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.

2. Alliteration: The repetition of first consonants in a group of words as in “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers.”

3. Allusion: A reference to something or someone often literary
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.

4. Analogy
a comparison of certain similarities between things which are otherwise unlike.
Here is an example of an analogy:
A street light is like a star. Both provide light at night, both are in predictable locations, both are overhead, and both serve no function in the daytime.

5. Anaphora
Repetition of a word, phrase or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences or clauses in a row.
This is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer’s point more coherent.

6. Antagonist: A major character who opposes the protagonist in a story or play. Example:

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

8. Aside
an actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. An aside is usually used to let the audience know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking.

9. Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds as in “Days wane away.”

10. Atmosphere: The overall feeling of a work, which is related to tone and mood.

11. Blank verse: Unrhymed lines of poetry usually in iambic pentameter
Blank verse: Unrhymed lines of poetry usually in iambic pentameter. Plenty of modern poetry is written in blank verse.

12. Characterization: The means by which an author establishes character.

13. Direct Characterization
A narrator who is not a character in the story makes statements about a character.

14. Indirect Characterization
The writer reveals information about a character through the words, thoughts and actions and the thoughts of other characters.

15. Climax: The point at which the action in a story or play reaches its emotional peak.

16. Conflict: A serious disagreement or argument The elements that create a plot. Traditionally, every plot is built from the most basic elements of a conflict and an eventual resolution.

17. Types of Conflict
External: Man vs. man man vs. circumstance (fate) man vs. society Internal: man vs. inner self

18. Contrast: To explain how two things differ
Contrast: To explain how two things differ. To compare and contrast is to explain how two things are alike and how they are different.

19. 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.

20. Denouement: The resolution of the conflict in a plot after the climax
Denouement: The resolution of the conflict in a plot after the climax. It also refers to the resolution of the action in a story or play after the principal drama is resolved—in other words, tying up the loose ends or wrapping up a story.

21. Diction
the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing

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

23. Dramatic Structure
The sequence a 5-act play follows including exposition, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action, and denouement or catastrophe. credit Gustav Freytag 1863

24. Plot Structure Components
Climax: The turning point. The most intense moment (either mentally or in action.
Rising Action: the series of conflicts and crisis in the story that lead to the climax.
Falling Action: all of the action which follows the Climax.
Exposition: The mood and conditions existing at the beginning of the story. The setting is identified. The main characters with their positions, circumstances and relationships to one another are established. The exciting force or initial conflict is introduced. Sometimes called the “Narrative HOOK” this begins the conflict that continues throughout the story.
Rising Action: The series of events, conflicts, and crises in the story that lead up to the climax, providing the progressive intensity, and complicate the conflict.
Climax: The turning point of the story. A crucial event takes place and from this point forward, the protagonist moves toward his inevitable end. The event may be either an action or a mental decision that the protagonist makes.
Falling Action/Denouement: The events occurring from the time of the climax to the end of the story. The main character may encounter more conflicts in this part of the story, but the end is inevitable.
Resolution: The tying up of loose ends and all of the threads in the story. The conclusion. The hero character either emerges triumphant or is defeated at this point.
Exposition: The start of the story. The way things are before the action starts.
Resolution: The conclusion, the tying together of all of the threads.

25. Elegy: A poem mourning the dead.

26. End rhyme: Rhyming words that are at the ends of their respective lines—what we typically think of as normal rhyme.

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

28. Epithet: a word, phrase or expression used as a term of abuse or contempt to express hostility.

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

30. Figurative Language: Language that does not mean exactly what it says
Figurative Language: Language that does not mean exactly what it says. For example, you can call someone who is very angry “steaming.” Unless steam was actually coming out of your ears, you were using figurative language.

31. First Person Point of View:
First Person Point of View: The point of view of writing which the narrator refers to himself as “I.”

32. Flashback
a device in the narrative of a motion picture, novel, etc., by which an event or scene taking place before the present time in the narrative is inserted into the chronological structure of the work.

33. Foil
A foil is a person who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight various features of the main character's personality: to throw the character of the protagonist into sharper focus.

34. Foreshadowing: A technique in which an author gives clues about something that will happen later in the story.

35. Free Verse: Poetry with no set meter (rhythm) or rhyme scheme.

36. Genre:. A kind of style usually art or literature
Genre: A kind of style usually art or literature. Some literary genres are mysteries, westerns, and romances.

37. Hyperbole: A huge exaggeration
Hyperbole: A huge exaggeration. For example, “Dan’s the funniest guy on the planet!” or “That baseball card is worth a zillion dollars!”

