Literary Terms

1. Literary Terms I can list and define!!!

2. Figurative Language Terms: comparisons • Metaphor – comparison of two essentially different things as if they are identical. • The snow was a white blanket over the ground • Simile – comparison of two essentially different things using a word of comparison. • The people reacted like pigeons going after bread crumb to the bargains on the counter. • Personification – a figure of speech in which an object or animal is spoken of as if it had human feelings, thoughts, or actions. • The clerk’s feather duster danced across the display.

3. Figures of Speech: Sound Devices • Alliteration – the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. • The crowd pressed closely together in the cramped corridor. • Onomatopoeia – using of words whose sounds suggest their meanings. • Crash, boom, buzz, whisper, howl, gurgle • Rhyme Scheme – the pattern of ending sounds in lines (rhyming). • To show rhyme scheme, use a different letter to label each line that ends with a new sound • Rhythm – the musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound patterns. • Jack and Jill went up the hill • To fetch a pail of water

4. Literary Terms I • Idiom – an expression that means something different from the literal meaning of the words. • It’s raining cats and dogs. • Analogy – a literal comparison made between two things to show how they are alike. • His father was very much like his grandfather. • Imagery – use of language that appeals to the senses. • The ruby red slippers of Dorothy Gale in Oz.

5. Literary Terms II • Hyperbole – an extreme exaggeration. • When I was young I had to walk to school ten miles uphill each way. • Irony – a contrast between expectation and reality • Narrative voice – the speaker of the poem, not to be confused with the poet. • Colloquial Language – the use of vocabulary that is part of everyday speech, often including slang

6. Poetry Sound and Sense

7. Poetry is like music • Reading just the lyrics is not enough. We need the sound as well. • Good poems create their own music. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge – “the best words in their best order.” • How did he do this? In Zanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree; Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

8. Poetry Terms I • Repetition – the use of the same word or words more than once in a line or group of lines. • Refer to “Artist to Artist” by Davida Adedjouma • Free Verse – a poem written without a set pattern of rhyme, meter, or line length. Poets use words and images to help make free verse feel different from regular sentences or prose. • Stanza –a group of lines in a poem. Usually, the lines in a stanza are related to each other in the same way the sentences of a paragraph go together.

9. Poetry Terms II • Sound Effects • rhythm (or beat) – the patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables • rhyme – the repetition of accented vowel sounds • usually at the ends of words • alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds in words close together • consonance -- the repetition of consonant sounds within words. • assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds within words • onomatopoeia – use of words whose sounds suggest their meanings • cacophony -- use of harsh, unpleasant sounds • euphony – use of pleasing sounds