Question | Answer |
Verse Drama | A play in which the dialogue is almost entirely in poetry |
Dramatic Irony | What appears true to one or more characters in a play is known to be false to the audience |
Foreshadowing | A writers use of hints or clued to suggest what events will occur later in a work |
Act | One of the main divisions of a play |
Scene | A smaller division of a play, usually involving some change of scenery, characters or a shift in the action |
Soliloquy | A speech that a character makes while alone on stage to reveal his thoughts to the audience |
Aside | A remark that the character makes in an undertone to the audience or to another character, but that others on stage are not supposed to hear |
Tragic Flaw | A character trait in a tragic hero or heroine that brings about his or her downfall |
Allegory | A narrative presentation of an abstract idea through more concrete means |
Alliteration | Repeated consonant sounds occurring at the beginning of words or within words. |
Allusion | An indirect reference to a person, event, statement or theme found in literature, the other arts, history, myths, religion or popular culture |
Anti-hero | A protagonist who does not show the qualities of the traditional hero |
Archetype | Persistent images, figures, or story patterns shared by people across cultures |
Authentic Diction | An authors use of words from the particular geographic region or time period in which a work or fiction is written |
Author's Style | The way an author writes a particular piece of literature. Its not what it is said, but how it is said |
Bildungsroman | Fiction whose main subject is the intellectual, moral and psychological development of a youthful main character |
Caesura | A pause in a line of poetry dictated by natural rhythm |
Coming of age story | A bildungsroman |
Elegy | A mournful, contemplative poem written to commemorate someone who is dead |
End Stop | A line of poetry in which a grammatical pause and the physical end of the line coincide |
Enjambment | A poetic expression that spans more than one line. A run-on line of poetry |
Epic | A long and formal narrative poem written in an elevated style that tells the adventures of a hero of almost mythic proportions |
Foil Character | A character who, by his contrast with the main character, serves to accentuate that characters distinctive qualities or characteristics |
Frame Story | A story that contains other stories |
Genre | A class or category of an artistic endeavor having a particular form, content or technique |
Hero | The protagonist or chief character of a literary work who possesses good qualities that enable him/her to triumph over evil in some way |
Humor | A device or tone that an author uses to bring levity into a work of fiction |
Imagery | The language an author uses to show a visual picture or represent any sensory experience |
Kenning | An embellished figurative phrase used in place of a simpler or more common term |
Metaphor | A figure of speech associating two things or the representation of one thing by another |
Motif | A recurring word, phrase, image, object, idea or action in a work of literature. Motifs focus as unifying devices and often relate to a major theme |
Picaresque action/Adventure story | A story developed from a specific type of fictional writing popularized in Spain in the 18th century, with an engaging rogue as the hero. The author uses humorous or satiric incidents which often show the everyday life of the people |
Polysyndeton | The repetition of conjunctions in close succession for rhetorical effect, as in the phrase "here and there and everywhere" |
Prose | The ordinary form of the written language. The opposite of poetry |
Rhythm | The measured flow of words and the basic beat or pattern in language that is established by stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses |
Scop | Anglo-Saxon poet singer |
Setting | The geographical setting and time of a work of literature |
Simile | A figure of speech that compares two unlike things by using like or as |
Stanza | A grouped set of lines in a poem, usually physically set off from other such clusters by a blank line |
Style | The particular way in which a piece of literature is written. How something is said |
Symbol | A person, place, object or activity that stands for something beyond itself |
Syntax | The pattern of words, phrases and sentences which make up a piece of writing |
Western | Fiction set in the western part of the US or Canada or Mexico or Australia |