Attitude a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character.

Central idea of a work of literature.

Person, place, thing, or event that stands for itself and for something beyond itself as well.

Uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what is going to happen next.

Fourteen line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes. Lyric poetry does not tell a story but is aimed only at expressing a speaker’s emotions or thoughts.

An unusually long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud.

Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, resembles, or than.

The time and place of a story or play.

Musical quality in language produced by repetition.

Repetition of accented vowel sounds, and all sounds following them, in words that are close together in a poem. End rhymes occur at the ends of lines.

The end of the story in which the conflict is resolved.

Play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.

Type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the reader’s emotions and imagination.

Kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human.

A figure of speech in which the words contradict each other because they have opposite meanings.

Generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, in which one thing becomes another thing without the use of the word like, as, than, or resembles.

The audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know.

A contrast between what would seem appropriate and what really happens or when there is a contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really takes place.

A writer or speaker says one thing but really means something completely different.

Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality -- between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected to happen and what really does happen, or between what appears to be true and what is true.

Reversal of the normal word order of a sentence.

Language that appeals to the senses.

Line of poetry that contains five iambs.

Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.

The use of clues to hint at events that will occur later in the plot.

A character who is used as a contrast to another character.

Scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to flash backward and tell what happened at an earlier time.

The introduction in which the characters and setting are presented.

Story that is written to be acted for an audience.

The turning point, the moment when a choice made by the main characters determines the direction of the action: upward to a happy ending in a comedy, or downward to tragedy.

Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.

Comic scene or event that breaks up a serious play or narrative.

Moment of great emotional intensity or suspense in a plot. The highest point of action.

Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Repetition of similar vowel sounds that are followed by different consonant sounds, especially in words that are close together in a poem.

Words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or another character but are not supposed to be heard by others onstage.

Reference to a statement, a person, a place or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, science, or pop culture.

Repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.