Literary Terms Flashcards

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Alliteration

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The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words. Example: “We saw the sea sound sing, we heard the salt sheet tell,” from Dylan Thomas’s “Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed.”

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Allusion

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A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement.

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Ambiguity

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A word, phrase, or statement containing more than one meaning. It refers to the openness of language to different interpretations.

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Antithesis

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A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in: Man proposes; God disposes. Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.

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Cacophony

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Describes words that are harsh sounding.

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Caesura

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A pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, often created by punctuation, and often greater than the normal pause. Example: One would naturally pause after “human” in the following line from Alexander Pope: To err is human, to forgive divine.

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Conceit

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An extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison.

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Connotation

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The cultural or emotional meaning of a word; the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes.

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Denotation

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The dictionary definition of the word.

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Diction

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The use of specific word choice in a literary work. Diction may be described as formal, informal, colloquial, or slang.