Allegory:

a story in verse, or prose which has a literal or surface level of meaning and a secondary "under-the-surface" meaning.

Alliteration:

The repetition of consonant sounds for a measured rhetorical effect.  For example the repetition of  "f" in the closing lines of Herbert´s "Easter Wings," "then shall the fall further the flight in me," becomes the flapping wing-beat of the soul´s ascension into heaven.

Anagnorisis:

(Recognition in Greek) The moment of illumination or knowledge (self-knowledge).  See Epiphany.

Analepsis:

A time-shift in the narrative.  Moving back into the past for example, to remember certain events (flashback).  See Prolepsis.

Caesura:

Punctuation in the middle of a line that is pronounced enough (not, for example usually a comma) to stop or halt a line dramatically.  See Yeats´ "Leda and the Swan," and Hughes´ "The Thought Fox," for examples.  It often caps an enjambed sequence so that there is a sensation of movement halted.

Catharsis:

The purging of high emotion (occurs at the end of tragedy)

Didactic:

Instructive, intending to teach.  Used, for example, of literature that has as a primary purpose to offer a guide to correct moral behavior.

Enjambement:

The lack of end-stopping punctuation in poetry.  The effect is to create continuous movement from one line to another, usually to support the development of a sense of movement or action in the poem.  Enjambement is often used alongside a Caesural pause.

Epiphany:

A moment of revelation and insight, according to Joyce, which materializes suddenly out of some everyday moment or event.

Evoke:

To call up or produce, memories, feelings, sensations, etc.

Hamartia:

(Error in Greek) The failing or mistake that triggers the hero's tragic fall.

Hubris:

Arrogance, excessive pride.

Irony:

Conveying a meaning which is often the opposite, or at least contrary to the ostensible or apparent meaning.

Metaphor:

Implicit comparison of unlike objects--using the dissimilarity of objects to create the frisson of the comparison.

Onomatopoeia:

A word derived from the sound of the thing it names or signifies, like slap or buzz, or boom.

Pathetic Fallacy:

Using the natural environment to reinforce or mimic the emotional or physical states of a character: for example, the storm scene in Shakespeare´s King Lear reinforces Lear´s mental collapse, just as the chillingly bleached out day in Hardy´s "Neutral Tones" seems to sympathise with the cold disconnection of Hardy´s two lovers.

Peripeteia:

Reversal of fortune.  In comedy peripety may be positive or negative.  Tragedy involves a collapse of fortune and rank that is part of the tragic fall which brings about the moment of anagnorisis of the tragic hero.

Personification:

Attributing animated or personal qualities to something abstract or inanimate.

Prolepsis:

A time-shift in the narrative.  Moving forward into the future to anticipate what will come to pass.  See Analepsis.

Satire:

Defined by Johnson as a poem "in which wickedness or folly is censured."  More generally it is a text which protests society´s weaknesses and vices, often through the use of humor and shock.

Stanza:

An arrangement or group of lines forming a unit of division of a poem.  From the Italian, "stopping place."

Simile:

A comparison of unlike objects (they may share a single particular likeness, but not a general likeness), using the constructions "like a . . ."   or    "as . . . as a . . .    (See Metaphore)

Sonnet:

(Italian for "little song.")  A short poem generally identified as having 14 lines.  Traditionally arranged around specific patterns of organization and rhyme scheme, such as Shakespearean, Petrarchan and Spencerian.

Symbol:

A word phrase or image having complex associated meanings.  Thus Red when it becomes a symbol might signify danger (since we often attach it to warning signs), anger (he saw red, "a red rag to a bull"), sexuality or prostitution (a red-light district), romance (just walk down the Valentines aisle in your local store), or life (the red cross), and more.  See Allegory.

Synecdoche:

A figure of speech that is basically metonymic in approach.  Substituting a part of something to represent the whole.  Thus, the Crown of England is synecdochal, since it takes the symbolic headgear and makes it representative of the monarchy in general.

Tragedy:

The term apparently comes, strangely enough, from the Greek, "goat song."  Chaucer styles it thus: "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyne storie,/As olde bookes maken us memorie,/Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee/And is yfallen out of heigh degree/Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly."

Volta:

The "turn" or shift from the octave to the sestet in a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.