Literary Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
Close repetition of initial consonant sounds of accented syllables (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Anaphora
Repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines or clauses (“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”)
Antithesis
The placing of one sentence or one of its parts against another to form a balanced contrast of ideas (“Give me liberty or give me death”)
Assonance
Close repetition of the vowel sound of accented syllables or important words (“Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade”)
Asyndeton
The elimination of conjunctions where they are expected
Caesura
A marked pause within a line (“Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope”)
Chiasmus
The crosswise arrangement of contrasted pairs (“Featured like him, like him with friends possessed”)
Connotation
What a word suggests beyond its basic definition
Consonance
Close repetition of the consonant sounds anywhere but the beginning of accented syllables or important words (“Like to the lark at break of day arising.”)
Couplet
Two successive lines linked by rhyme
Denotation
The basic dictionary meaning of a word
End Rhyme
Rhymes that occur at the ends of the lines
End-stopped
A line that ends with a punctuation mark
Enjambment
A line that does not end with a punctuation mark but continues into the next line (“Like to the lark at break of day arising/ From sullen earth”)
Hyperbole
An exaggeration for emphasis