tone definition: it is the attitude a writer takes toward a subject. example: the tone of the novel...
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TONE
DEFINITION: It is the attitude a writer takes toward a subject.
EXAMPLE:
The tone of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is humorous, childlike, nostalgic, yet increasingly dark, and serious.
MOOD
DEFINITION: The feeling or atmosphere that the writer creates for the reader.
EXAMPLES:
The mood in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is funny, sad, and suspenseful.
PERSONIFICATION
DEFINITION: The giving of human characteristics to inanimate objects, ideas, or animals.
EXAMPLES:
The desk cried when the obese man sat down in it.
“The waves beside them danced.”
-William Wordsworth
NARRATIVE POEM
DEFINITION: A narrative poem tells a story. It has setting, plot, and point of view, all of which combine to develop a theme.
EXAMPLE:
Homer’s The Odyssey
REFRAIN
DEFINITION: It is the repetition of one or more lines in each stanza of a poem.
EXAMPLE:
“The Bells” by Edgar Allen Poe
(pg. 198)
ASSONANCE (#6)
DEFINITION: The similarity or repetition of a vowel sound in two or more words; sometimes called a partial rhyme or near rhyme
EXAMPLES:
“My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay…”
- “Lineage” by Margaret Walker
DICTION
DEFINITION: a writer’s or speaker’s choice of words and way of arranging them in sentences.
EXAMPLES: In poem “A Voice” – ordinary language, informal conversational style: “meat, potatoes, gravy”. In poem “The Road not Taken” – unusual word order: “long I stood.”
ONOMATOPOEIA
DEFINITION: The use of the words whose sounds actually suggest their meaning.
EXAMPLES:
“Snap, Crackle, Pop”
In Homer’s The Odyssey, the speaker says
“Eyelid and lash were seared; the pierced ball/ hissed broiling…”
SIMILE
DEFINITION: A comparison of two dissimilar things using “like” or “as”.
EXAMPLES:
Chris swims like a fish.
Amber eats like a bird.
Corey threw the football like a bullet.
METAPHOR
DEFINITION: A comparison between two things that are basically unlike but that have something in common. Metaphors do NOT use “like” or “as”.
EXAMPLES: Mr. Ewell is a pig at the table.“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
-William Shakespeare
ALLUSION
DEFINITION: A reference to a person, place, or event-usually from history, mythology, music, art etc.
EXAMPLES:In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is mentioned several times in the novel, which indicates that the story takes place during the Great Depression.
ALLITERATION
DEFINITION: The repetition of initial consonant or vowel sounds.
EXAMPLES:
Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Sally was safe and sound in the sanctuary.
13. DENOTATION OF A WORD
DEFINITION: The literal or dictionary meaning of a word.
EXAMPLE: The words skinny, thin, bony, skeletal, slim and slender all have similar meanings, or denotations.
CONNOTATION OF A WORD
DEFINITION: The attitudes and feelings associated with a word. May be positive or negative.
EXAMPLE: The words skinny, bony, and skeletal have negative connotations (you are too thin). The words slim, slender, and thin all have positive connotations (you look good, you look healthy.)
EXAMPLE: enthusiastic has a positive connotation, but rowdy has a negative connotation.
EPIC
DEFINITION: a long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero whose actions reflect the ideals and values of a nation or race. Epics address universal concerns, such as good and evil, life and death, and other serious subjects.
EXAMPLE: Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad
FREE VERSE
DEFINITION: It is poetry that does not contain a regular pattern of rhyme and meter.
EXAMPLE:
“Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman
(pg. 289)
LYRIC
DEFINITION: A lyric poem is a short poem in which a single speaker expresses personal thoughts and feelings.
EXAMPLE:How quickly my love turns elsewhere.
His eyes search someone else's face for the love that blazes in mine.
If only he knew how to unlock his own mind and heart and soul, if only he knew me, too, as I know him.
How quickly my love looks to someone else, his memory of us fading. My memorystill fresh, but faltering now, too. Soon, we will be no more, forever. If only my love knew me, if only my love loved me, too.
-”Love is Blind” Unknown Poet
Blank Verse
DEFINITION: Unrhymed poetry written in iambic pentameter (each line has five pairs of syllables)
EXAMPLE: But soft! What light through yonder window
breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Ballad
DEFINITION: a poem that tells a story and is meant to be sung or recited.
EXAMPLE:”O What is That Sound” by W.H. Auden; “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe
NARRATIVE POEM
DEFINITION: a poem that tells a story. It has all the elements of a story: characters, setting, plot, point of view, and theme.
EXAMPLE: The Odyssey by Homer; “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
STANZA
DEFINITION: It is a grouping of two or more lines in a pattern that is repeated throughout a poem. A stanza is similar to a paragraph in a novel, short story, or essay.
EXAMPLE: The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean.A Traveling Flake of SnowAcross a Barn or through a RutDebates if it will go—
A Narrow Wind complains all DayHow some one treated him.Nature, like Us is sometimes caughtWithout her Diadem
-”Sky is Low” by Emily Dickinson
#22 Verse
DEFINITION: Lines of poetry. Novels are written in chapters and paragraphs; poems and songs are written in verse.
