| A | B |
|---|
| alliteration | repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds usually at the beginning of words that are close together in a poem. |
| allusion | Reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or pop culture. |
| blank verse | Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
| climax | Moment of great emotional intensity or suspense in a plot. |
| comic relief | Comic scene or event that breaks up a serious play or narrative. |
| conflict | Struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces. |
| couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. |
| dialogue | The conversation between characters in a story or play. |
| foil | Character who is used as a contrast to another character. |
| genre | The category that a work of literature is classified under. |
| iambic pentameter | Line of poetry that contains five iambs. |
| lyric poetry | Poetry that does not tell a story but is aimed only at expressing a speaker's emotions or thoughts. |
| metaphor | Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, in which one thing becomes another thing without the use of the word like, as, than, or resembles. |
| meter | Generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. |
| personification | Kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human. |
| protagonist | Main character in fiction or drama. |
| pun | Play on the multiple meanings of a word or two words that sound alike but have different meanings. |
| rhyme | Repetition of accented vowel sounds, and all sounds following them, in words that are close together in a poem. |
| simile | Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, resembles, or than. |
| soliloquy | Long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud. |
| sonnet | Fourteen line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes. |
| stanza | Group of consecutive lines in a poem. |
| symbol | Person, place, thing, or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself as well. |
| theme | . |
| tragedy | . |
