| A | B |
|---|
| allegory | a story in which the characters, settings, and events stand for abstract or moral concepts. |
| alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to one another |
| allusion | a reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or popular culture |
| analogy | a comparison of two things to show that they are alike in certain respects |
| anecdote | a brief and sometimes witty story that focuses on a single interesting incident or event, often in order to make a point or teach a moral lesson. |
| antagonist | the character of force that opposes or blocks the protagonist, or main character in a narrative |
| aphorism | a concise, sometimes witty saying that expresses a principle, truth, or observation about life. |
| apostrophe | a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract quality or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding |
| aside | private words that a character in a play speaks to the audience or to another character and that are not supposed to be overheard by others onstage. |
| asonance | the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together. |
| atmosphere | the mood or feeling in a literary work |
| autobiography | a written account of the author's own life |
