Literary TermsI can list and define!!!

Figurative Language Terms: comparisons

• Metaphor – comparison of two essentially different things as if they are identical. • The snow was a white blanket over the ground

• Simile – comparison of two essentially different things using a word of comparison.• The people reacted like pigeons going after bread crumb to the bargains on the

counter.

• Personification – a figure of speech in which an object or animal is spoken of as if it had human feelings, thoughts, or actions. • The clerk’s feather duster danced across the display.

Figures of Speech: Sound Devices

• Alliteration – the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. • The crowd pressed closely together in the cramped corridor.

• Onomatopoeia – using of words whose sounds suggest their meanings.• Crash, boom, buzz, whisper, howl, gurgle

• Rhyme Scheme – the pattern of ending sounds in lines (rhyming). • To show rhyme scheme, use a different letter to label each line that ends with a new sound

• Rhythm – the musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound patterns. • Jack and Jill went up the hill• To fetch a pail of water

Literary Terms I

• Idiom – an expression that means something different from the literal meaning of the words. • It’s raining cats and dogs.

• Analogy – a literal comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.• His father was very much like his grandfather.

• Imagery – use of language that appeals to the senses. • The ruby red slippers of Dorothy Gale in Oz.

Literary Terms II

• Hyperbole – an extreme exaggeration. • When I was young I had to walk to school ten miles uphill each

way.

• Irony – a contrast between expectation and reality• Narrative voice – the speaker of the poem, not to be

confused with the poet. • Colloquial Language – the use of vocabulary that is part of

everyday speech, often including slang

PoetrySound and Sense

Poetry is like music

• Reading just the lyrics is not enough. We need the sound as well.• Good poems create their own music.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge – “the best words in their best order.”

• How did he do this?

In Zanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree;Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.

Poetry Terms I • Repetition – the use of the same word or words more than once in

a line or group of lines. • Refer to “Artist to Artist” by Davida Adedjouma

• Free Verse – a poem written without a set pattern of rhyme, meter, or line length. Poets use words and images to help make free verse feel different from regular sentences or prose.

• Stanza –a group of lines in a poem. Usually, the lines in a stanza are related to each other in the same way the sentences of a paragraph go together.

Poetry Terms II• Sound Effects

• rhythm (or beat) – the patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables • rhyme – the repetition of accented vowel sounds

• usually at the ends of words

• alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds in words close together• consonance -- the repetition of consonant sounds within words.• assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds within words

• onomatopoeia – use of words whose sounds suggest their meanings• cacophony -- use of harsh, unpleasant sounds

• euphony – use of pleasing sounds