| A | B |
|---|
| allegory | tale with 2 or more levels of meaning |
| alliteration | repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words |
| allusion | reference to a well-known person, place, or thing |
| anecdote | a brief story about an interesting or unusual event |
| antagonist | the character in conflict with a main character, who often stirs up trouble in the story |
| apostrophe | a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent person, quality, object, or idea |
| assonance | repetition of vowel sounds in the middle of words within a line of poetry or prose |
| connotation | the association a word calls to mind beyond the dictionary definition |
| consonance | repetition of similar final consonant sounds at the ends of words |
| denotation | a word's dictionary definition |
| dialect | a form of language spoken by people of a particular region of the country |
| figurative language | an expression or word used imaginatively rather than literally |
| foreshadowing | clues or hints of future developments in a work of literature |
| hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration or overstatement in literature |
| imagery | language used to create word pictures or appeal to the five senses |
| irony | a contrast between what is expected and what actually happens |
| metaphor | a comparison between two dislike items; one thing is spoken as if it were another thing |
| mood | the feeling created by the author |
| onomatopoeia | use of words that imitate sounds |
| oxymoron | figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas |
| personification | a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics |
| protagonist | the main character in a literary work |
| scansion | the process of analyzing a poem's meter pattern and rhyme scheme |
| simile | comparison of two dissimilar items using like or as |
| symbol | an item that has both literal and figurative meaning in a work of literature |
| theme | the central message of a work of literature |
| tone | the writer's attitude toward his/her subject matter |
