Literary Elements

Ian T. (United States of America)
46 words 8 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. alliteration
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word
  2. allusion
    passing reference or indirect mention
  3. antagonist
    someone who offers opposition
  4. aside
    a line spoken by an actor not intended for others on stage
  5. assonance
    the repetition of similar vowels in successive words
  6. cadence
    the accent in a metrical foot of verse
  7. characterization
    the act of describing essential features
  8. clause
    an expression including a subject and predicate
  9. climax
    the highest point of anything
  10. conflict
    an open clash between two opposing groups
  11. consonance
    a harmonious state of things and of their properties
  12. diction
    the manner in which something is expressed in words
  13. foreshadowing
    the act of providing vague advance indications
  14. hyperbole
    extravagant exaggeration
  15. image
    language used in a nonliteral sense
  16. irony
    incongruity between what might be expected and what occurs
  17. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
  18. meter
    a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse
  19. onomatopoeia
    using words that imitate the sound they denote
  20. overstatement
    exaggeration of the importance or extent of something
  21. oxymoron
    conjoined contradictory terms
  22. paradox
    a statement that contradicts itself
  23. parallelism
    similarity by virtue of corresponding
  24. participle
    a form of the verb used as an adjective
  25. personification
    attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas
  26. phrase
    an expression consisting of one or more words
  27. plot
    a small area of ground covered by specific vegetation
  28. point of view
    a mental position from which things are perceived
  29. protagonist
    the principal character in a work of fiction
  30. pun
    a humorous play on words
  31. resolution
    something settled
  32. setting
    the context and environment in which something is situated
  33. simile
    a figure of speech expressing a resemblance between things
  34. soliloquy
    speech you make to yourself
  35. stance
    a rationalized mental attitude
  36. stanza
    a fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem
  37. subordination
    the relation of a modifying word or phrase to its head
  38. symbol
    something visible that represents something invisible
  39. syntax
    the study of the rules for forming admissible sentences
  40. theme
    a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in literary work
  41. tone
    a quality that reveals the attitudes of the author
  42. tragedy
    drama exciting terror or pity
  43. understatement
    something said in a restrained way for ironic contrast
  44. vignette
    a small illustrative sketch
  45. voice
    the distinctive quality or pitch of a person's speech
  46. tragic flaw
    the error of a hero in a drama that leads to his downfall
Created on Wed Jun 20 17:45:10 EDT 2012 (updated Mon Jun 25 12:12:26 EDT 2012)

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