litterary devices for English 11 enriched
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| Allegory | The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form
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| Alliteration | The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in a line of poetry. ie. Marilyn Monroe
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| Ambiguity | When an author leaves out details/information or is unclear about an event so the reader will use his/her imagination to fill in the blanks
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| Anaphora | epetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines in a poem
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| Anecdote | A short story or joke told at the beginning of a speech to gain the audience’s attention
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| Antagonist | The protagonist’s adversary
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| Anti-climatic | When the ending of the plot in poetry or prose is unfulfilling or lackluster
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| Apostrophe | When a character speaks to a character or object that is not present or is unable to respond
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| Assonance | The repetition of the same vowel sound in a phrase or line of poetry
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| Blank verse | Name for unrhymed iambic pentameter. An iamb is a metrical foot in which an unstressed syllable is
followed by a stressed syllable. In iambic pentameter there are five iambs per line making ten syllables
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| Climax | The turning point in the plot or the high point of action
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| Colloquial language | nformal, conversational language. Colloquialisms are phrases or sayings that are indicative of a
specific region
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| Connotation | An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing, ie. Bat=evil
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| Convention | An understanding between a reader and a writer about certain details of a story that does not need to be
explained
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| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds in a phrase or line of poetry. The consonant sound may be at the
beginning, middle, or end of the word
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| Couplet | Two rhyming lines in poetry
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| Deus ex machina | Term that refers to a character or force that appears at the end of a story or play to help resolve
conflict. The phrase has come to mean any turn of events that solve the characters’ problems through an unexpected and unlikely intervention
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| Diction | Word choice or the use of words in speech or writing
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| Denouement (day-new-mon) | The final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot
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| Doppelganger | The alter ego of a character-the suppressed side of one’s personality that is usually unaccepted by
society
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| Elegy | A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person
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| Emotive language | Deliberate use of language by a writer to instill a feeling or visual
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| Enjambment | The continuation of reading one line of a poem to the next with no pause, a run-on line
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| Epic | An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional
hero
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| Epilogue | A short poem or speech spoken directly to the audience following the conclusion of a play, or in a novel the
epilogue is a short explanation at the end of the book which indicates what happens after the plot ends
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| Epiphany | Sudden enlightenment or realization, a profound new outlook or understanding about the world usually
attained while doing everyday mundane activities
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| Epistolary | Used to describe a novel that tells its story through letters written from one character to another
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| Euphemism | The act of substituting a harsh, blunt, or offensive comment for a more politically accepted or positive one.
(short=vertically challenged)
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| Euphony | A succession of words which are pleasing to the ear. These words may be alliterative, utilize consonance, or
assonance and are often used in poetry but also seen in prose
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| Expansion | Adds an unstressed syllable and a contraction/elision removes an unstressed syllable in order to maintain the rhythmic meter of a line. This explains some words frequently used in poetry such as th’ = the, o’er = over, and ‘tis or ‘twas = it is or it was
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| Fable | A usually short narrative making an edifying or cautionary point and often employing as characters animals that speak and act like humans
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| Feminine ending | Term that refers to an unstressed extra syllable at the end of a line of iambic pentameter
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| Figurative language | Speech or writing that departs from literal meaning in order to achieve a special effect or meaning.
Speech or writing employing figures of speech
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| Flashback | When a character remembers a past event that is relevant to the current action of the story
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| Flat character | 35. Flat character-A literary character whose personality can be defined by one or two traits and does not change over the
course of the story. Flat characters are usually minor or insignificant characters.
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| Foil | A character that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another.
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| Folklore | the traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally
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| Foot | The metrical length of a line is determined by the number of feet it contains.
Monometer: One foot
Dimeter: Two feet
Trimeter: Three feet
etc.
The most common feet have two to three syllables, with one stressed.
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| Iamb | An iambic foot has two syllables. The first is unstressed and the second is stressed. The iambic foot is most common in English poetry.
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| Trochee | A trochaic foot has two syllables. The first is stressed and the second is unstressed
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| Dactyl | A dactylic foot has three syllables beginning with a stressed syllable; the other two unstressed
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| Anapest | An anapestic foot has three syllables. The first two are unstressed with the third stressed.
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| Foreshadowing | Clues in the text about incidents that will occur later in the plot, foreshadowing creates anticipation in
the novel
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| Free verse | a type of verse that contains a variety of line lengths, is unrhymed, and lacks traditional meter.
