Quiz Literary Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
The repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of words
Conceit
Figures of speech which establish a striking parallel usually an elaborate parallel between two dry dissimilar things or situations
Concrete poetry
Radically reduced language, typed or printed in such a way as to force the visible text on the reader’s attention as an object which is itself to be perceived as a whole.
Couplet
A pair of lined rhymes
Epigrammatic turn
In poetry, the volta or turn, is a dramatic change in thought or emotion, epigrams typically end with a punchline or a satirical twist, making them very memorable.
Hyperbole
A bold overstatement or the extravagant exaggeration of a fact or possibility. It may be used for serious, ironic or comedic effect.
Iambic pentameter
A line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable.
Literary ballad
Narrative poem which tells a story
Lyric
Any fairly short poem consisting of the utterance by a single speaker who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception thought and feeling. Although the lyric is uttered in the first person in the poem, it need not be the poet who wrote it. In other words if this is the case we are to read the poem as a personal expression.
Meter
Rhythm of stresses that are structured in a recurring, regular pattern.
Narrative
Any poem that tells a story which involves events and characters through the voice of a narrator or characters. These ones usually do not have a rhyme scene, except: ballad.
Onomatopoeia
A word or combination of words, whose sound seems to ressemble closely the sound it denotes.
Prose
All discourse spoken or written which is not patterned into the lines and rhythms either of metric versus or of free verse.
Rhyme
Standard rhyme consists of the repetition in the rhyming words of the last stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel.
Slam poetry
A form of performance poetry that combines the elements of performance, writing, competition and audience participation.
Sonnet
A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme.
Stanza
A grouping of verse lines in a poem, set off by a space in the printed text. Usually, the stanzas of a given poem are marked by a recurrent pattern of rhyme and are also uniform in the number and lengths of component lines.
Synecdoche
A part of something is used to signify a whole
Verse
Compositions written in meter are known as verse.
