Alliteration

1. Alliteration • The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. It is used to emphasize certain words or create a musical quality.

2. Ballad • A short, musical narrative song or poem that in most cases recounts a single, exciting or dramatic episode.

3. Characterization • The methods used to reveal the personality of a character. • Direct characterization: author describes personality in a sentence • Indirect characterization: suggests personality by characters’ words, actions, appearance, and the reactions of other characters to the person being portrayed.

4. Climax • Emotional high point of the plot or turning point for the main character

5. Connotation • The suggested or implied meanings associated with a word beyond its dictionary definition. • Positive, negative, neutral

6. Denotation • Dictionary definition of a word

7. Denouement • Another name for the resolution to the plot in which the final outcome is revealed

8. Dialect • A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people. Dialects may differ from the standard from of language in pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar.

9. Dialogue • Conversation between characters in a literary work

10. End Rhyme • Rhyme at the ends of lines

11. Epilogue • A concluding statement or section added to a work of literature

12. Foreshadowing • The author’s use of hints or clues to prepare readers for events that will happen later in a narrative

13. Formal Language • A set of words defined by a means of formal grammar or rules that describe how to form strings form the language’s alphabet

14. Heroic couplet • Name for the poetic form used by Greek and Roman poets • Each line typically consists of ten alternating unstressed and stressed syllables (iambic pentameter)

15. Hyperbole • A figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor

16. Imagery • The “word pictures” that writers create to help evoke an emotional response in readers.

17. Imperfect Rhyme • Same as slant rhyme

18. Internal Rhyme • Occurs within a line of poetry

19. Irony • A contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality.

20. Metaphor • A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things to help readers perceive the first thing more vividly and suggest an underlying similarity between the two

21. Monologue • A long speech by a character in a play, spoken either to others or as if alone.

22. Moral • A message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or an event

23. Mourn • To feel or express grief or sorrow

24. Onomatopoeia • The use of words with sounds that imitate or suggest their meaning.

25. Optimistic • Tending to take a hopeful and positive view of future outcomes

26. Paradox • A statement that appears to be contradictory but is actually true, either in fact or in a figurative sense

27. Personification • A figure of speech in which an animal, object, force of nature, or idea is given human qualities

28. Pessimistic • Tendency to see only the negative or worst aspects of all things and to expect only unpleasant things to happen.

29. Plot • The sequence of events in a narrative work

30. Point of View • The relationship of the narrator to the story

31. Prologue • An introductory section of a play, speech, or other literary work

32. Resolution • Final outcomes of the plot are revealed…also known as the denouement.

33. Rhyming Couplet • Two lines of rhymed verse that work together as a unit to express an idea or make a point.

34. Sarcasm • Mocking, contemptuous, or ironic language intended to convey scorn or insult

35. Satire • Literature that exposes to ridicule the vices or follies of people or societies through devices such as exaggeration, understatement, and irony.

36. Setting • The time and place in which the events of a literary work occur. The setting includes not only the physical surroundings but also the ideas, customs, values, and beliefs of the people who live there.

37. Simile • A figure of speech that uses the words like or as to compare two seemingly unlike things.

38. Slant Rhyme • An approximate rhyme based on assonance, the repetition of a vowel sound, or on consonance, the repetition of a consonant sound at the end of a word.

39. Soliloquy • A dramatic device in which a character, alone on the stage (or while under the impression of being alone) reveals his or her private thoughts and feelings as if thinking aloud.

40. Suspense • The anticipation of the outcome of events, especially as they affect a character for whom one has sympathy, uncertainty causes anxiety.

41. Theme • The main idea of a story, poem, novel, or a play, sometimes expressed as a general statement about life.

42. Universal • Affecting the entire world or all within the world, worldwide

43. Paragon • A model of excellence or perfection

44. Stereotyping • A generalization about a group of people that is made without regard for individual differences or a conventional character who conforms to an expected, fixed pattern of behavior