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

39. Imagery: The use of description that helps the reader imagine how something looks, sounds, feels, smells, or taste. Most of the time, it refers to appearance. For example, “The young bird’s white, feathered wings flutter as he made his way across the nighttime sky.”

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

41. Irony "To say one thing but to mean something else"—
incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

42. Dramatic Irony
In dramatic irony, the author, narrator or playwright reveals to the reader or audience information about a character’s situation of which the character is not aware.

43. Situational Irony
Situational irony results when well-founded expectations –- either a character’s or the audience’s –- appear to be secure but fail to manifest –- another way in which appearance and reality can wind up in contradiction.

44. Verbal Irony
Verbal irony involves figures of speech, in which what is said is not what is meant. Sarcasm!

45. Literal Language: Language that means exactly what it says.

46. Lyric: A type of poetry that expresses the poet’s emotions
Lyric: A type of poetry that expresses the poet’s emotions. It often tells some sort of brief story, engaging the reading in the experience.

47. Metaphor: A comparison that doesn’t use “like” or “as”—such as “He’s a rock” or “I am an island.”

48. Meter: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the lines of a poem.

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

50. Mood: The emotional atmosphere of a given piece of writing.

51. Motif: A theme or pattern that recurs in a work.

52. Myth: A legend that embodies the beliefs of people and offers some explanation for natural and social phenomena.

53. Onomatopoeia: The use of words that sound like what they mean such as “buzz.”

54. Oxymoron conjoining contradictory terms
Example: as in ‘deafening silence’
Deliberate puns: ‘same difference’
‘pretty ugly’

55. Paradox:. A seeming contradiction
Paradox: A seeming contradiction. For example, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

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

57. Personification:. Giving inanimate object human characteristics
Personification: Giving inanimate object human characteristics. For example, “The flames reached for the child hovering in the corner.”

58. Plot: The action in the story.

59. Point of View
First Person Point of View: The narrator tells the story and is a character in the story. (Pronouns: I, me, us, we, our, etc.)
Third Person Omniscient: The narrator is not a character in the story but can tell you the thoughts and actions of all characters at all times. (Pronouns: he, she, him, her, they, them, etc.)
Third Person Limited: The narrator is not a character in the story but can tell you the thoughts and actions of a few key characters at all times. (Pronouns: he, she, him, her, they, them, etc.)

60. Prose:. Writing organized into sentences and paragraphs
Prose: Writing organized into sentences and paragraphs. In other words, normal writing—not poetry.

61. Protagonist: The main character of a novel, play, or story.

62. Pseudonym
A fictitious name adopted, especially by an author.
alias

63. Pun: The use of a word in a way that plays on its different meanings
Pun: The use of a word in a way that plays on its different meanings. For example, “Noticing the bunch of bananas, the hungry gorilla went ape.”

64. Quatrain: A four-line stanza.

65. Rhetorical Question: A question not meant to be answered such as “Why can’t we just get along?”

66. Sarcasm: Language that conveys a certain idea by saying just he opposite such as if it’s raining outside and you say, “My what a beautiful day.”

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

68. Sensory imagery: Imagery that has to do with something you can see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. For example, “The stinging, salty air drenched his face.”

69. Setting
The place and time at which a play, novel, short story or film is represented as happening.

70. Simile: A comparison that uses “like” or “as” For example, “I’m as hungry as a wolf,” or “My love is like a rose.”

71. 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.

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

73. Stanza: A section of poetry separated from the sections before and after it; a verse “paragraph.”

74. Subplot: A line of action secondary to the main story.

75. Suspense
That quality of a literary work that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. Suspense makes the reader ask "What will happen next?".

76. Symbol
Something that on the surface is its literal self but which also has another meaning or even several meanings.
For example, a sword may be a sword and also symbolize justice.

77. Symbolism:. The use of one or more things to represent another
Symbolism: The use of one or more things to represent another. For example, a dove is a symbol of peace.

78. Syntax
Syntax is a set of rules in a language. It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought.
To convey meaning is one of the main functions of syntax. In literature, writers utilize syntax and diction to achieve certain artistic effects like mood, tone etc. Like diction, syntax aims to affect the readers as well as express the writer’s attitude.

79. Theme: The central idea of a work.

80. Tone: The author’s attitude toward his or her subject
Tone: The author’s attitude toward his or her subject. For example, a tone could be pessimistic, optimistic, or angry.

81. Voice: The narrative point of view whether it’s in the first, second, or third person.