Literary Terms and Features
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- cheville
- a "plug" to secure the necessary syllables in verse
- anabasis
- the rising of action to climax or dénouement
- palilogy
- repetition for emphasis
- motif
- a recurrent character type, image or verbal pattern
- satire
- protest becoming art
- the four levels of meaning
- literal, moral, allegorical, anagogical
- onomatopoiea
- words imitating sounds
- an example of slant rhyme
- "other" with "powder"
- hypostatization
- an abstract quality or concept personified
- logorrhea
- verbosity or prolixity
- anagogical meaning
- spiritual or mystical meaning
- hypallage
- epithet modifying a noun to which it does not strictly belong
- Spenserian sonnet rhyme scheme
- abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee
- an example of prolepsis
- "their murder'd man rode past fair Florence"
- anaphora
- repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses
- a zeugma
- "Miss Bolo went home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair"
- systrophe
- an accumulation of definitions of the same thing
- litotes
- understatement for emphasis
- an example of metonomy
- the theatrical profession = "the stage"
- apostrophe
- address of an abstract quality or concept, or of a dead or absent person
- aptronym
- a name that fits a character's qualities (lots of examples in Dickens)
- adynaton
- hyperbole that refers to the impossible
- paralipsis or autoclesis
- speaker feigns to gloss over something in order to draw attention to it
- psittacism
- parrot-like speech
- historical rhyme
- no longer a rhyme because of a change in pronunciation
- pathetic fallacy
- human feelings ascribed to the inanimate
- sentimentality (perj.)
- false or superficial emotion
- foregrounding
- devices that emphasise the act of expression
- cacophony
- dissonance
- assonance
- vocalic rhyme that can achieve a particular euphony
- allusion
- reference that may enrich the work by association
- a Spoonerism
- "you have hissed my mystery lectures"
- Petrarchan sonnet rhyme scheme
- abbaabba, cdecde
- sesquipedalian
- using polysyllabic words
- absolutism
- the concept that there are immutable standards by which a work can be judged
- hamartia
- the shortcoming or flaw of the tragic hero
- psychomachy
- a battle for the human soul between inhuman beings or abstract concepts
- "ab ovo"
- the opposite of "in medias res"
- dissemination
- multiplicity of meaning
- hendiadys
- one idea expressed by two substantives
- solecism
- deviation from conventional grammar, syntax, pronunciation
- an effect of foreshadowing
- to give structural and/or thematic unity
- dramatic irony
- when the audience is aware of something a character isn't
- Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme
- abab, cdcd, efef, gg
- ficelle
- a confidant whose role in the work is to elicit information from other characters
- chosism
- detailed description of objects
- dénouement
- the "unknotting", or resolving of the drama
- fustian language
- inflated, eg. "turgid prose"
- soraismus
- a mixture of terms from various languages, usually for comic effect
- harangue
- an exhortory speech
- periphrasis
- roundabout speech or circumlocution