1. Allegory: A story in which the characters represent abstract qualities or ideas. For example, in westerns, the sheriff represents the good, and the outlaw represents evil. They can be understood on both a literal and symbolic level.

2. Ballad: a song or poem, especially a traditional one or one in a traditional style, telling a story in a number of short regular stanzas, often with a refrain

3. Epic: A long poem narrating the adventures of a heroic figure—for example, Homer’s The Odyssey, Beowulf.

4. Fable: A story that illustrates a moral often using animals as the character—for example, The Tortoise and the Hare.

5. Farce: a comic play in which authority, order, and morality are at risk and ordinary people are caught up in extraordinary events

6. Memoir: a biography or an account of historical events, especially one written from personal knowledge

7. Parody: A humorous, exaggerated imitation of another work.

8. Satire: A work that makes fun of something or someone.

9. Aside: a remark made by an actor, usually to the audience, that the other characters on stage supposedly cannot hear

10. Dramatic Monologue: A poem with a fictional narrator addressed to someone who identity the audience knows, but who does not say anything.

11. Monologue: A long speech by one character in a play or story.

12. Dialogue: the words spoken by characters in a book, movie, or play, or a section of a work that contains spoken words

13. Soliloquy: A monologue in which a character expresses his or her thoughts to the audience and does not intend the other characters to hear them.

14. Argument: the main point of view expressed in a book, report, or speech, your thesis.

15. Appeals: In classical rhetoric, one of the three main persuasive strategies as defined by Aristotle in Rhetoric: the appeal to logic (logos), the appeal to the emotions (pathos), and the appeal to the character (or perceived character) of the speaker (ethos). More broadly, an appeal may be any persuasive strategy, especially one directed to the emotions, sense of humor, or cherished beliefs of an audience.

16. Counter Argument: A counter-argument is an argument opposed to your thesis, or part of your thesis.

17. Bias: Affects how you interpret and collect information and can lead to flawed reasoning. Biases result from personal experience and ideology, such as political or religious influence, and these biases lead people to believe information that supports what they already perceive to be true, rather than test their own point of view against contradicting evidence

18. Couplets: A pair of rhyming lines in a poem often set off from the rest of the poem. Shakespeare’s sonnets all end in couplets.

19. Rhyme: A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words, most often at the end of lines in poems and songs.

20. Half Rhyme: Half-rhyme or slant-rhyme, sometimes called near-rhyme or imperfect rhyme, are words that come near rhyming, but do not really rhyme.

21. Approximate Rhyme: ( aka imperfect, near, slant or oblique rhyme) A term used for words in a rhyming pattern that have some kind of sound similarity but are not perfect rhymes. Approximate rhymes occur occasionally in patterns where most of the rhymes are perfect, and sometimes are used systematically in place of perfect rhyme.

22. Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written iambic pentameter. Different kinds of sonnets have different rhyme schemes.

23. Ode a lyric poem typically of elaborate or irregular metrical form and expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion, a poem intended to be sung.

24. Sestet A sestet is the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet (as opposed to an English or Spenserian Sonnet), which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines.

25. Iambic pentameter: Ten-syllable lines in which every other syllable is stressed. For example: “With eyes like stars upon the brave night air.”

26. Internal rhyme: A rhyme that occurs within one line such as “He’s King of the Swing.”

27. Rhyme Scheme the pattern of rhymes used in a poem, usually marked by letters to symbolize correspondences, as rhyme royal, ababbcc.

28. Petrarchan Sonnet Original Italian sonnet form in which the sonnet's rhyme scheme divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, an octet (first eight lines) and a sestet (last six lines). The rhyme scheme for the octet is typically abbaabba. There are a few possibilities for the sestet, including cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdcdee.

29. Refrain phrase, line, or group of lines repeated at intervals throughout a poem, generally at the end of the stanza. Three common refrains are the chorus, recited by more than one person; the burden, in which a whole stanza is repeated; and the repetend, in which the words are repeated irregularly throughout the poem. A refrain may be an exact repetition, or it may exhibit slight variations in meaning or form

30. Allusion: A reference to something or someone often literary. For instance, if you were trying to instill confidence in a friend and said, “Use the force,” that would be an allusion to Stars Wars. The verb form of allusion is to allude.

31. Analogy Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. A comparison based on such similarity.

32. Archetype: A character who represents a certain type of person. For example, Daniel Boone is an archetype of the early American frontiersman.

33. Characterization: The means by which an author establishes character. An author may directly describe the appearance and personality of character or show it through action or dialogue.