literary terms

• Simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words "like" or "as".
• Hyperbole is an exaggeration used for emphasis, not meant to be taken literally.
• Personification is giving human qualities to non-human objects.
• Metaphor is a comparison between two different things without using "like" or "as".
• Alliteration is repeating consonant sounds at the beginning of multiple words close together.
• Onomatopoeia is when a word imitates the sound it describes.
• Tone refers to the attitude or mood conveyed by the writer towards their subject matter.
• An assonance is a sound effect consisting of the repetition of stressed vowel sounds
• Denotation is the meaning of a word according to the dictionary, as opposed to connotations
• Connotation the secondary meaning and associations suggested to the reader by a particular word or phrase
• Caesura is a pause in a line of poetry, usually dependent on the sense of the line an indicated by a strong punctuation mark
• Epic is a long narrative poem, usually celebrating some aspect of the history or identity of a people
• Elegy is a formal poem lamenting the death of a particular person
• Free verse is poetry with no regular rhythmic pattern (metre)
• Couplet is two lines of the same metre which rhyme
• Quatrain is a four line stanza or group of lines, usually rhyming
• Sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem that follows one of several standard forms. The two main types of sonnet are the English or Shakespearean sonnet (distinguished by its final couplet) and the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, consisting of a group of eight lines (the octave) followed by a group of six lines (the sestet)
• Tercet is a three line stanza within a poem
• Stress refers to the prominence or emphasis given to certain words or syllables when they are spoken
• Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part is used for a whole or reversed
• Stanza is a group of lines forming one of the divisions of a poem
• Epic simile is a simile extending over several lines, in which the object of comparison is described at great length
• Eye rhyme is a pair of syllables which appear to the eye as though they should rhyme, but which do not
• Figurative language is non-literal expressions used to convey more vividly certain ideas and feelings; includes such figures as simile, metaphor and personification
• Form is either the appearance of poetry on the page or a way of referring to the structure of the poem — its division into stanzas, etc.
• Imagery is vivid description of an object or a scene
• Irony is a device whereby the apparent meaning of a phrase or passage is different from the meaning it is really intended to convey
• Lyric is a type of poetry that is a personal statement evoking a mood or expressing metaphor
• Metre is the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that we hear over several lines of poetry
• Mood is the dominant feeling evoked by the words, images and other devices used in a poem
• Pastoral is a highly conventional poetic form which celebrates the world of shepherds and other country people
• Rhyme is the repetition of the last stressed vowel sound in a word together with any unstressed sounds that follow
• Rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymed endings of lines within a stanza or short poem; the first rhymed sounds can be labelled a, the second b, and so on
• Rhythm is the recurrence of groups of stressed and unstressed syllables in lines of poetry
• Run-on lines are lines in which the meaning leads you to run swiftly beyond the end of the line and into the next line to complete the syntax and the sense