| A | B |
|---|
| Iamb | a poetic foot made up of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented on; te TUM |
| Icon | A holy replica used in Eastern Orthodox Churches |
| Ictus | the stress (') that falls on a syllable |
| Identical Rhyme | a rhyme with words that sound alike but are spelled differently; "rain" "reign" and "rein" |
| Ideology | a belief in something |
| Idiom | the use of words that are "peculiar" to a specific language; i.e. "I'm fixin to" |
| Idyll (Idyl) | short, descriptive narratives |
| Illocutionary Act | a verbal oration or speech |
| Imagists | a group of American poets, including Ezra Pound, who wanted to create poetry with imagery |
| Implied Author | a term applied by Wayne C. Booth; a person in the story who presents the story to the reader |
| Implied Reader | defined by Wolfgang Iser; the invisible reader written into the text of a work |
| Imprecation | a curse or malediction |
| Impression | all the copies of a book printed at one time without changing the type |
| Impressionism | belief that material is to be "felt" rather than seen or read |
| Impressionistic Criticism | criticism that attempts to communicate what the author or artist feels |
| Imprimatur | a license to print a work |
| Improvisation | a work or performance that is done on the spur of the moment |
| Incantation | verbalization that is spoken or chanted |
| Inciting Moment | the name Freytag used for the event that brings about the rising action of a play |
| Incremental Repetition | a form of repetition or iteration found in ballads |
| Incunabulum | a term applied to any book printed in the late 15th century |
| Indeterminacy | the idea that the meaning of a work cannot be determined |
| Index Expurgatorius | a list of passages that are to be "expurgated" (removed) from books that may be read by Catholics |
| Index Librorum Prohibitorum | a list of books that Catholics are not allowed to read |
| Indirect Satire | when the characters who speak or act are themselves the object of ridicule |
| Induction | an old word for "introduction" |
| Influence | the impact that a writer or work has on an individual |
| Inkhorn | a 450 year-old term that describes stiff, formal, or pedantic language |
| Inkhornists | a Renaissance group who used heaving Latin and Greek |
| In medias res | a term for Horace, meaning "in the middle of things" |
| Inscape | a Gerard Manley Hopkins term which refers to "the inner structure or nature of a thing" |
| Inscription | symbols cut or scratched into a hard surface |
| Instress | a Gerard Manley Hopkins term which refers to the idea or force that creates an inscape |
| Intended Reader | a work designed for a specific type of reader |
| Intentional Fallacy | a work is to be judged by the author's or artist's creative intention |
| Intergeneric Prose | prose that combines genres; it may combine prose and poetry |
| Interior Monologue | a stream of consciousness or mind monologue |
| Interlocking Rhyme | when one line of rhyme is carried forward to the next line |
| Interlude | 15th and 16th dentury drama that preceeded realistic comedy |
| Internal Rhyme | rhyme that occurs before the last syllables in a line; "it dropped so low--in my Regard-..." |
| Interpolation | in editing, a word can often be interpolated (inserted) into an empty space; "a man had ____ sons, James and Charles. |
| Interpretive Community | term used by Stanley Fish to distinguish between various interpretaions by readers |
| Intertextuality | created by Julia Kristeva; she said "every text builds upon...absorption from another text." |
| Intrigue Comedy | a comedy in which the major interest is in scheming and complications |
| Intrusive Narrator | an omniscient (unseen) narrator |
| Invention | original and individual creative power |
| Inversion | placing a sentence element out of its normal place; "house beautiful' or "lady fair" |
| Invocation | a plea or address to a god for aid |
| Ionic | a foot of verse with two long and two short syllables |
| Irony | a reality that is different that what is being seen or said |
| Irregular Ode | an ode that does not follow the pattern of strope, antistrophe and epode of the "Pindaric Ode" |
| Isobaric | syllables that bear the same level of stress |
| Issue | a specific set of copies and an edition of a book |
| Italian Sonnet | a sonnet divided into an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdecde |
