Poetry Terms

Alliteration	The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words
Anapest	Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE
Antagonist	A character or force against which another character struggles
Assonance	The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe"
Aubade	A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover
Ballad	A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style
Blank verse	A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Caesura	A strong pause within a line of verse
Character	An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change)
Characterization	The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions
Climax	The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The climax of John Updike's "A&P," for example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier
Closed form	A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern
Complication	An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work
Conflict	A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work
Connotation	The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation
Convention	A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle
Couplet	A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem.