Literary Terms List 1 1.

Simile: A figure of speech that compares two things that is unlike yet, something in common, using like or as. Ex: When he found out he was late to class, he ran like the wind. 2. Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes a comparison between 2 things that is basically unlike, yet something in common. Unlike simile, there is no like or as. Ex: Brian was a wall, bouncing every tennis ball back over the net. 3. Extended simile: A long comparison that often continues for a number of lines. Ex: As when the shudder of the west wind suddenly rising scatters across the water, And the water darkens beneath it, so darkening were settled the ranks of Achaeans and Trojans in the plain. 4. Extended metaphor: 2 things that are compared at length in various ways- perhaps through a stanza, paragraph, or entire work. Ex: "It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. Thats what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts." (Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemans Union. Harper, 2007) 5. Personification: Figure of speech which human qualities are attributed to an object, animal, or idea. Writers use it to make feelings and images concrete for the reader. Ex: The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky. 6. Apostrophe: speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and was able to reply. Ex: Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? 7. Allusion: A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event--real or fictional. Ex: "I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does." 8. Verbal Irony: irony in which a person says or writes one thing and means another, or uses words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning. Ex: The young girl stares at him in disbelief. "I'm not mad!" she yells, gritting her teeth. The look on her face clearly showed the anger that she was trying so hard to mask. 9. Situational Irony: situation where the outcome is incongruous with what was expected, but it is also more generally understood as a situation that includes contradictions or sharp contrasts. Ex: On Friday night, you leave with friends to watch a basketball game but when you arrive, it is a volleyball tournament instead the basketball game is actually on Saturday night. 10. Dramatic Irony: when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning ex: if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, 'I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered,' and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony 11. Pun: A play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on the similar sense or sound of different words. Ex: "When it pours, it reigns." 12. Allegory: The rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. Ex: Animal Farm. The animals represent a point in history or totalitarianism. 13. Hyperbole: extreme exaggeration, opposite of an understatement.

Ex: I am so hungry I could eat a horse. 14. Anachronism: a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other Ex: a modern-day person to wear a top hat, writes with a quill, or carries on a conversation in Latin 15. Paradox: a statement appears to contradict itself Ex: "If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness." 16. Transferred epithet: an epithet (or adjective) grammatically qualifies a noun other than the person or thing it is actually describing. Ex: "We're coming close to those little creeks now, and we keep a discreet silence." (Henry Hollenbaugh, Rio San Pedro. Alondra Press, 2007) 17. Oxymoron: incongruous or seemingly contradictory terms appear side by side; a compressed paradox Ex: "Ralph, if you're gonna be a phony, you might as well be a real phony." 18. Maxim: A compact expression of a general truth or rule of conduct. Ex: Never trust a man who says, "Trust me." 19. Parallelism: Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. Ex: "They are laughing at me, not with me." 20. Anaphora: A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. Ex: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, and I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun."