Literary Terms

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Parallelism

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making the elements in a series or in pairs of words, phrases, or clauses analogous in part of speech, grammatical structure, and concept

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Inversion

Back 2

reverse the subject-verb-object order.

i.e. Rarely had she felt so awkard

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loose or cummulative sentence

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ideas in the order of subject-verb-object.

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Periodic Sentence

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not complete in either syntax or sense until its end.

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Intrusive Narrator

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an omniscient narrator who offers philosophical or moral commentary on the characters and the events he depicts.

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authorial intrusion

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the author jolted down a note for the reader that is not related to the story line.

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Stream of consciousness

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replicate the though processes of a character, with little or no intervention by the narrator.

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Round (three-dimensional) character

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a multifaceted and subject to change and growth; he or she is also capable of inconsistencies, and in those ways similar to an actual human being.

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Flat (two-dimensional) character

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a type that stays essentially the same throughout the work.

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Soliloquy

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A monologue delivered by a character who is alone on stage.

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Allegory

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an extended form of personification in which an abstract concept is presented as though it were a character who speaks and acts as an independent being.

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Pathetic fallacy

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A special type of personification in which inanimate aspects of nature, such as the landscape or the weatehr are represented as having juman qualities or feelings.

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Synecdiche

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a figure of though in which the term for part of something is used to represent the whole or part.

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Metonymy

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a trope which substitutes the name of an entity with something else closely associated with it.

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Verbal Irony

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consists of implying a meaning different from, and often the complete opposite of, the explicitly stated.

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Structural irony

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Refers to an implication of alternate or reversed meaning that pervades a work (unreliable narrator).

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Dramatic Irony

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the audience is privy to knowledge that one or more of the characters lacks.

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Tragic Irony

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dramatic irony in tragedies.

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Cosmic Irony

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Characters are led to embrace false hopes of aid or success, only to be defeated by some larger force, such as God or fate.

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Understatement

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a form of irony in which a point is deliberately expressed as less, in magnitude, value, or importance, than it actually is.

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Litotes

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a special form of understatement, in which a point is affirmed by negating its opposite.

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Periphrasis

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a point is stated by deliberate circumlocution, rather than directly. (passed away).

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Apostrophe

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an address to a dead or absent person or to an inanimate object or abstract concept.

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Inovacation

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a special form of apostrophe in which the poet addresses an appeal to a muse or a god to inspire the creative endeavor.

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Anaphora

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The intentional repitition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive lines, stanzas, sentences, or paragraphs.

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Antithesis

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words or phrases that are parallel in order and syntax express opposite or contrasting meanings.

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Chiasmus

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Two successive phrases or clauses are parallel in syntax, but reverse the order of the analogous words (criss-cross).

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zeugma

Back 28

describing the joining of two or more parts of a sentence with a single common verb or noun

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Epiphany

Back 29

a sudden, overwhelming insight or revelation evoked by a commonplace object or a scene in a poem or a work of fiction.

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In medias res

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beginning a narration ot in chronological order, with the first event in the plot, but at some later point.

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Parenthetical observation

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a brief interruption during which the character or the narrator reflects on a minor point that seizes his attention.

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polysyndeton

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Using more than neccesary conjuction.

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asyndeton

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not using conjuctions when needed.

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SYNAESTHESIA

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Characterizing one sensory experience in terms of a different sense

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Iambic

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unstressed followed by a stressed syllable.

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Anapestic

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two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one.

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Trochaic

Back 37

a stressed syllable followed by two that are unstressed.

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Dactylic

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a stressed syllable followed by two that are unstressed.

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End-stopped

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lines contain a complete sentence or independent clause and so have a distinct pause at the end, usually indicated by a mark of punctuation

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Enjambled

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(run-on-lines) the sentence or clause continues for two mor more lines of verse; no punctuation appears at the end.

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Caesura

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a pause in the midst of a verse line; the pause is indicated by a mark of punctuation, such as a comma, a question mark, a period, or a dash.

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Consonance

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the repetition of consonant sounds in two or more succesive words or stressed syllables that contain different voewl sounds.

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Alliteration

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the repetition of sounds in nearby words or stressed syllables

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Assonance

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the repetition of identical or similar voewl sounds in nearby words or stressed syllables.

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Onomatopoeia

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using a word or phrase that seems to imitate the sound it denotes.