Literary Terms (Examples) Free Essay Example

Alliteration

the repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants, in a group of words (“whose heart hung humble” -The Open Boat by Stephen Crane)

Allusion

a reference to a person, a place, an even, or a literary work that a writer expects a reader to recognize (“He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot and Priam’s Neighbors”-Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Apostrophe

a figure of speech where something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly (“Sleep sweetly in your humble graves”-Ode on the Confederate Dead by Henry Timrod) (“O world, I cannot hold thee close enough.

Don’t waste time
Get Your Custom Essay on

“Literary Terms (Examples)”

Get High-quality Paper

helping students since 2016

”)

Anaphora

repetition or phrase at the beginning of lines of verse or prose (“And they tell me”-Chicago by Carl Sandburg)

Assonance

repetition of similar vowel sounds (“our toes, our noses”-Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath)

Blank Verse

verse in unrhymed iambic pentameter (The Death of a Hired Man and Mending Wall by Robert Frost)

Catalogue

a long list of things, people, or events (Song of Myself by Walt Whitman)

Conceit

usually long metaphor between startlingly different things (Prayers of Steel by Carl Sandburg, he compares himself to a crowbar)

Concrete Poetry

poetry that uses verse lines to imitate inanimate subject of the poem (The Merit Parkway by Denise Leveton)

Consonance

repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words (“Let me pry loose old walls.

Let me lift and loosen old foundations.” -Prayers of Steel by Carl Sandburg) (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”- The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)

Couplet

two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme (Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish)

Confessional Poetry

poetry about the poet’s life (The Fortress by Anne Sexton)

Dactyl

poetic foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (“rollicking”-The Dance by William Carlos Williams)

Dramatic Lyric

personal thoughts and emotions of an imagined character are explained (The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound)

Dramatic Monologue

narrative poem in which a character speaks to listeners whose replies are not given (Mending Wall by Frost)

Ecphrastic Poetry

poetry about art forms such as music, graphic art, film, architecture, poetry, etc.

Bella Hamilton

Verified

Proficient in: Flashcards

5 (234)

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

(The Dance by William Carlos Williams is about a painting)

Epigraph

motto or inscription that proceeds a literary work (“Sung at the occasion of decorating the graves at magnolia cemetery” -Ode on the Confederate Dead by Henry Timrod)

Epitaph

short inscription on a grave (George Gray by Edgar Lee Masters) (Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters???/)

Foot

unit used to measure the meter of a line of poetry

Iamb

foot with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

Trochee

foot with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable

Anapest

foot with two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable

Free Verse

unrhymed verse that has no or an unusual pattern (woops. didn’t write one down. Walt Whitman I think)

Haiku

Japanese poem; 5 syllables, 7, 5

Harlem Renaissance

black artistry in the 1920s (The Tropics in New York by Claude McKay)

Iambic Pentameter

five feet, each foot is in iamb (Shakespeare?)

Imagery

words of phrases that create pictures (“blue nights into white stars”-Prayers of Steel by Carl Sandburg)

Imagism

1. direct concentration on precise image
2. use of precise words and common speech
3. creation of new rhythms
4. freedom of choice of subject
(can a movement have an example?)

Internal Rhyme

rhyme within a line (you can figure it out. read the lines)

Inversion

reversal of usual word order (“Rambled over the fields where sang the larks”-Lucinda Matlock by Edgar Lee Masters)

Irony (Verbal)

when one thing is said but the opposite is meant (War is Kind by Crane)

Irony (Dramatic)

reader or audience perceives something that a character doesn’t know

Irony (of Situation)

expected and actual results or events are not the same “Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the perfect man kills himself)

Hyperbole

exaggeration, overstatement (I don’t think he gave us a real example?)

Elegy

poem of mourning (Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke)

Ode

serious poems on a lofty subject (Ode on the Confederate Dead by Henry Timrod)

Metaphor

comparison between two dissimilar things (“Life in itself/Is nothing,/ An empty cup”)

Meter

pattern of syllables

Metonymy

a part or word representing a whole or person (“crown” representing monarch)

Mixed Metaphor

use of two or more inconsistent metaphors (“The awful tide battled to and fro” -Douglass by Paul Laurence Dunbar)

Octave

eight line poem or stanza

Onomatopoeia

sound imitates meaning (“click”- The Skaters by John Gould Fletcher)

Oxymoron

brief paradox; figure of speech that combines words of opposite meaning (“armless ambidextrian”-End of the World by Archibald MacLeish

Parallelism

uses of phrases or structures that are similar in wording or meaning (“I am the poet of body and I am the poet of the Soul”-Song of Myself by Walt Whitman)

Parable

a short tale with a moral (Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot though Mr. Peachey doesn’t really agree)

Paradox

a statement that seems controversial but relays a universal truth (Much Madness is Divinest Sense by Emily Dickinson)

Pathetic Fallacy

nature sympathizes with plot (“The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead”-The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound)

Personification

non human object given human qualities (“sorrow knocked at my door/ambition called to me”- George Gray by Masters)

Pun

intentional play on words (Janet Waking by John Crowe Ransom)

Quatrain

four line stanza with a definite rhyme scheme (almost all of Emily Dickinson)

Refrain

a word, phrase, or lines are repeated regularly, usually at the end of a stanza (“war is kind”-War is Kind by Stephen Crane)

Repetition

repeating of words

Requiem

a prayer /poem/song for the repose of the dead (Death of a Salesman)

Rhyme

repetitions of similar ending sounds

Masculine Rhyme

last syllable rhymes (him and slim)

Feminine Rhyme

two last syllables rhyme (seasons and reasons)

Sestet

six line poem or stanza

Simile

comparison with like or as (“April/Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers”)

Sonnet

a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter

Sonnet (English or Shakespearean)

three quatrains followed by a couplet (Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven”)

Sonnet (Italian or Petrachan)

octave and sestet (Douglass by Paul Laurence Dunbar)

Stanza

unit of a poem (every single poem?)

Stream of Consciousness

attempts natural flow of thoughts/feelings (Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot)

Symbol

any object that has a deeper meaning (“In seeds of laurel in the earth”-Ode on the Confederate Dead by Timrod)

Synecdoche

a part represents a whole (“shades”-Ode on the Confederate Dead by Timrod. shades represent bodies)

Tanka

Japanese poem with five lines and thirty one syllables

Tone

attitude the writer takes toward his or her subject, characters, or readers (the mocking tone in Miniver Cheevey by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Transcendentalism

existence beyond proof; intuitive philosophy (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau)

Understatement

less is said than is meant (“death is no parenthesis” by ee cummings)

Organic Rhythm

the syllables or rhythm of the poem represent the sounds or actions of the subject (“Poem” by William Carlos Williams)

Literary Terms (Examples)

Cite this page