SPEAKER
DEFINITION: In poetry the speaker in the poem is the voice that talks to the reader, similar to the narrator in fiction.
EXAMPLE:
“A Voice” by Pat Mora (pg, 680)
#24 Quatrain
DEFINITION: A stanza consisting of four lines, which may or may not rhyme.
EXAMPLE:
The sense of danger must not disappear:The way is certainly both short and steep, However gradual it looks from here;Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
#25 COUPLET
DEFINITION: A rhymed pair of lines
EXAMPLE:I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
SYMBOL
DEFINITION: An object, person, action, or event that stands for something deeper than itself.
EXAMPLES:
The cross is a symbol for Christianity.
A ring on the fourth finger/left hand represents a person who is married.
#27 IMAGERY
DEFINITION: Imagery consists of descriptive words and phrases that re-create sensory experiences for the reader. It appeals to one or more of the five senses-sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch-to help the reader imagine exactly what is being described.
EXAMPLE:
From the short story, “My Wonder Horse”:
“I now see black stains over his body. Sweat and wet snow have revealed the black skin beneath the white hair. Snorting breath, turned to steam, tears the air.”
#28 Internal Rhyme
DEFINITION: Rhyme that occurs within a single line of verse
EXAMPLES:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December.
#29 END RHYME
DEFINITION: rhyme that occurs in the last syllables of verses. End rhyme is the most common type of rhyme in English poetry.
EXAMPLE: Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.
#30 Slant Rhyme
DEFINITION: Imperfect or “half-rhyme”
EXAMPLE:
When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
RHYME SCHEME (#31)
DEFINITION: The pattern of end rhyme in a poem. The pattern is charted by assigning a letter of the alphabet, beginning with the letter a, to each line. Lines that rhyme are given the same letter.
EXAMPLE:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, a
And sorry I could not travel both b
And be one traveler, long I stood a
And looked down one as far as I could a
To where it bent in the undergrowth; b
-Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
DEFINITION: Language that communicates ideas beyond the literal, ordinary meanings of words. Includes personification, metaphor, and simile.
EXAMPLE: Personification: “Death stood there” (Incident
in a Rose Garden) Simile: the crowd “like the beating of the storm
waves” (Casey at the Bat) Metaphor: “people who harness themselves,
an ox to a heavy cart” (To Be of Use)
HYPERBOLE
DEFINITION: Exaggeration or overstatement; it is not be taken literally.
EXAMPLES:
“I had so much so homework, I needed a pickup truck to carry all of my books home.”
“I think of you a million times a day.”
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
DEFINITION: It is a metrical line of five feet, or units, each of which is made up of two syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed. (10 syllables per line = 5 beats/feet).
EXAMPLE:
IRONY
DEFINITION: a contrast between appearance or expectations, and reality
EXAMPLES: “The Most Dangerous Game”: The hunter
becomes the hunted. “The Necklace”: The very thing Madame
Loisel thought would make her happy actually ruined her life.
“Incident in a Rose Garden”: The master thinks Death is coming for the gardener, but Death is actually coming for him.
Paradox
DEFINITION: A statement that seems to contradict (go against) itself, but is still true.
EXAMPLES: “Dark fins appear, innocent /as if in fair
warning” (The Sharks) “I know that I know nothing at all” (Socrates) Many documents contain pages on which the
text "This page is intentionally left blank" is printed, thereby making the page not blank.
REPETITION
DEFINITION: It is a technique in which a sound, word, phrase, or line is repeated for effect or emphasis.
EXAMPLE: My grandmothers were strong.They followed plows and bent to toil.They moved through fields sowing seed.They touched earth and grain grew.They were full of sturdiness and singing.My grandmothers were strong.
-”Lineage” by Margaret Walker
SONNET DEFINITION: A fourteen lined poem with the last two lines, usually rhyming,
called a couplet. It is usually written in iambic pentameter (10 syllables=5 beats per line).
EXAMPLE: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shadeWhen in eternal lines to time thou growest:So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
-Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
THEME (#39)
DEFINITION: It is the main idea in a work of literature. It answers the question: What is this book/poem/story really about?
EXAMPLE: In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the themes include the following: courage, prejudice, concern for others, hidden identities discovered etc.
RHYTHM
DEFINITION: The pattern or flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. The accented, or stressed, syllables are marked with / , while unaccented, or unstressed, syllables are marked with U. It has a da-DUM/da-DUM/da-DUM rhythm.
EXAMPLE:
APOSTROPHE
DEFINITION: A sudden shift to direct an address, either to an absent person or to an abstract or inanimate being or idea.
EXAMPLE:
“O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done.” –Walt Whitman
“But tell me, Death, when will you show your face at my door?” -unknown
CONSONANCE
DEFINITION: The repetition of consonant sounds within a line of verse
EXAMPLES:
“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”
-Alfred Tennyson