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| Genre | A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content
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| Gothic novel | A genre of fiction characterized by mystery and supernatural horror, often set in a dark castle or other
medieval setting
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| Heroine | A woman noted for courage and daring action or the female protagonist
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| Hubris | Used in Greek tragedies, refers to excessive pride that usually leads to a hero’s downfall
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| Hyperbole | A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or comic/dramatic effect
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| Illocution | Language that avoids meaning of the words. Speaking to conceal intentions or the true subject of a conversation; expresses two stories, one which is not apparent to the characters, but is to the reader. contains an underlying meaning or parallel meanings
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| Imagery | The use of vivid or figurative language to represent objects, actions, or ideas
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| In medias res | A story that begins in the middle of things
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| Inversion | In poetry is an intentional digression from ordinary word order which is used to maintain regular meters. For
example, rather than saying “the rain came” a poem may say “came the rain”. Meters can be formed by the insertion
or absence of a pause
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| Irony | When one thing should occur, is apparent, or in logical sequence but the opposite actually occurs. Example: A
man in the ocean might say, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”
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| Dramatic Irony | When the audience or reader knows something characters do not know
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| Verbal Irony | When one thing is said, but something else, usually the opposite, is meant
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| Cosmic Irony | When a higher power toys with human expectations
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| Masculine ending | Stressed extra syllable at the end of a line
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| Memoir | An account of the personal experiences of an author
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| Meter | The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of
syllables in a line
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| Metaphor | A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate
another, thus making an implicit comparison; this comparison does not use like or as
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| Metonymy | The use of a word or phrase to stand in for something else which it is often associated. ie. Lamb means
Jesus
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| Motif | A dominant theme or central idea
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| Novella | A short novel usually under 100 pages
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| Neutral language | Language opposite from emotive language as it is literal or even objective in nature
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| Oblique rhyme | Imperfect rhyme scheme
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| Ode | A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal
stanzaic structure. Celebrates something. John Keats is known for writing these
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| Onomatopoeia | The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the
objects or actions they refer to
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| Paradox | Statement which seems to contradict itself. i.e. His old face was youthful when he heard the news
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| Parody | A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.
i.e. SNL or Weird Al Yankovich
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| Personification | A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are
represented as possessing human form
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| Poetic justice | The rewarding of virtue and the punishment of vice in the resolution of a plot. The character, as they
say, gets what he/she deserves
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| Prequel | A literary, dramatic, or cinematic work whose narrative takes place before that of a preexisting work or a
sequel
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| Prologue | An introduction or preface, especially a poem recited to introduce a play
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| Prose | Ordinary speech or writing without metrical structure, written in paragraph form. Novels and short stories are
referred to as prose
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| Protagonist | The main character in a drama or literary work
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| Pun | Play on words, when two words have multiple meanings and spellings and are used in a humorous manner
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| Rhyme | the repetition of sounds in words
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| Rhyme scheme | The act of assigning letters in the alphabet to demonstrate the rhyming lines in a poem
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| Rising action | The events of a dramatic or narrative plot preceding the climax
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| Rites of passage | An incident which creates tremendous growth signifying a transition from adolescence to adulthood
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| Round character | A character who is developed over the course of the book, round characters are usually major
characters in a novel
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| Resolution | Solution to the conflict in literature
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| Satire | A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit; the goal is to change the
behavior/issue. Authors known for satires are Jonathan Swift and George Orwell
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| Simile | A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or
as
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| Slang | A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect
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| Soliloquy | A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener. Typical in plays
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| Sonnet | A poem with fourteen lines. An Italian sonnet subdivides into two quatrains and two tercets; while an English sonnet subdivides into three quatrains and one couplet. A volta is a sudden change of thought which is common in sonnets.
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| Style | The combination of distinctive features of literary or artistic expression, execution, or performance characterizing a particular person, group, school, or era.
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| Symbolism | Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
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| Tragedy | A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
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| Tone | Reflects how the author feels about the subject matter or the feeling the author wants to instill in the reader
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| litotes | ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary (e.g., non of the wise ones regretted his going, meaning they supported his going)
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| Kenning | metaphorical phrase used to name something, for example: mankind's enemy; that shadow of death instead of Grendel
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