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Guide to Literary Terms
Remembering that kennings offer a visual or sensory description of a word's meaning, I can offer some suggestions for thinking about the words you list, but very much want to emphasize that these...
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Guide to Literary Terms
M. Jourdain in Moliere's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme famously said: "Par ma foi! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien." (By Jove! I've been speaking prose...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Much Renaissance love poetry uses extended metaphors or other figures of speech as a means of talking about love or sexuality. One charming example is Thomas Campion’s song “There Is a Garden...
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Romeo and Juliet
This seems like a far more general question than one that is directed towards Romeo and Juliet, so I am going to address it more generally. A genre is a category of books, while a style is the...
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Guide to Literary Terms
"Plot" is a literary term referring to the central action in a work of literature. If you need to summarize a plot for a homework assignment, you should focus on events that move the story from its...
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Guide to Literary Terms
A metaphor is a way of explaining something in terms of something else, without using the words "like" or "as." It is an implied comparison. I think the best way to help you understand this is with...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Dramatic irony means that the audience knows what is going on, but the characters do not. Dramatic irony can be either funny or tragic. Basically, it means that in a prior scene, or from another...
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Guide to Literary Terms
This is an example of personification. Figurative language is language that is not meant to be taken literally. It is colorful and creative, and is used to create a picture in the reader’s mind....
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Guide to Literary Terms
In "I'm Yours," a love song by Jason Mraz, alliteration is used sporadically. There is quite a bit of repetition in the song, as in most songs. Repetition is when a word is repeated. However,...
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Guide to Literary Terms
It is a personification. A personification is when traits that are usually given to human beings are applied to objects or ideas. In this example, love is described as if it had breath, like a...
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Guide to Literary Terms
There are of course a wide range of perspectives within feminist theory. The most widely discussed concepts of the feminist understanding of gender are as follows: Gender in NOT a binary: This...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Modernism is such slippery word. In everyday use we consider it to mean things of our contemporary era. In literature, Modernism is a particular movement and aesthetic of the 19th and 20th...
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Guide to Literary Terms
By contemporary standards, we have a certain notion of comedy that involves a work that is funny and lighthearted. While there is certainly a connection, the classical notion of comedy is a genre...
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Literature
"Life is a roller coaster" is a metaphor, which is a way of equating one person, place, or thing, or idea with another person, place, or thing, or idea to show that some attribute or attributes of...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Appreciation means to recognize and/or enjoy the good qualities of someone or something. Poetry appreciation is that attitude about poetry. Some people flat out enjoy reading poetry. There...
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Guide to Literary Terms
There are two definitions that answer your question. The term abridgment refers to a book or other piece that has been condensed to a shorter form. The main ideas of the story are contained in an...
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Guide to Literary Terms
This opening line from the song "She Looks so Perfect" by the band, 5 Seconds of Summer, when taken out of context does not appear to present any obvious literary device. However, if you look at...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Prose is any kind of writing without a metrical structure. Poetry, in contrast, includes meter, rhyme, and rhythm, so none of these elements are related to prose. Prose solely relies on sentences...
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Guide to Literary Terms
There are hundreds of different "literary devices" or techniques employed by writers of imaginative literature to enhance the effects of their work. The term literary devices usually is applied to...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Literary terms (or literary devices) are found in everything from poems to novels. There are many different literary terms, but a few of the most important ones include: Theme: the central idea or...
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The Lottery
I need to disagree with the basic premise of your question because I believe you are confusing metaphors and symbols. Let's talk about both, so you are able to use literary terms with precision...
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Guide to Literary Terms
This is a great question! Literary analysis requires that you have the ability to make meaning of what you read, that you are able to look at the big picture in your reading and simultaneously be...
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Guide to Literary Terms
The first step in summarizing the main conflict in a book is identifying it. While not all books have a central conflict, most drama and fiction have plot arcs that begin with a conflict and end...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds at the beginning of words. It is a sound device authors use to add pep to their work. You probably will recognize it best if I describe...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Diction can be defined as an author's word choice. It is "literary craftsmanship." Diction can be used in many ways—to set the mood, provide characterization, support a theme, or snag the...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word. It should not be confused with its opposite, connotation. Denotation is the basic, literal meaning of the word. Connotation is a word with...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Some of these phrases are difficult to recognize in that they are taken out of context. "Loving you was nice" may be an example of understatement or meiosis. Meiosis, or understatement is......
