![]() Indirect characterization shows the audience the character’s personality. Direct characterization tells the audience about the character. As audience members watch a play and see the misfortunes of the characters, they might feel scared or sorrowful for them, but at the end, these negative emotions are “purged,” tensions are released, and viewers are left calm.Įxample: When watching or reading William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the scene when Romeo believes Juliet to be dead might make us recall our own lost loves and thus to release our emotions.Ĭharacterization is the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character. Cadence is present in prose as well as in poetry.Ĭatharsis refers to the release of emotions of pity or fear at the end of a tragedy. An autobiography is a story one writes about one’s own life.Įxample: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiographical account of slavery.Ĭadence refers to the natural rhythm of language, the rising and falling “tune” of a piece of writing, based on stressed and unstressed syllables. Usually, only the second and fourth lines rhyme.Įxample: from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”Ī biography is the story of a person’s life, presumed to be factual. The first and third lines have eight syllables (tetrameter) the second and fourth have six (trimeter). ![]() The ballad stanza, named because it is frequently used in ballads, consists of four lines. Literary ballads are narrative poems that are written in a form that imitates traditional ballads.Įxample: For an example of a traditional ballad, read “Get Up and Bar the Door”: įor an example of a literary ballad, read John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”: Ballads usually offer dramatic, short, and impersonal stories. Historically, ballads were story songs passed down orally thus, they usually cannot be traced to particular authors. “Moon” and “spoon” rhyme “moon” and “mood” are assonant.Įxample: from Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” ![]() Alliteration occurs at the start of words rhyme, at the ends and assonance, in the middle. The antagonist is a character or force that comes into conflict with the protagonist, the central character, in fiction or drama.Įxample: In the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort is Harry’s antagonist, as are, at various points, Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape.Īssonance is the repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not rhyme. Mud here is analogous to slander-it makes us dirty. Just like we cannot touch mud without getting dirty, we cannot speak ill of others without sullying ourselves. ![]() The mud in this sentence clearly isn’t literal dirt. “No mud can soil us but the mud we throw” Analogies are more extensive than similes and metaphors.Įxample: from James Russell Lowell’s “An Epistle to George William Curtis” Allusions tap into readers’ cultural knowledge and create an in-group of readers who catch the reference.Įxample: Though many people who use the phrase probably aren’t aware of this, using the phrase “going down the rabbit hole” to describe starting a disorienting, confusing, and lengthy experience is an allusion to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), in which Alice ends up in Wonderland by following the White Rabbit down his rabbit hole.Īn analogy is a comparison in which an idea or thing is compared to something quite different from it. Alliteration can add emphasis, playfulness, or rhythm.Įxample: from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”Īn allusion is a reference, usually implicit, to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature. Alliteration is based on repeated sounds, not letters: car keys is alliterative, but city cardis not. Need more practice with these definitions? Visit to study virtual flashcards, play study games, and more! The password is “Warriors”.Īlliteration describes when the initial sounds of words are repeated in close proximity.
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