Poetic Terms Flashcards
(19 cards)
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words.
Characterisation
The means by which writers present and reveal character.
Cliffhanger
A dramatic ending to a piece on writing, leaving the audience in suspense and often anxious.
Denouement
The resolution of the plot of a literary work.
Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next.
Foreshadowing
Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration.
Irony
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean.
Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is “My love is a red, red rose,”
Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic.
Personification
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities.
Protagonist
The main character of a literary work–Macbeth on Romeo in the plays named after them
Quatrain
A four-line stanza in a poem
Rhyme
The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.
Rhythm
The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse often creating a beat.
Simile
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: “My love is like a red, red rose.”
Sonnet
A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter, often on the theme of love, made famous by Shakespeare.
Stanza
A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form (also known as a verse).
Symbol
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
