Glossary of Literary Terms and Devices

LITERARY STYLE TERMS

• GENERAL
• DRAMATIC PLOT STRUCTURE
• DRAMA-SPECIFIC
• POETRY-SPECIFIC

GENERAL

Allegory: a story that may be applied to another, parallel, set of situations while maintaining its own narrative integrity; serves as an extended metaphor

Alliteration: repetition of identical consonant sounds in different words in close proximity (see assonance,consonance, and sibilance)

Allusion: references (usually unacknowledged) to literary works, persons, sayings, and other elements of our cultural heritage

Anaphora: deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs (see repetition)

Antithesis: a balancing or contrasting of one term against another

Apostrophe: the addressing of discourse to a real or imagined person who is not present (may have died); a speech to an animate object

Assonance: similarity or repetition of a vowel sound in two or more words (versus consonance)

Cacophony: words combining consonant sounds that do not permit an easy flow of pronunciation, but rather produce sharpness or harshness