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Guide to Literary Terms
This question is somewhat puzzling as there is actually no such thing as a non-fiction novel. A novel is defined as a long work of imaginative literature written in prose. Thus all novels are...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Foreshadowing in a technique commonly used in literature, both in poetry and fiction, to give hints of how a literary work will turn out, often giving the work a sense of inevitability. Anything...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Irony is a literary technique in which words, characters, or plot development are used to create the exact opposite of what would be expected in terms of literal meaning or intention (Random House...
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Guide to Literary Terms
In literature, a symbol is something that represents something else. A symbol is a person, a place, an activity or an object that stands for something beyond itself. The item that seems to be a...
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Guide to Literary Terms
In the study of literature, some readers may be puzzled over the difference between mood and tone. The mood of a literary piece is how the author makes the reader feel. In a literary work, the...
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Guide to Literary Terms
A simile and a metaphor are both literary devices used to compare one thing to another or to transfer the sense or aspect of one thing onto another. The major difference is the fact that a simile...
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Guide to Literary Terms
The word comes from music and it is characterized by the recurrence of a short musical phrase. Of German origin: from leit- "leading"+motiv "motive". Adopted in literature, it also refers to a...
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Invisible Man
(Hopefully, the Vintage Books edition is the one that you have.) In Chapter 13 after his symbolic "rebirth" from the electric shock that temporarily cleansed him of memory, the narrator purchases a...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Since experience comes to people predominantly through the senses, the use of imagery in literary works is essential because it is "the representation through language of sense experience."...
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Reference
Her expectations included a quiet room, a nice view, and she didn't want to pay a lot. This sentence is somewhat parallel. The initial Subject-Verb phrase sets up what could be a X, Y, and Z to...
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Guide to Literary Terms
You're correct in the deduction you made in the penultimate paragraph of your reply to the first answer: pars-pro-toto defines a part used to describe the whole, and synecdoche "can refer both to...
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Poetry
Understanding the terminology in any given field is important, and it is essential in poetry because terminology can impact meaning. The terms you have listed are all important to know when...
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Guide to Literary Terms
A sonnet consists of a 14 line poem which follows a very precise pattern and usually in iambic pentameter: 3 four line units called a quatrain and then the end which is a rhymed couplet or two...
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Guide to Literary Terms
A juxtaposition is a literary device used to develop contrasts and comparisons. Specifically, juxtaposition is defined as when we place "side by side" any "two or more ideas, places, characters and...
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Monster
Walter Dean Myers includes numerous different types of figurative language in his novel Monster. First, Myers includes imagery in the novel. Imagery is the use of descriptive language which...
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Guide to Literary Terms
To answer this question, we need to start with the definitions of what "tone" and themes" actually are. So: Tone is the general feeling of the text. It has more to do with the way in which the...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Writers, desiring to engage the reader, uses language which proves to be filled with figurative language. Imagery, the use of vivid details, helps readers to create mental images of what the author...
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Guide to Literary Terms
You already have a nice response but, since you made a request of me, I'll carry the discussion a little further. Let's start by defining terms. expectation: the act or state of looking forward or...
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Guide to Literary Terms
A metaphor is a rhetorical device in which the author compares two typically unlike things. This comparison is based upon analogies or direct comparisons. Take the following example: "my life is a...
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Guide to Literary Terms
Other examples of the various figures of speech are as follows:Synechdoche: This figure of speech describes either naming a part of something to represent the whole of it, or the reverse. Examples...
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Grammar
The "voice" of a sentence (or clause) determines the relationship between subject and predicate. The term “active” refers to the “voice” of a sentence, and denotes that the subject of the...
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Guide to Literary Terms
The difference lies not in its seriousness but in its length and structure. A symbol can be any thing – an image, a word picture, a reference to a parallel of any kind – it simply “stands...
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Guide to Literary Terms
An allusion is a reference made to an idea, person, condition, or event which one believes the reader or viewer will understand. At times, the allusion made fails to be understood by the...
