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| (Greek "rule"): the group of texts regarded as worthy of special respect or attention by a given institution. Also, the group of texts regarded as definitely having been written by a certain author. |
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| The careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they are read. |
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| The breaking up of a topic to make it easier to understand. |
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| The repetition of an initial consonant sound or consonant cluster in consecutive or closely positioned words. |
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| The repetition of identical or near identical stressed vowel sounds in words whose final consonants differ, producing half-rhyme. |
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| (Latin "cut"): a term of meter. A pause or breathing space within a line of verse, generally occurring between syntactic units. |
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| Initially meaning a song, "lyric" refers to a short poetic form, without restriction of meter, in which the expression of personal emotion, often by a voice in the first person, is given primacy over narrative sequence. |
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| (Greek "change of name"): Using a word to denote another concept or other concepts, by virtue of habitual association. Thus, "The Press," designating printed news media. |
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| A poetic genre that typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts his experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking, and the story is often an allegory. |
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| A genre. In classical literature elegy was a form written in elegiac couplets (a hexameter followed by a pentameter) devoted to many possible topics. |
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| (a.k.a. epic), a genre. An extended narrative poem celebrating martial heroes, invoking divine inspiration, beginning in medias res, written in a high style, and divided into long narrative sequences. |
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| A type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually two words, often hyphenated) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. |
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| (Greek "to take with something else"): Using a part to express the whole, or vice versa; e.g., "all hands on deck" |
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| "Where are...[they]?" Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience. |
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