| A | B |
|---|
| ballad | a form of verse to be sung or recited and characterized by a dramatic or exciting episode |
| bathos | an abrupt change from the lofty to the ordinary or trivial in writing or speech; anticlimax in narrative form |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| cacophony | the use of seemingly harsh, unmusical sounds |
| caesura | a pause for effect in the middle of a line of poetry |
| catharsis | Aristotle's word for the pity and fear an audience experiences upon viewing the downfall of a hero |
| characterization | the techniques employed by authors to develop characters: actions, descriptions, dialogue, thoughts, inferences |
| chiasmus | similar to antimetable, but reversing the grammatical elements rather than just words, for emphasis |
| clause | a grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. |
| cliche | an overused, worn-out, hackneyed expression taht used to be fresh but is no more |
| climax | the turning point, or crisis, in a play or other piece of literature |
| colloquialism | the use of slang or informalities in speech or writing. Not generally acceptable for formal writing, they give a work a conversational or familiar tone |
| comedy | a work that strives to provoke smiles and laughter |
| complication | the part of a plot in which the entaglement caused by the conflict is developed |
| complex sentence | contains two or more principal clauses and one or more subordinate clause |
| compound sentence | contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinate conjunction (and, but, or) or by a semicolon |
| compound-complex sentence | contains two or more principal clauses and one or more subordinate clauses |
| conceit | an extended metaphor--two unline things are compared in several different ways |
| conflict | a struggle in a story that triggers the action |
| connotation | the emotional implications that a word may carry |
| consonance | repetition of a consonant sound in two or more words in a line of verse |
| couplet | a pair of rhyming lines written in the same meter |
| crisis | the climax or turning point of a story or play |
