10 Literary Terms that will promote your communication or writing skills

10 Literary Terms And Definition that you need to know

By Shalomupdatez

Save the post and read again and again for memorisation*

1. Cliché – An expression that has lost its freshness or appeal due to overuse. 

 Examples: the writing is on the wall, as easy as pie, what goes around comes around, or turn over a new leaf

2. Melodrama – A drama (play) which sets clearly “good guys” against obviously “bad guys” in scenes of

sensational action and suspense, but ends happily. 

3. Meter – the sound a poem makes based on regular or irregular patterns of syllables and stresses in each

line. Meter is measured in ‘feet’ per line of a poem, and the lines are measured as ‘versification.’ Figuring

out a poem’s meter can be a bit tricky, but usually a pattern emerges after you ‘scan’ a few lines and mark

the stressed and unstressed syllables and add up the ‘feet,’ or stresses. These patterns (or ‘scansion’)

are assigned names such as “iambic pentameter,” which means each lines has five ‘iambs’ (one

unstressed + one stressed syllable) for a total of ten beats per line. Certain forms of poetry prescribe a

certain meter. Sonnets, for example, are usually iambic pentameter. It’s helpful to scan a poem for meter

for a few reasons. For one, meter can help you figure out the form of a poem, which can give you clues

about the writer and his or her historical, social or cultural context; this can help you ask questions about

the conventions and expectations of the poem. Additionally, meter can help you figure out the overall

‘sound’ of the poem and consider the pacing---how fast or how slow it moves and why. Further, meter

might complement imagery. For example, long deep-breathing lines followed by shorter lines might mimic

waves crashing on a beach and then receding.

4. Versification - Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse

structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet:

•

Monometer: 1 foot

•

Dimeter: 2 feet

•

Trimeter: 3 feet

•

Tetrameter: 4 feet

•

Pentameter: 5 feet

•

Hexameter: 6 feet

•

Heptameter: 7 feet

•

Octameter: 8 feet

•

Nonameter: 9 feet

5. Elegy – A formal poem lamenting about the dead

6. Allusions imply reading and cultural experiences shared by the writer and the reader, functioning as a kind

of shorthand whereby the recalling of something outside the text supplies an emotional or intellectual

context. Use the verb form, allude.

 Example: At the outset of his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “Five score

years ago,” an allusion to Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” which begins “Four score and seven

years ago.” King alludes to Lincoln in order to draw a parallel between the historic moment of

emancipation and his own time during the Civil Rights Movement.

7. Foot – the basic unit of rhythm in poetry consisting of a group of two or three syllables. For example, a

line of poetry ten syllables long written in iambs (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable)

would be iambic pentameter. Note that variation is important in poetry; therefore, the prevailing foot may

be spotted with different feet. A line of iambic poetry may begin with a trochee.

Types of feet: U (unstressed); / (stressed)

 Iamb: U /

 Trochee: / U

 Anapest: U U /

 Dactyl: / U U

 Spondee: / /

 Pyrrhic: U U

8. Conceit – a figure of speech (such as an analogy, metaphor, hyperbole, or oxymoron) which sets up

an unusual, exaggerated, or elaborate parallel between two different things (for example, comparing one’s

beloved to a ship or planet. The comparison may be brief or may extend throughout an entire poem.

 Example: In “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” John Donne includes an extended metaphor

comparing the souls of himself and his lover to a drafting compass: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two;” The poem continues to build on this image until its conclusion. 

9. Free Verse – flowing lines, usually unrhymed, that vary in length and with no fixed meter.

10. Enjambment– when a sentence ‘steps over’ a line break into the next line without pause.

For more tips visit fifipediaacademy on Facebook, shalomuodatez on facebooks, and our WhatsApp tv