Literary Terms 3

a comparison, often elaborate, extended, or startling, between objects which are apparently dissimilar; a type of extended metaphor

• ex. Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare
• Where we almost, yea more than married are
• This flea is you and I and this
• Our marriage bed and marriage temple is

reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes

ex. We await word from the crown.

a statement that does not logically follow another

ex. If you get hit by a car when you are six, you will die young. But you were not hit by a car when you were six, thus you will not die young.

placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another

ex. Festina lente (Make haste slowly)

a statement that is self-contradictory on the surface, yet seems to evoke a truth nonetheless

ex. What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young.

refers to the quality of literary works that deal with the pleasures of a simple, rural life

employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm

ex. and, and, and, and

ridicules human folly or vice with the purpose of bringing about reform

a speech in which a character, alone on the stage, addresses himself or herself

• a poem of 14 lines, normally iambic pentameter
• English/Shakespearean-ABABCDCDEFEFGG
• Italian/Petrarchan-ABBABBA

the transposition of initial or other sounds of words, as in a blushing crow for a crushing blow

narrative that presents the private thoughts of a character without commentary or interpretation by the author

a deductive system of formal logic that presents two premises; first major, then minor, then conclusion

• Ex. everything that lives moves (major)
• no mountain moves (minor)
• no mountain lives (conclusion)

a whole is represented by naming one of its parts

• Ex. Listen, youve got to come look at my new wheels
• A vehicle is referred to in terms of some of its parts, "wheels"

imagery that involves the use of one sense to evoke another

Ex. loud color, warm gesture

a 19 line poem consisting of 5 tercets rhymed aba and a concluding quatrain phymed abaa

a general term describing when one part of speech (normally the verb) governs two or more other parts of a sentence

Ex. He missed his wife and the train