Hyperbole:
Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Simile:
A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a
different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as
a lion).
Metaphor:
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to
which it is not literally applicable.
Personification:
The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something non-
human, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
Alliteration:
Alliteration is a literary device where words begin with letters belonging to the
same sound group. Whether it is the consonant sound or a specific vowel group.
Conflict:
It is a literary device used for expressing a resistance the protagonist of the story
finds in achieving his aims/ dreams.
Example:
John tried hard to convince himself that his Hollywood dreams were worth the
struggle but his parents, and his inner voice of reason, failed to agree.
Conceit:
Conceit is an elaborate figure of speech comparing two very dissimilar things or
situations.
Example:
John Donne has used many conceits in his poem, ‘The Good Morrow’. For
example: ‘Or snorted we in the seven sleepers den?’
Character:
A person in a literary work. Any person in a play is considered as a character.
Plot:
The plot usually refers to the sequence of events and happenings that make up a
story.
Example:
Many date movies follow a similar simple plot. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy
wins girl back in the end.
Theme:
The theme of any literary work is the base topic or focus that acts as a foundation
for the entire literary piece.
Example:
The main theme in the play Romeo and Juliet was love with smaller themes of
sacrifice, tragedy, struggle, hardship, devotion.
Setting:
Place and time where the event takes place.
Example:
In the winter/ summer.
Point of view:
The prescriptive form in which a narrative is related.
Imaginative literature:
A verbal presentation of an imaginary world in which imaginary beings engage in
imaginary acts and processes.
Haiku:
A Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five,
traditionally evoking images of the natural world.
Literature:
Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.
Connotation:
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that
some word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is
its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative,
with regard to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection.
Spenserian sonnet:
The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth century English poet Edmund
Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet
—but employs a series of “couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the
rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.
Assonance:
Resemblance of sound between syllables of nearby words, arising particularly from
the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels, but not consonants
(e.g. sonnet, porridge ), but also from the use of identical consonants with different
vowels (e.g. killed, cold, culled ).
