| A | B |
|---|
| idyll | a short descriptive narrative, usually a poem, about an idealized country life; also called a pastoral |
| imagery | words or phrases that use a collection of images to appeal to one or more of the five senses in order to create a mental picture |
| interior monologue | writing that records the conversation that occurs inside a character's head |
| internal rhyme | a rhyme occurring within a line of poetry, eg. Poe's "The Raven" |
| irony | a situation or statement in which the actual outcome or meaning is opposite to what was expected |
| lyric | a type of melodious, imaginative, and subjective poetry that is usually short and personal, expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker rather than telling a story |
| metaphor | a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to as another; for example, "my love is a fragile flower" |
| meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry |
| monometer | one foot |
| dimeter | two feet |
| trimeter | three feet |
| tetrameter | four feet |
| pentameter | five feet |
| hexameter | six feet |
| heptameter | seven feet |
| anapest | two unstressed followed by one stressed syllable |
| iamb | one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable |
| spondee | two successive stressed syllables |
| trochee | one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable |
| metonymy | figure of speech that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent something with which it is associated, such as using "the crown" to refer to a monarch |
| mode | the method or form of a literary work; a manner in which the work of literature is written |
| mood | similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work |
| narration | the telling of a story in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama; one of the four modes of discourse |
| objectivity | impersonal presentation of events and characters |
| ode | a long lyric poem, usually serious and elevated in tone; often written in praise of someone or something |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words that sound like what they mean, such as hiss and boom |
| oxymoron | a figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as "wise fool" |
| identification | a rhetorical technique in which a speaker suggests his or her similarity or closeness to a particular group, such as the audience |
| idiom | a way of speaking that is peculiar to a region, group, or class, or the conventional forms peculiar to a language; also an expression that is odd or incorrect yet accepted |
| informal | refers to language appropriate for everyday, casual, or familiar conversation or writing |
| in medias res | Latin for "in the middle of things"; refers to the technique of starting a narrative in the middle of the action |
| introduction | the first part of an argument, the purpose of which is to establish the topic to be discussed and engage the reader's interest |
| limited omniscient narration/third-person limited omniscience point of view | a literary style in which the narrator conveys the actions, feelings, and motivations of only one or a handful of characters and discussed these using proper names and the third-person pronouns "he," "she," "it," and "they" |
| literal | focusing on the explicit meaning or words only, and not dealing with context, connotation, figurative language, or other elements that add deeper shades of meaning to a text |
| logic | the mode of reasoning by which we determine whether something is valid or invalid, according to which any claim should in principle be able to be justified by reasons and evidence |
| Logos | Greek for "wisdom" or "reason"; in the context of rhetoric, refers to the process of persuading by means of logic and reason, as opposed to style, authority, or emotion |
| main idea | the central meaning, purpose, or concept around which a piece of writing is organized |
| mediation | the process of bringing opposing parties or positions into a state of accord or compromise; also refers to negotiation |
| melodrama | the use of sentimentality, gushing emotion, sensational action, or plot twists to provoke audience or reader response. Popular in Victorian England, melodrama is now considered manipulative and hokey. |
| mood | the atmosphere or a work of literature; the emotion created by the work (most notably by its setting) |
| motif | a recurring idea, structure, contrast, or device that develops or informs the major themes of a work of literature |
| myth | a story about the origins of a culture's beliefs and practices or of supernatural phenomena, usually derived from oral tradition and set in an imagined supernatural past |
| narrative device | a design or pattern in a literary work used to achieve a particular effect |
| negotiation | the process of discussion and compromise between conflicting positions |
| neologism | a new or invented word, expression, or usage |
| nostalgia | a yearning for the past or for some condition or state of existence that cannot be recovered |
| objective narration/third-person objective point of view | a style in which the narrator reports neutrally on the outward behavior of the characters but offers no interpretation of their actions or their inner states |
| internal conflict | a conflict taking place within a character |
| nonfiction | writing that deals with real people, things, events, or places |
