Allegory: a story in which characters, events, and places represent something in real life.
Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").
Allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase. The writer assumes will recognize the reference.
Ambiguity: (1) a statement, which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.
Analogy: a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between the heart and a pump.
Anaphora: the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.
Anecdote: a little story used to explain an idea.
Antagonist: a character that goes against the main character and tries to stop him/her from achieving their goal.
Aside: A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech, which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play.
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree.
Audience: person reading or viewing the story or writing.
Autobiography: The story of a person's life written by himself or herself.
Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action. The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these.
Biography: The story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work.
Blank Verse: A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Cacophony/Euphony: Cacophony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the opposite, is