| A | B |
|---|
| allusion | refernce to a literary or historical person |
| apostrophe | when to character speaks to inanimate objects |
| aside | brief remark made by a character and intended to be heard |
| ballad | a song or aonglike poem that tells a story |
| bathos | going quickly from a serious idea to an absurd idea to understate the serious one |
| caesura | a decisive pause near the middle of the line |
| catastrophe | the necessary consequences of the hero's previous actions which must be the hero's death |
| cathasis | purging and purifying the body |
| climax | the turning point in the play |
| comic relief | humorous scene or speech in a serious drama whcih is meant to provide relief from emotional intensity |
| dramatic irony | the audience knows what the characters don't |
| epic | long narrative poem recounting achievement of warriors involved in great battles |
| epithet | adjective or phrase that describes a distinctive |
| exciting force | also called "complication"; begins the conflict whcih will continue in the play |
| exposition | describes the mood and conditions existing at the beginning of the play - time, place, main characters etc |
| falling action | the events occuring from the time of the climax up to the hero's death |
| kenning | metaphorized coumpound word |
| pun | play on words with similar sounds but different meanings |
| rising action | series of events which lead up to the climax of the story |
| romance | tale of chivalry |
| soliloquy | speech given by a character alone on the stage to let the audience know what the character is thinking |
| tragic recognition | hero accepts his destiny |
