Literary Terms of Analysis
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- figurative language
- makes use of figure of speech
- situation
- circumstances turn out to be reverse of those aniticipated
- meter
- pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
- fable
- narrative illustrating a moral truth
- denouement
- epilogue after time gap
- epic
- extended narrative poem
- dissonance
- juxtaposition of jarring sounds
- epilogue
- final section of speech
- diction
- choice of words
- epithet
- term used to characterize a person
- bathos
- excessive pathos
- ballad
- narrative poem
- narrative verse
- tells a story
- verbal
- attitude opposite to what is litteraly stated
- spenserian stanza
- also iambic pentameter with rhyme
- pathetic fallacy
- human sympathies given to personfied objects
- heroic couplet
- pair of rhymed iambic pentameter
- lyric
- sung to lyre; lyric poetry
- epic simile
- extended simile
- allusion
- brief reference to familiar person/thing/incident
- assonance
- repetition of vowel sounds
- rhyme royal
- 7 line stanza in iambic pentameter
- terza rima
- aba bcb cdc
- persona
- a mask which author assumes to speak to audience
- stanza
- groub of lines which form divison of a poem
- imagery
- launguage which evokes sensory experience or things
- form
- fixed metrical arrangement
- shakesperean sonnet
- 14 lines of iambic pentameter
- onomatopoeia
- words whose sounds express or reinforce their meanings
- simile
- comparision using like or as
- foot
- group of syllables forming one metrical unit
- deus ex machina
- god from machine
- tone
- author's demeanor toward subject
- ode
- lyric poem of some length
- consonance
- close repetition of consonant sounds
- repetition
- do not overlook this as fundamental devices of any art
- metonymy
- figure of speech
- hyperbole
- deliberate exaggeration
- enjambment
- line runs onto next line w/o pause
- epitaph
- death inscription
- doggerel
- rough, crudely written, comic
- symbol
- something that stands for something else
- alliteration
- close repetition of sounds
- couplet
- two lines of verse
- pathos
- quality which evokes feelings of pity
- connotative meaning
- emotional baggage of a word
- blank verse
- unrhymed iambic pentameter
- style
- qualities which made up a literary personality
- diem poetry
- tragedy; novels
- gallows humor
- black humor (dead baby jokes)
- epigram
- short witty statement
- ottava rima
- eight lines, iambic pentameter
- villanelle
- a french fixed form
- epiphany
- showing forth
- caesura
- pause in line
- free verse
- lacks regular meter and line length
- litotes
- meiosis; understatement
- genre
- literaly type or class
- dramatic
- sistuation understood in double sense
- synecdoche
- part represents the whole
- syntax
- word placement in sentences
- apostrophe
- an address to a person not present (to god)
- petrarchan sonnet
- 14 lines divided into 2 parts
- irony
- writer expresses a meaning contradictory to stated
- metaphor
- 2 unlike objects compared
- motif
- recurring person, character, thing
- oxymoron
- two apparently contradicotry terms
- end-stopped line
- end of phrase or sentenence
- elegy
- dignified poem mouring death