theme—the unifying point, message, or purpose of a literary work that gives it momentum and exigency, its reason for being
Tone—the attitude of the narrator or author toward the material or the reader/audience. Usually conveyed through diction and imagery.
Trope—the use of words in other than their literal sense, such as metaphor or irony; word play.
Verse forms—forms are based on meter and rhyme:
Rhymed Verse—end rhyme with regular meter (usually)
Blank Verse—iambic pentameter without end rhyme
Free Verse—no regular meter and no rhyme
Villanelle—a French verse form, calculated to appear simple and spontaneous, five tercets anda final quatrain rhyming aba aba aba aba aba abaa; lines 1, 6, 12, 18 and 3, 9, 15, and 19 are refrain.
Zeitgeist—German for “spirit of the times.”
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