Literary Terms: Character Types and Poetic Devices

What type of character has only one or two personality traits?

What is the term for a rhetorical balance in poetry where the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed?

What is the term for a word or phrase that has become lifeless due to overuse?

What type of story typically ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character or characters?

What is the term for an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different?

What is the term for poetry that uses intimate material from the poet's life?

What type of conflict involves opposing forces within a person's mind?

What is the term for the associations and emotional overtones attached to a word or phrase?

What is the term for a poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died?

What is the term for a device of repetition where the same expression is repeated at the beginning and end of a line or clause?

What type of fiction or nonfiction teaches a specific lesson or moral?

What is the term for a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work?

What is the term for the use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot?

Which type of poetry does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme?

What is the term for a character who acts as a contrast to another character?

What is the term for words that are inaccurate if interpreted literally, but are used to describe?

What is the term for a scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence of events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time?

What is the term for a sentence that uses connecting words to show the logical or other relationships between clauses or sentences?

What type of sentence is characterized by a main clause followed by dependent grammatical units?

What is the primary purpose of a lyric poem?

What type of metaphor makes a comparison between two unlike things without using specific words of comparison?

What is the term for a metaphor that has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid?

What occurs when a metaphor has gotten out of control and mixes its terms in a visually or imaginatively incompatible way?

What type of poem tells a story, unlike a lyric poem?

What literary device involves saying less than what is meant?

What is the term for a story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end?

What is the term for the language spoken by the people who live in a particular locality?

What literary movement advocated a recording of the artist's personal impressions of the world?

What is the term for a sentence with three parts of equal importance and length?

What is the term for a unified writing that is organized around a central idea or principle?