Literary Terms

Literary Terms

  • Poetry Lesson

    Carla Beard: Who knows why we call it figurative language?
    Student: Because you have to figure out what it means!

    Peggy Smith: Cut out newspaper headlines and titles of articles- especially from the sports section. Paste them on a posterboard and number them. Have students identify the figure of speech by number and explain in concrete terms what the line is saying. Some examples from today's Plain Dealer: "Buckeyes clip ice-cold Gophers", "New Crop of Garden Catalogs", "The Heat is Back on Steel Makers". These are pretty lame, but usually there are some good pickings in the daily newspaper.

    Allegory
    Alliteration
    Allusion
    Amplification
    Anagram
    Analogy
    Anaphora
    anastrophe
    Anthropomorphism
    Animal related words
    Antithesis
    Aphorism
    Apostrophe/Authorial Intrusion
    Archetype
    Assonance
    Asyndeton
    Bibliomancy
    Bildungsroman
    Cacophony
    Caesura
    Characterization
    Chiasmus
    Circumlocution
    Conflict
    Connotation
    Consonance
    Denotation
    Deus ex Machina
    Diction
    Doppelganger
    Ekphrastic
    Emulation
    Epilogue
    Epithet
    Euphemism
    Euphony
    Faulty Parallelism
    Flashback
    Foil
    Foreshadowing
    Hyperbation
    Hyperbole
    Imagery
    Internal Rhyme
    Inversion
    Irony
    Juxtaposition
    Kennings
    Malapropism
    Metaphor
    Metonymy
    Motif
    Mood
    Negative Capability
    Nemesis
    Onomatopoeia
    Oxymoron
    Paradox
    Pathetic Fallacy
    Periphrasis
    Periodic Structure
    Personification
    Point of View
    Plot
    Polysyndeton
    Portmanteau
    Prologue
    Puns
    Rhyme Scheme
    Rhythm & Rhyme
    Satire
    Setting
    Simile
    Spoonerism
    Stanza
    Stream of Consciousness
    Syllepsis
    Symbol
    Synecdoche
    Synesthesia
    Syntax
    Theme
    Tone
    Tragedy
    Understatement
    Verisimilitude
    Verse


    For specific types of poetry like sonnet, ode, etc, go HERE

    Other Sources

  • BedfordStMartins
  • The Forest of Rhetoric
  • Literary Terms.
  • Literary and Rhetorical Terms The Department of English, University of Victoria
  • More Lit Terms from Joel Sommer Littauer
  • Rhetorical Figures
  • Virtual Salt A Glossary of Literary Terms from Robert Harris
  • Virtual Salt Rhetorical Devices from R Harris.
  • Wikipedia Literary Terms.
  • Words of Art
  • Writing Tools from Matthew Alexander


    Please email comments etc about the entries. Please put the literary term being discussed in your missive on the subject line.
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