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Allegory	A story whose characters and events stand for deeper ideas		tp-literary-terms
Alliteration	Repeating beginning consonant sounds		tp-literary-terms
Allusion	A brief reference to a known person, place or work		tp-literary-terms
Ambiguity	Deliberate use of more than one possible meaning		tp-literary-terms
Anachronism	Something placed in the wrong time period		tp-literary-terms
Analogy	A comparison to explain something by likeness		tp-literary-terms
Anaphora	Repeating a word or phrase at the start of successive lines or sentences		tp-literary-terms
Antagonist	The character or force opposing the protagonist		tp-literary-terms
Antithesis	Placing opposite ideas in balanced phrases		tp-literary-terms
Aphorism	A short statement of a general truth		tp-literary-terms
Apostrophe	Directly addressing an absent person or thing		tp-literary-terms
Assonance	Repetition of vowel sounds		tp-literary-terms
Bildungsroman	A novel about a character's growth to adulthood		tp-literary-terms
Blank verse	Unrhymed iambic pentameter		tp-literary-terms
Caesura	A pause within a line of poetry		tp-literary-terms
Characterization	How an author creates and develops a character		tp-literary-terms
Climax	The turning point of highest tension		tp-literary-terms
Colloquialism	Informal everyday expression		tp-literary-terms
Conceit	An elaborate, extended metaphor		tp-literary-terms
Connotation	The feelings a word suggests beyond its literal meaning		tp-literary-terms
Denotation	The literal dictionary meaning		tp-literary-terms
Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds within or at ends of words		tp-literary-terms
Couplet	Two rhymed lines		tp-literary-terms
Deus ex machina	A sudden unexpected event that solves a plot problem		tp-literary-terms
Diction	An author's word choice		tp-literary-terms
Didactic	Intended to teach a lesson		tp-literary-terms
Dramatic irony	The audience knows something the characters do not		tp-literary-terms
Elegy	A poem of mourning		tp-literary-terms
Ellipsis	The omission of words, or the three dots marking it		tp-literary-terms
End-stopped line	A line whose thought ends with the line		tp-literary-terms
Enjambment	A sentence continuing past the end of a line		tp-literary-terms
Epic	A long narrative poem about heroic deeds		tp-literary-terms
Epigraph	A quotation placed at the start of a work		tp-literary-terms
Epistolary novel	A novel told through letters or documents		tp-literary-terms
Euphemism	A mild word replacing a harsh one		tp-literary-terms
Exposition	Background information at a story's start		tp-literary-terms
Extended metaphor	A metaphor developed over several lines		tp-literary-terms
Falling action	Events after the climax		tp-literary-terms
Figurative language	Language meant to be understood beyond its literal sense		tp-literary-terms
First-person narrator	A narrator who tells the story as 'I'		tp-literary-terms
Flashback	A scene from an earlier time		tp-literary-terms
Foil	A character who contrasts with another to highlight traits		tp-literary-terms
Foreshadowing	Hints about what will happen later		tp-literary-terms
Frame story	A story that contains other stories		tp-literary-terms
Free verse	Poetry without regular rhyme or meter		tp-literary-terms
Genre	A category of literature		tp-literary-terms
Gothic	Fiction with gloomy settings and mystery		tp-literary-terms
Hyperbole	Deliberate exaggeration		tp-literary-terms
Iambic pentameter	Ten-syllable line of five unstressed-stressed pairs		tp-literary-terms
Imagery	Language appealing to the senses		tp-literary-terms
In medias res	Beginning a story in the middle of the action		tp-literary-terms
Irony	A contrast between expectation and reality		tp-literary-terms
Juxtaposition	Placing contrasting things side by side		tp-literary-terms
Litotes	Understatement using a negative, like 'not bad'		tp-literary-terms
Metaphor	A direct comparison without 'like' or 'as'		tp-literary-terms
Metonymy	Using a related thing to stand for something, like 'the crown' for a king		tp-literary-terms
Mood	The feeling a work creates in the reader		tp-literary-terms
Motif	A recurring element that supports a theme		tp-literary-terms
Narrative arc	The shape of a story's development		tp-literary-terms
Ode	A lyric poem praising a subject		tp-literary-terms
Onomatopoeia	A word that imitates a sound		tp-literary-terms
Oxymoron	Two contradictory words together		tp-literary-terms
Parable	A short story teaching a moral lesson		tp-literary-terms
Paradox	A statement that seems contradictory but reveals truth		tp-literary-terms
Parallelism	Repeating similar grammatical structure		tp-literary-terms
Parody	An imitation meant to mock or amuse		tp-literary-terms
Pathos	An appeal to emotion		tp-literary-terms
Ethos	An appeal based on credibility		tp-literary-terms
Logos	An appeal based on logic		tp-literary-terms
Personification	Giving human traits to non-human things		tp-literary-terms
Point of view	The perspective from which a story is told		tp-literary-terms
Third-person omniscient	A narrator who knows all characters' thoughts		tp-literary-terms
Third-person limited	A narrator who knows one character's thoughts		tp-literary-terms
Protagonist	The main character		tp-literary-terms
Pun	A play on words		tp-literary-terms
Quatrain	A four-line stanza		tp-literary-terms
Refrain	A repeated line or phrase		tp-literary-terms
Rhetorical question	A question asked for effect, not an answer		tp-literary-terms
Rhyme scheme	The pattern of rhymes at line ends		tp-literary-terms
Rising action	Events building toward the climax		tp-literary-terms
Satire	Using humor and exaggeration to criticize		tp-literary-terms
Setting	The time and place of a story		tp-literary-terms
Simile	A comparison using 'like' or 'as'		tp-literary-terms
Soliloquy	A speech in which a character speaks thoughts aloud alone		tp-literary-terms
Sonnet	A fourteen-line poem		tp-literary-terms
Stanza	A group of lines in a poem		tp-literary-terms
Stream of consciousness	A narrative style following a character's flowing thoughts		tp-literary-terms
Symbol	An object that stands for a larger idea		tp-literary-terms
Synecdoche	A part standing for the whole, like 'hands' for workers		tp-literary-terms
Syntax	The arrangement of words in sentences		tp-literary-terms
Theme	A central idea of a work		tp-literary-terms
Tone	The author's attitude toward the subject		tp-literary-terms
Tragedy	A drama of a hero's downfall		tp-literary-terms
Tragic flaw	A trait that leads to a hero's ruin		tp-literary-terms
Understatement	Describing something as less than it is		tp-literary-terms
Unreliable narrator	A narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted		tp-literary-terms
Utopia	An imagined perfect society		tp-literary-terms
Dystopia	An imagined society marked by suffering or oppression		tp-literary-terms
Voice	The distinctive style of a writer or narrator		tp-literary-terms
Zeugma	One word applied to two others in different senses		tp-literary-terms