List of Literary Terminology
alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds in
neighboring words. Example: In
cliches: sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy.
In Wordsworth: And sings a solitary song/That whistles in the wind.
apostrophe: Words that are spoken to a person who is absent, or to
an object or abstract idea.
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds but
not consonant sounds as in consonance. Example:
fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks.
caesura: a pause somewhere in the middle of a
verse. Some lines have strong (easily recognizable) caesurae, which usually
coincide with punctuation in the line, while others have weak ones.
Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds,
but not vowels, as in assonance. Example:
lady lounges lazily, dark deep dread crept in
enjambment: running over from one line of poetry
to the next without stop, as in the following lines by Wordsworth: "My
heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky."
foreshadowing: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or
showing what will occur later in a narrative. Foreshadowing often provides
hints about what will happen next.
iamb: a metrical foot consisting of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
iambic pentameter: a metrical form in which the basic
foot is an iamb and most lines consist of five iambs; iambic pentameter is the
most common poetic meter in English: "One com | mon note | on ei | ther
lyre | did strike" (Dryden, "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham")
in medias res: "in the midst of things";
refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, necessitating filling in
past details by exposition or flashback.
Limited
Omniscient Narrator:
the material is presented from the point of view of a character, in third
person.
meter: the more or less regular pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
metaphor: language that directly compares two
seemingly unrelated subjects without the use of like or as. Example: all the world’s a stage. --Shakespeare
motif: a recurrent thematic element in an
artistic or literary work. A dominant theme or central idea.
octave: the first eight lines of the
Italian,or Petrarchan, sonnet.
omniscient narrator: knows everything, may reveal the
motivations, thoughts and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader
information.
pathetic Fallacy: The poetic practice of attributing
human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals. The
practice is a form of personification that is as old as poetry, in which it has
always been common to find smiling or dancing flowers, angry or cruel winds,
brooding mountains, or happy larks.
psychomachia: a struggle within the self between the
forces of good and evil.
sestet: the last six lines of the Italian, or
Petrarchan, sonnet.
simile: the comparison of two unlike things using like or
as. Example: he eats like
a pig. Vines like golden prisons.
setting: time and place.
sonnet: a fixed verse form consisting of
fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter.
speaker: the person, not necessarily the
author, who is the voice of a poem.
symbol: using an object or action that means something more than
its literal meaning. Example: water may represent life or rebirth.
the poetry of meditation: 17th century British religious verse,
wherein the speaker is in a state of spiritual crisis.
unreliable Narrator: A narrator, speaker, or character
that may or may not describe what he witnesses accurately, and/or misinterprets
those events because of faulty perception, personal bias, or limited
understanding. Often the writer or poet creating such an unreliable narrator
leaves clues so that readers will perceive the unreliability and question the
interpretations offered.