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Glossary of literary terms

Alliteration
Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the Night," provides us with an example of alliteration,": I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet." The repetition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.
Allusion
A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work.
Ambiguity
A statement which can contain two or more meanings.
Anapest
In a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable forming the pattern for the line or perhaps for the entire poem.

Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" contains numerous examples. Consider these from stanza 2:
Hear the mellow wedding bells-
and
From the molten-golden notes,
The repetition of the short e and long o sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the i sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.
Ballad
A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers.
Blank Verse
A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from "The Ball Poem" by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw
it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over-there it is in
the water!
Cacophony/Euphony
Cacophony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the opposite, is a pleasant combination of sounds. These sound effects can be used intentionally to create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. The cacophony in Matthew Arnold's lines "And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,/Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honor'd, self-secure,/Didst tread on earth unguess'd at," is probably unintentional.
Concrete Poetry
A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a wormy apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple, as in the following, is an example.
Couplet
A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
Dactyl
In poetry, a metrical pattern consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

Elegy
A lyric poem lamenting death. These lines from Joachim Du Bellay's "Elegy on His Cat" are an example:
I have not lost my rings, my purse,
My gold, my gems-my loss is worse,
One that the stoutest heart must move.
My pet, my joy, my little love,
My tiny kitten, my Belaud,
I lost, alas, three days ago.
Epic
In literature generally, a major work dealing with an important theme. "Gone with the Wind," a film set in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and Civil War South, is considered an epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a book length epic poem consisting of twelve subdivisions called books. Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are epic poems, the former concerning the Greek invasion of Troy; the latter dealing with the Greek victory over the Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.
Epithet
In literature, a word of phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character.
Fable
A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. Often the characters are animals as in the fables of Aesop.
Figurative Language
In literature, a way of saying one thing and meaning something else. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns, My luv is a red, red rose. Clearly Mr. Burns does not really mean that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, long, thorny-stemmed plant. He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a rose. While, figurative language provides a writer with the opportunity to write imaginatively, it also tests the imagination of the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into deep, hidden meanings.
Figure of Speech
An example of figurative language that states something that is not literally true in order to create an effect. Similes, metaphors and personification are figures of speech which are based on comparisons. Metonymy, synecdoche, apostrophe, oxymoron, and hyperbole are other figures of speech.
Foot
The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry.

Free Verse
Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the following lines from Song of Myself.
I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Haiku
A Japanese poetic form which originated in the sixteenth century. A haiku in its Japanese language form consists of three lines: five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line. A haiku translated may not contain the same syllabication. Designed to capture a moment in time, the haiku creates images. Consider the following by the seventeenth-century poet, Basho. Note the bringing together of the images of the clouds and the moon.
Clouds come from time to time-
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
Hyperbole
A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.
Iamb
A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The following is an example:

Imagery
A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.
Irony
Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
Lyric Poem
A short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle. Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died" is a lyric poem wherein the speaker, on a deathbed expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common housefly instead.
Metaphor
A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words "like" or "as." Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," has this to say about the moral condition of his parishoners:
There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder;
The comparison here is between God's anger and a storm. Note that there is no use of "like" or "as" as would be the case in a simile.
Meter
A regular pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables in a line or lines of poetry. Below is an illustration of some commonly used metrical patterns:

Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a word represents something else which it suggests. For example in a herd of fifty cows, the herd might be referred to as fifty head of cattle. The word "head" is the word representing the herd.
Mood
The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work, partly by a description of the objects or by the style of the descriptions. A work may contain a mood of horror, mystery, holiness, or childlike simplicity, to name a few, depending on the author's treatment of the work.
Setting
The time and place in which a story unfolds. The setting in Act 1, scene 1 of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," for example, is a public square in Verona, Italy. A drama may contain a single setting, Or the setting may change from scene to scene.
Simile
A figure of speech which takes the form of a comparison between two unlike quantities for which a basis for comparison can be found, and which uses the words "like" or "as" in the comparison.
Sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed. The rhyme scheme in the Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian sonnet has two divisions: the first is of eight lines (the octave), and the second is of six lines (the sestet). The rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The change of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in the poem.
Spondee
A metrical pattern characterized by two or more successively-placed accented syllables. In the following example from Shakespeare's "Othello," Othello's sleep has been disturbed by a fight. He angrily demands to know who started the fight that disturbed him. Not receiving an immediate answer he says:

This is the first instance in the play where Othello shows that he can be ruled by his emotions. The spondee in the first three feet (followed by an iamb in the remaining feet) reminds the reader of a bowstring being drawn back before the arrow flies, or of a bull pawing the ground before charging. This is the use of literary devices: to draw the reader's attention to some noteworthy phenomenon within the literary work, either to illuminate or to intensify.
Stanza
A major subdivision in a poem. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet; a stanza of three lines is called a tercet; a stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," consists of four rhymed tercets followed by a rhymed couplet. The following illustrates the look of a stanza:
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain-and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
Symbolism
A device in literature where an object represents an idea. In Willaim Blake's "The Lamb," the speaker tells the lamb that the force that made him or her is also called a lamb:
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little lamb, I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb;
The symbol of the lamb in the above lines corresponds to the symbolism of the lamb in Christianity wherein Christ is referred to as The Lamb of God.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech wherein a part of something represents the whole thing. In this figure, the head of a cow might substitute for the whole cow. Therefore, a herd of fifty cows might be referred to as "fifty head of cattle."
Theme
An ingredient of a literary work which gives the work unity. The theme provides an answer to the question What is the work about? There are too many possible themes to recite them all in this document. Each literary work carries its own theme(s). The theme of Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night" is loneliness. Shakespeare's "King Lear" contains many themes, among which are blindness and madness. Unlike plot which deals with the action of a work, theme concerns itself with a work's message or contains the general idea of a work.
Tone
Tone expresses the author's attitude toward his or her subject. Since there are as many tones in literature as there are tones of voice in real relationships, the tone of a literary work may be one of anger or approval, pride or piety-the entire gamut of attitudes toward life's phenomena. Here is one literary example: The tone of John Steinbeck's short novel "Cannery Row" is non-judgmental. Mr. Steinbeck never expresses disapproval of the antics of Mack and his band of bums. Rather, he treats them with unflagging kindness.
Trochee
A metrical pattern in a line of poetry characterized by one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. The opening line to Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" provides an example:

Understatement
A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant. For example, if one were in a desert where the temperature was 125 degrees, and if one wee to describe thermal conditions saying "It's a little warm today." that would be an understamement. In Shakespeare's "Macbeth," Macbeth, having murdered his friend Banquo, understates the number of people who have been murdered since the beginning of time by saying "Blood hath been shed ere now."
The opposite is hyperbole.