Literary Terms and Techniques1

Hello people

These definitions are from a book called ‘Literary Terms and Techniques’. I’m picking a bunch of these to submit so that you guys can get some definitions that I think are helpful in writing.

I’m not going to submit them all at once, 5 every week or so, that way people can digest a little at a time.

You may be wondering why I can do this and not start a contest, but it’s because I don’t have a steady computer and all this entitles is me typing up some stuff and submitting. I just wanted to stay active

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Allegory
A tale in prose or verse in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Thus, an allegory has two meanings, a literal meaning an a symbolic meaning. The most famous allegory in English is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (16878). A well-known American allegory is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.”

A related form is the parable, a short, simple tale from which a moral lesson is drawn. Probably the most famous of all parables are those told by Jesus in the New Testament.

Alliteration
The repetition of similar sounds, usually initial consonants, in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Alliteration serves several purposes: it is pleasing to the ear, it emphasizes the words in which it occurs, and it links and emphasizes the ideas these words express. Edgar Allan Poe frequently used alliteration, as in this line from “The Raven”:
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Here, alliteration links the ideas of dreaming, doubting, and daring.

Allusion
A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects a reader to recognize. Allusions may be drawn from literature, mythology, religion, history, or geography. An allusion to Greek mythology is found in this line from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “The Chambered Nautilus”
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings
Here Holmes alludes to the Sirens, sea nymphs who enchanted sailors with their songs and lured them to their deaths. This allusion helps to evoke the mystery of the sea. The title of Archibald MacLeish’s poem ‘Ars Poetica’ alludes to a famous long poem of the same name by the Roman poet Horace.

Almanac
A book of months and days for one year, containing weather predictions, a wide varietry of miscellaneous information, and, often, proverbs. Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard almanacs (1732-1757) were among the earliest American almanacs.

Analogy
A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them. Analogies can be used for illustration (to explain something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar) or for argument (to persuade that what holds true for one thing holds true for the thing to which it is compared). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow draws an analogy for the sake of illustration in “The Tides Rises, the Tide Falls,” where he compares the repeated rise and fall of the tide to the passage of time and human life.