Literary Terminology
Below is an introduction to the most common terms used to describe and analyze poetry. These terms will be helpful to complete critical close readings.
Literary Terms
Alliteration - The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate. Example: “With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim” from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.”
Allusion - A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement. “The Waste Land,” T. S. Eliot’s influential long poem is dense with allusions. The title of Seamus Heaney’s autobiographical poem “Singing School” alludes to a line from W.B. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” (“Nor is there singing school but studying /Monuments of its own magnificence”).
Ambiguity - A word, statement, or situation with two or more possible meanings is said to be ambiguous.
Anaphora - Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.
Apostrophe - An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present.
Archetype - A basic model from which copies are made; a prototype.
Hyperbole - A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration.
Irony - As a literary device, irony implies a distance between what is said and what is meant. Based on the context, the reader is able to see the implied meaning in spite of the contradiction.
Metaphor - A comparison that is made directly (for example, John Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) or less directly (for example, Shakespeare’s “marriage of two minds”), but in any case without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”
Motif - A central or recurring image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works. Unlike themes, which are messages, statements, or ideas, motifs are details whose repetition adds to the work’s larger meaning; multiple and varying motifs can take place within one work and across longer collections.
Neologism - A newly coined word.
Pathetic Fallacy - The assignment of human feelings to inanimate objects, as coined by the Victorian literary critic John Ruskin.
Persona - A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem. The identity of the speaker is not always so clear; John Berryman’s sequence of Dream Songs is narrated primarily by a persona named Henry, who refers to himself in the third person.
Personification - A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person.
Simile - A comparison made with “as,” “like,” or “than.”
Soliloquy - A soliloquy is a monologue in which a character in a play expresses thoughts and feelings while being alone on stage. Soliloquies allow dramatists to communicate information about a character’s state of mind, hopes, and intentions directly to an audience.
Symbol - Something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or is a sign for something else, often abstract or otherworldly. A rose, for example, has long been considered a symbol of love and affection.
Synecdoche - A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole (for example, “I’ve got wheels” for “I have a car,” or a description of a worker as a “hired hand”).
Tone - The poet’s attitude toward the poem’s speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader. Often described as a “mood” that pervades the experience of reading the poem, it is created by the poem’s vocabulary, metrical regularity or irregularity, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhyme.
Allusion - A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement. “The Waste Land,” T. S. Eliot’s influential long poem is dense with allusions. The title of Seamus Heaney’s autobiographical poem “Singing School” alludes to a line from W.B. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” (“Nor is there singing school but studying /Monuments of its own magnificence”).
Ambiguity - A word, statement, or situation with two or more possible meanings is said to be ambiguous.
Anaphora - Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.
Apostrophe - An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present.
Archetype - A basic model from which copies are made; a prototype.
Hyperbole - A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration.
Irony - As a literary device, irony implies a distance between what is said and what is meant. Based on the context, the reader is able to see the implied meaning in spite of the contradiction.
Metaphor - A comparison that is made directly (for example, John Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) or less directly (for example, Shakespeare’s “marriage of two minds”), but in any case without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”
Motif - A central or recurring image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works. Unlike themes, which are messages, statements, or ideas, motifs are details whose repetition adds to the work’s larger meaning; multiple and varying motifs can take place within one work and across longer collections.
Neologism - A newly coined word.
Pathetic Fallacy - The assignment of human feelings to inanimate objects, as coined by the Victorian literary critic John Ruskin.
Persona - A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem. The identity of the speaker is not always so clear; John Berryman’s sequence of Dream Songs is narrated primarily by a persona named Henry, who refers to himself in the third person.
Personification - A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person.
Simile - A comparison made with “as,” “like,” or “than.”
Soliloquy - A soliloquy is a monologue in which a character in a play expresses thoughts and feelings while being alone on stage. Soliloquies allow dramatists to communicate information about a character’s state of mind, hopes, and intentions directly to an audience.
Symbol - Something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or is a sign for something else, often abstract or otherworldly. A rose, for example, has long been considered a symbol of love and affection.
Synecdoche - A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole (for example, “I’ve got wheels” for “I have a car,” or a description of a worker as a “hired hand”).
Tone - The poet’s attitude toward the poem’s speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader. Often described as a “mood” that pervades the experience of reading the poem, it is created by the poem’s vocabulary, metrical regularity or irregularity, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhyme.